Carlo e Camilla in Segheria

A former sawmill on Via Giuseppe Meda, in Milan's Porta Romana district, is not the obvious address for a Michelin-starred chef's most personal project. Yet Carlo Cracco and art director Tanja Solci chose precisely this space, preserving its exposed brick and raw cement while suspending antique Venetian chandeliers overhead, creating a tension between industrial memory and theatrical warmth that no purpose-built dining room could replicate. Solci's family undertook the restoration of the building itself, which gives the interior a lived-in conviction that sets it apart from the wave of converted-factory restaurants that followed.

The format is communal by design: roughly 65 guests sit together along two long tables, a deliberate choice that dissolves the private-table formality typical of cooking at this level. It is a social experiment as much as a restaurant, and it works because the food, overseen by chef Emanuele Pollini, earns the attention. The menu shifts with the seasons and with Pollini's instincts, reinterpreting classical Italian combinations through unexpected pairings. Frommer's has noted dishes such as tagliatelle with clams, chervil, and juniper, and spiced veal with peppers, potatoes, and scallions — combinations that signal a kitchen comfortable with restraint rather than spectacle.

Coverage in Wallpaper* and Condé Nast Traveler has focused on the design as much as the cooking, which reflects the dual ambition Cracco and Solci brought to the project from the outset. The restaurant is not a showcase for one discipline at the expense of the other; the chandeliers and the seasonal menu are equally load-bearing. For a city that produces some of Europe's most design-conscious dining rooms, Carlo e Camilla in Segheria has maintained a distinct position by committing to the communal table format and to an interior that reads as genuinely restored rather than styled to look that way.