Why you should experience Forte Garden Milano in Milan, Italy.
Forte Garden Milano is a polished seafood restaurant where Risorgimento's elegant residential character meets Andrea Reitano's international hospitality ambitions, a lush private courtyard and the Mediterranean refinement of the Forte restaurant family.
Set along Via Benvenuto Cellini near Viale Premuda and just steps from Piazza Risorgimento, the restaurant occupies an eastern Milan pocket distinguished by early-twentieth-century apartment architecture, secluded gardens and the decorative experimentation spreading outward from Corso Monforte during the city's prewar expansion. The dining room opens through a veranda toward a planted courtyard, with antique-brass finishes, polished teak and strategically placed mirrors amplifying the daylight entering from outside. Striped umbrellas and mature greenery turn the garden into a genuine outdoor dining room, giving tables greater separation from the surrounding streets than a conventional pavement terrace. Nautical references continue indoors through details that connect the urban property with the coastal orientation behind the wider Forte concept. The result is a Risorgimento restaurant whose garden and maritime design translate an international seafood brand into a quieter Milanese residential setting.
What you should know about Forte Garden Milano.
Forte Garden Milano is best known for bringing Andrea Reitano's international seafood restaurant enterprise into a new Milan chapter after a career that began when the Naples-born entrepreneur left university at nineteen and moved to London to learn English. Reitano entered hospitality there, participating in the 2014 opening of Assunta Madre in Mayfair at twenty before developing his own portfolio through Osteria Romana, Caffè Rei and other projects; by twenty-five he was operating restaurants across London, Milan and Miami. Forte dei Marmi opened on Miami Beach in 2017 and became his American flagship, followed in 2019 by London seafood restaurant Santo Mare, whose Tyrrhenian sourcing philosophy strengthened the marine focus running through his group. Forte reached Milan in 2022 through a 140-seat Moscova restaurant, marking the concept's first Italian expansion after Miami. A second chapter arrived in 2025 when the operation relocated to the newly opened NEMI Hotel and emerged as Forte Garden, placing Reitano Food's Milan restaurant inside a five-star hospitality project on Via Benvenuto Cellini. Forbes Italia profiled Reitano that July after eleven years had produced ten restaurant openings, spanning concepts in London, Miami and Milan. Fortune Italia subsequently included the 1993-born entrepreneur in its 40 Under 40 2026 ranking, by which point his portfolio extended through Forte dei Marmi, Sopra, Santo Mare, several regional Osterias, Forte Garden and Nonna Mamma.
Raw red prawns establish the marine emphasis through tartare and carpaccio, joined by scampi, oysters and wild sea bass across a crudo selection that places the fish itself ahead of elaborate sauces. Involtini di tonno wrap tuna around scampi and mint, introducing herbal freshness before calamaretti with tomato and sea-bass polpette shift toward cooked starters. Gnocchi combine red prawn, cherry tomatoes and pecorino, bringing shellfish into a richer pasta preparation, and cacio e pepe receives another marine variation through red prawn against the cheese-and-pepper emulsion. Mediterranean lobster enters Gragnano tagliatelle before returning as a principal dish prepared grilled, steamed or alla catalana. Salt-crusted sea bass moves in the opposite direction through whole-fish cookery, and the pistachio gelato tower closes dinner with a large-format dessert prepared for sharing.
How to fold Forte Garden Milano into your trip.
Forte Garden Milano works as the dining anchor for an afternoon tracing Risorgimento and neighboring Porta Monforte through Milanese Liberty, rebellious early-twentieth-century eclecticism and the private architecture of interwar industrial wealth.
Begin at Casa Campanini, the residence architect Alfredo Campanini designed for himself between 1904 and 1906 after working alongside Giuseppe Sommaruga on Palazzo Castiglioni. Campanini commissioned sculptor Michele Vedani for the female figures flanking the entrance and Alessandro Mazzucotelli for wrought iron enriched with floral forms, then carried decorative work through stained glass, frescoes and custom interior elements, turning his own house into a concentrated demonstration of Milanese Liberty craftsmanship. Continue to Palazzo Berri Meregalli, constructed between 1911 and 1913 under Giulio Ulisse Arata, whose design fused exposed brick, stone, arches and loggias with an unusually dense program of painting, mosaic, sculpture and wrought iron. Alessandro Mazzucotelli contributed ironwork, Angiolo D'Andrea and Adamo Rimoldi worked on painted and mosaic decoration, and Adolfo Wildt contributed sculpture, allowing Arata to push beyond conventional Liberty through Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance references. Conclude at Villa Necchi Campiglio, commissioned from Piero Portaluppi by industrialist Angelo Campiglio, his wife Gigina Necchi and her sister Nedda and constructed between 1932 and 1935. Portaluppi translated the family's industrial prosperity into a technologically advanced private residence with an elevator, dumbwaiter, intercom system and Milan's first private swimming pool; beginning in 1938, Tomaso Buzzi spent two decades revising portions of the interiors toward a more decorative eighteenth-century language. The progression moves from Campanini's personal Liberty workshop through Arata's collaborative collision of historic styles into Portaluppi and Buzzi's successive interpretations of industrial wealth, tracing three increasingly ambitious forms of private architectural patronage around Risorgimento.
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