Acanto

A Classic Room With Something to Prove

The dining rooms of Milan's grand hotels occupy a specific tier in the city's restaurant hierarchy: formal enough to carry a hotel's prestige, but increasingly expected to compete with independent kitchens on culinary terms. Acanto, the restaurant inside the Principe di Savoia on Piazza della Repubblica, operates in exactly that space. The address is one of Milan's most recognisable, a hotel that has anchored the Repubblica neighbourhood for decades, and the dining room reflects that legacy: classic proportions, professional service, the kind of setting where a business dinner and a celebration can coexist without either feeling out of place.

What has changed more recently is the kitchen's ambition. Chef Matteo Gabrielli, who brings experience working abroad, has positioned the menu around traditional Italian cooking applied with contemporary technique. The goal is not reinvention but clarity: using modern approaches to let the quality of the ingredients speak rather than to obscure or reinterpret them. That philosophy puts Acanto in a different register from Milan's more aggressively creative €€€€ tables — a peer group that includes Cracco in Galleria at one Michelin star and multi-star kitchens that lean into progressive technique. Acanto's Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025 signals consistent quality without the tasting-menu formalism those starred rooms tend to require.

What the Price Point Actually Delivers

At €€€€ pricing, Acanto sits in the same bracket as some of Milan's most decorated restaurants. The editorial question for any room at this level is direct: what does the diner actually receive for that spend? Here, the answer has several components. The first is ingredient quality channelled through classical Italian meat and fish dishes — the kind of cooking that relies on sourcing and technique in equal measure rather than spectacle. The second is service: attentive and professional without the theatrical formality that can make high-end hotel dining feel transactional. The third, and perhaps the most quantifiable, is the wine programme.

Wine Director Torrence O'Haire oversees a list of 1,700 selections, with depth concentrated in Italian regions. At a $$ price tier based on general markup and spread across the list's range, the programme is positioned to offer accessibility across its 375-selection active inventory without abandoning ambition. Sommeliers Patti Robison, Philip Greenwood, Diego de Cordova, and Leonardo Pisano staff the floor, which means the knowledge on hand matches the depth of the list. For a diner weighing whether an €€€€ dinner at a hotel restaurant delivers against, say, a more focused independent room, a wine programme of this scale tipped by experienced staff is a meaningful differentiator. A corkage fee of $35 is noted for those bringing their own bottles.

In the broader context of Italian fine dining, the combination of classical cooking, a credentialled wine team, and consistent Michelin recognition places Acanto closer to the serious end of hotel dining than the purely ceremonial. Rooms at this level in other Italian cities , Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence being the extreme example , demonstrate how high hotel and grand-restaurant wine programmes can reach when the infrastructure is genuinely invested in.

The Risotto as a Reference Point

Among the dishes Acanto has become associated with, the risotto alla Milanese is the most cited. In Milan, this is a dish with weight. The saffron-gilded risotto is one of the city's signature preparations, appearing in trattorias and fine dining rooms alike, and the quality gap between a correctly executed version and a perfunctory one is immediately legible to anyone who has eaten their way through the city. That Michelin's own editorial commentary calls it one of the highlights at Acanto is a meaningful signal: the Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025 rests partly on the kitchen's ability to execute a dish that Milanese diners know intimately.

The broader menu spans Italian meat and fish dishes in the classical mode. Modern techniques appear as a means of precision rather than as an end in themselves , a distinction that separates cooking with genuine grounding from the kind of technical borrowing that produces technically accomplished but personality-free plates. Lunch and dinner service are both available, which gives Acanto more schedule flexibility than the tasting-menu-only format adopted by some of its more austere €€€€ peers.

Piazza della Repubblica and the Hotel Context

Milan's hotel dining scene has been in transition. The city's boom as a fashion and design capital has pulled serious independent kitchens into the spotlight, and the most decorated rooms , Enrico Bartolini's three-star operation and the two-star kitchens at Andrea Aprea and Seta , have moved the standard for what ambitious restaurant cooking in Milan looks like. Hotel restaurants that coast on address and room service trade are increasingly visible as such. Acanto's positioning, inside a landmark property but driven by a kitchen with real culinary intent and a wine programme of genuine scale, represents the version of hotel dining that makes the format worth considering.

The Piazza della Repubblica location places the restaurant within reach of the city's central business and fashion districts, and the hotel's longstanding status gives the room a gravity that newer openings have to build from scratch. For visitors already staying at the Principe di Savoia, Acanto is the obvious choice; for those coming from elsewhere in the city, the combination of the address, the cooking, and the wine list merits the journey.

Milan has no shortage of directions to explore for those building a broader itinerary. The EP Club guides cover the full picture: our full Milan restaurants guide maps the city's dining range from neighbourhood trattorias to three-star rooms. Our full Milan bars guide covers the aperitivo circuit and the city's more serious cocktail venues. Our full Milan hotels guide, our full Milan wineries guide, and our full Milan experiences guide round out the city's offer for visitors with broader plans.

For a longer view across Italian fine dining, the peer reference points are worth knowing. Osteria Francescana in Modena and Le Calandre in Rubano define the upper register of contemporary Italian cooking. Piazza Duomo in Alba and Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico show how regional Italian kitchens are building their own serious identities. Dal Pescatore in Runate offers a different register again , family-run longevity with multi-decade Michelin recognition. Within Milan itself, 28 Posti, Altriménti, Ceresio 7, and Don Carlos offer contrasting approaches to the city's dining character at various price points. For those curious about how similar modern-cuisine ambition translates in entirely different contexts, Frantzén in Stockholm and FZN by Björn Frantzén in Dubai represent the European modern-cuisine tradition extended across geographies.

Planning a Visit

Acanto is located at Piazza della Repubblica 17, inside the Principe di Savoia hotel, in Milan's Repubblica district. The restaurant serves both lunch and dinner. Given the hotel context and consistent Michelin recognition, reservations are advisable, particularly for dinner and at peak periods during Milan's fashion and design weeks, when the city's leading rooms fill quickly. General Manager Diego de Cordova oversees operations. Pricing sits at €€€€ for cuisine and $$ for the wine list, reflecting a hotel-restaurant value structure where the wine programme adds measurable depth to the overall spend.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the must-try dish at Acanto?

The risotto alla Milanese has the clearest claim. Michelin's own notes on the restaurant single it out as one of the highlights, and in a city where this dish is a cultural touchstone prepared across every price tier, that specific recognition from a credentialled source carries weight. The broader menu covers Italian meat and fish in the classical mode, with modern technique applied to sharpen rather than transform the cooking.

Is Acanto reservation-only?

Acanto operates inside the Principe di Savoia, one of Milan's landmark hotels, and holds Michelin Plate recognition for consecutive years at a €€€€ price point. At that level in Milan, particularly during the city's high-demand periods , fashion week, Salone del Mobile, and peak summer months , securing a table without a reservation carries real risk. The restaurant serves both lunch and dinner, which offers some scheduling flexibility, but advance booking is the practical approach for anyone treating the visit as a planned occasion rather than a walk-in attempt.