Waby

The Room Before the Menu

The neighbourhood around Corso Como and Piazza Gae Aulenti has, over the past decade, become Milan's most internationally calibrated quarter, a grid of glass towers, design showrooms, and restaurants with passports. Coming off the main corso toward Via Carlo de Cristoforis, the shift from street noise to the interior register of Waby is deliberate. Contemporary design anchors the room: a rear counter with stools signals the kitchen as performance, not backstage. The international ambience here is not a styling choice applied over an Italian chassis; it reflects a dining segment that Milan has been growing with real seriousness.

Milan's Asian Restaurant Moment

Italy's dining culture was, for a long time, resistant to the kind of Asian fine-dining investment that had already taken root in London, Paris, and Zurich. Milan changed that dynamic faster than anywhere else in the country, partly because of its fashion and finance visitor base, and partly because its own residents began demanding the same range they encountered abroad. The city now has a layered Asian restaurant market: at one end, high-volume delivery-adjacent operations; at the other, kitchens working with the same ingredient discipline and presentation standards applied at the city's Italian fine-dining addresses. Waby sits in that upper tier, holding a Michelin Plate in both 2024 and 2025, a signal of consistent technical execution rather than a one-season performance.

For context, the Michelin Plate recognises cooking that is good without reaching the single-star tier. Within Milan's Asian category, that positioning places Waby alongside a small group of addresses the guide considers worth tracking. The city's dominant restaurant awards conversation tends to focus on its Italian modern cooking, addresses like Enrico Bartolini, Cracco in Galleria, Andrea Aprea, and Seta, all operating at the €€€€ tier. Waby operates at €€€, which places it at a more accessible price point while still belonging to a recognised critical conversation.

What the Menu Is Actually Doing

Modern Japanese menus at this level in European cities tend to organise around a familiar scaffold: raw preparations, sushi and sashimi, grilled items, and fried or steamed formats. The interest is in how each kitchen chooses to move within that scaffold. At Waby, the raw section includes preparations that read more as composed dishes than straight sashimi, the noted example of raw tuna with dashi broth, yuzu, and sake-marinated salmon roe is a dish built around aromatic layering rather than pure product display. That approach reflects a broader trend in contemporary Japanese cooking outside Japan, where European technique and ingredient fluency get folded into Japanese structural logic.

The menu also runs robata alongside gyoza (here listed as gozya), which together extend the offer beyond the sushi-centric format that dominates many European Japanese restaurants. Robata grilling has its own discipline, temperature control and ingredient selection matter more than technical flourish, and its presence here indicates a kitchen set up for a wider range of preparation methods. The result is a menu with genuine range across textures and temperatures, from cold raw dishes to grilled proteins, rather than a menu that circles back to the same register throughout.

The wine list is worth noting in its own right. Italian and French labels, including champagnes, alongside sake available by the glass is a practical acknowledgment that diners at this address arrive with varied preferences. Sake by the glass, in particular, remains the exception rather than the norm in Milan's Japanese restaurants, and its presence here lowers the commitment required to explore the pairing angle.

Planning Your Visit

EA-GN-10 angle here is worth taking seriously: bookings at Waby require forward planning, particularly for counter seats. At a 4.8 Google rating across 326 reviews, the restaurant carries strong word-of-mouth in a city where Japanese restaurant options at this price tier are limited. Demand at the rear counter is likely to outpace availability on short notice during peak periods, particularly Thursday through Saturday evenings and Friday lunch.

Booking through the restaurant directly is the standard method; the address is Via Carlo de Cristoforis, 2, in the 20124 postal district, easily reached from Garibaldi FS or Porta Nuova metro stations. The Corso Como location makes it a natural anchor for an evening that might begin at a nearby bar, see our full Milan bars guide for options in the same quadrant. For those building a full Milan itinerary, our full Milan restaurants guide maps the broader dining picture, while our full Milan hotels guide covers the accommodation options closest to this neighbourhood.

Quick Comparison: Milan Japanese and Asian at the €€€ Tier

For context on Italy's broader fine-dining range, the Michelin landscape extends well beyond Milan: Osteria Francescana in Modena, Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, Uliassi in Senigallia, Dal Pescatore in Runate, Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone, and Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico each represent a different regional register. See also our full Milan wineries guide and our full Milan experiences guide for adjacent programming.