Why you should experience 168 Chinese Township in Milan, Italy.
168 Chinese Township is an expansive Chinese restaurant where Dergano's northern urban fabric meets Cantonese and Hong Kong culinary traditions, ceremonial dining culture and a restaurant conceived on the scale of a miniature Asian township.
Set along Viale Edoardo Jenner near Via Livigno and just steps from the historic Fratelli Branca distillery complex, the restaurant occupies a northern Milan district shaped by manufacturing, railway infrastructure and the dense residential growth surrounding Maciachini. A pagoda-like entrance establishes the architectural theme before the building opens across two floors of halls, private rooms and raised dining areas modeled on large contemporary restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai. Imperial tables occupy enclosed rooms, leather banquettes line niches decorated with Chinese masks and more restrained contemporary sections interrupt the elaborate decorative scheme. A dedicated hot-pot room places heated vessels directly into the communal dining arrangement, giving one Chinese cooking tradition its own purpose-built environment within the enormous operation. The result is a Dergano restaurant whose extraordinary physical scale supports multiple forms of Chinese communal dining under one roof.
What you should know about 168 Chinese Township.
168 Chinese Township is best known for transforming a former fixed-price Asian restaurant on Viale Edoardo Jenner into one of Milan's largest Chinese dining operations during 2019, with Cantonese cooking, banquet culture and hot pot established as central components of the new concept. Its name draws on the auspicious significance attached to 168 in Chinese culture, where the sequence is associated with prosperity and commercial fortune; the same numerical association extends into Chinese business culture through Alibaba's 1688 platform. The rebuilt restaurant was already being presented as a major new Milan opening by summer 2019, with more than 500 Chinese preparations and an entire room devoted to hot pot distinguishing the operation from the smaller restaurants then introducing the technique across the city. Eight broths supported that format, placing diners around tabletop vessels with meats, seafood, offal, tofu and vegetables cooked directly at the table. Canton and neighboring Hong Kong supplied another organizing principle for the kitchen, connecting dim sum, roasts, seafood and shared dishes with a regional Chinese tradition built around large-group dining. The forced hospitality shutdown of 2020 produced a substantial second transformation: reopening brought a Japanese Open Sushi format into the building, adding lobster rolls, sashimi, gunkan and tempura without eliminating the extensive Chinese à-la-carte operation. The restaurant's scale subsequently acquired a cultural function beyond ordinary service; in May 2026 it hosted the Milan competition of Chinese Bridge for primary-school students, supported by the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Italy and the Confucius Institute of the University of Milan. A restaurant initially rebuilt around the physical dimensions and communal customs of Chinese dining had consequently developed into a venue capable of accommodating formal language and cultural programming for Milan's Chinese community.
Pan-fried dim sum with scallion and ginger establishes the Cantonese sequence through browned dough, aromatic alliums and a crisp surface surrounding the softer filling. Crab shao mai move into steamed preparation before roast duck introduces lacquered skin and richer meat, and century egg brings the preserved texture and concentrated flavor of a classic Chinese cold preparation. Hot pot changes the rhythm completely: one of eight broths arrives at the table, then thin meat, seafood, offal, tofu, vegetables, rice and noodles cook in successive batches before passing through individually assembled sauces. Winter-melon soup moves toward a gentler register, followed by steamed sea urchin filled with an egg-based cream that combines marine salinity with a soft custard texture. Large shared dishes become especially important during Chinese New Year, when preparations have included blue-lobster mapo tofu, black glutinous rice steamed in bamboo and fried rice with truffle. Dim sum, roasting, preservation, steaming and tableside broth cooking place markedly different Chinese techniques within a meal designed around communal ordering and sharing.
How to fold 168 Chinese Township into your trip.
168 Chinese Township works as the meal anchor for an outing through the northern districts beyond the historic center, connecting a nineteenth-century Milanese distilling dynasty with a Renaissance country residence and the industrial works that produced generations of the city's tramcars.
Begin at Museo Branca, housed inside the Via Resegone factory that succeeded Fratelli Branca's original Porta Nuova operation after Bernardino Branca created Fernet-Branca in 1845. The family enterprise expanded internationally under later generations, and its industrial collection now occupies more than 1,000 square meters of the working complex, preserving historic production equipment alongside advertising by artists including Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Leonetto Cappiello, Jean d'Ylen and Achille Mauzan. Continue to Villa Simonetta, whose original country house was built for Gualtiero Bascapè, chancellor to Ludovico il Moro, before Milanese governor Ferrante Gonzaga commissioned Domenico Giunti in 1547 to transform it into a representative residence. Giunti added lateral wings and the façade portico to establish its U-shaped form; wartime bombing later destroyed substantial portions before a municipal restoration beginning in 1959 recovered the Renaissance complex. Conclude at Fabbrica del Vapore, where Antonio Carminati, Giuseppe Pozzi and Carlo Toselli founded Carminati, Toselli & C. in 1899 to build and repair railway and tram equipment. Reorganized as Società Italiana Carminati Toselli in 1907, the works employed 1,350 people by 1919 and produced the 1928 prototype for Milan's celebrated Series 1500 tramcars before the company closed in 1935 and the surviving industrial complex eventually became a municipal cultural center. The progression moves from the Branca family's nineteenth-century expansion of an herbal preparation into industrial production through the aristocratic transformations of Villa Simonetta into Carminati Toselli's mechanization of Milanese transport, tracing successive forms of enterprise and production across the districts surrounding 168 Chinese Township.
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