Ronin, Milan

Why you should experience Ronin in Milan, Italy.

Ronin is an audacious Japanese hospitality house where Paolo Sarpi's East Asian culture, Guillaume Desforges and brothers Jacopo and Leonardo Signani's entrepreneurial partnership, five years of study, Katsu Nakaji's four-generation sushi lineage and Tokyo nightlife references unfold across four floors devoted to food, cocktails, music and karaoke.

Set along Via Vittorio Alfieri near Via Canonica and just steps from Arco della Pace, the restaurant occupies a neo-Liberty palazzo formerly connected with the Martinitt orphanage, Casa Verdi and Pio Albergo Trivulzio before Salva Tu Alma acquired the property in 2016. Simone Colombo and Michela dell'Orto of Studio SC+ worked with Salva Tu Alma's Design Unit on a two-year restoration that turned the building into a succession of Japanese-inspired environments, with Marsica Fossati designing the upper floor. Neon, custom furnishings, cinematic references and a preserved central staircase carry the interior from Piccolo Ronin and its Klipsch La Scala listening system through Ronin Robata, Madame Cheng, private karaoke rooms, Hatsune Ronin Milano and Arcade. The result is a Paolo Sarpi restaurant where the Signani brothers and Desforges transformed an entire historic palazzo into a vertical exploration of Japanese food and nightlife that has continued changing since its 2022 debut.

What you should know about Ronin.

Ronin is best known for Guillaume Desforges and brothers Jacopo and Leonardo Signani's five-year effort to create an entire Milanese house around Japanese culinary and entertainment culture, extending a partnership whose origins reach back to Peruvian food, a childhood nanny and a chance encounter at a wedding. Jacopo, born in 1981, and Leonardo, born in 1985, grew up in Carrara within a family connected with the marble industry before moving to Milan, where Jacopo studied architecture and design and Leonardo studied economics. Their connection with Peruvian cooking began much earlier through the Peruvian nanny who raised them and prepared dishes including ceviche and causa. Paris-born Desforges, also born in 1985, had his own personal connection with Peru through his partner from Lima. The three friends were attending a wedding when they met Peruvian chef Jaime Pesaque, whose international career already stretched from Lima to restaurants across several continents. That encounter became the catalyst for Pacifico, which the trio developed as Milan's first Nikkei restaurant and later expanded to Rome and Porto Cervo. The partners formed Salva Tu Alma around their growing hospitality work, with Leonardo concentrating on management and Jacopo taking a particularly strong role in concept and design. Ronin pushed their ambitions far beyond a conventional restaurant. Salva Tu Alma acquired the Via Alfieri palazzo in 2016, then spent five years developing a project conceived around Japan during the period from the 1970s through the 1990s, when Japanese technology, cinema and design were exerting enormous influence abroad as Western references simultaneously entered Tokyo. Construction consumed two years before Ronin opened in early 2022. Chef Luigi “Gigi” Nastri initially directed the principal fine-dining kitchen, connecting Japanese techniques with Italian ingredients through dishes such as tempura oyster with veal and risotto with robata-glazed eel and mandarin. Riccardo Speranza directed the original cocktail work at Madame Cheng. The most consequential culinary relationship reached Tokyo. Sushi master Katsu Nakaji came from the family behind Hatsune Zushi in Kamata, founded in 1893, and represented the fourth generation of its sushi tradition after earning two MICHELIN stars at the Tokyo restaurant. His early Ronin appearances developed into something permanent: Hatsune Ronin Milano is now Nakaji's first permanent restaurant outside Japan, serving a ten-seat Edomae omakase within the same building.

Ronin Robata now centers the first-floor kitchen on yakiniku, placing an individual grill into each table and building the meat selection across Japanese A5 Wagyu from several prefectures, Australian and Spanish Wagyu, US Prime Black Angus and selected European breeds. The restaurant works with six international beef varieties and uses less familiar Wagyu cuts alongside prized portions, widening the anatomical range presented for tabletop grilling. Japanese Ozaki Wagyu forms another strand through cattle raised by Muneharu Ozaki, whose beef carries his own name. Sushi remains alongside the grill through blue-prawn nigiri with kizami wasabi, hay-smoked Scottish salmon sashimi with fennel and ikura, A5 Ozaki Wagyu sashimi with anchovy and sesame and red-prawn uramaki with black kale. The hot kitchen moves through black-cod gyoza with miso and a Genovese version filled with veal and onion. Yuzukosho risotto with candied lemon and almond crosses directly into the restaurant's Japanese-Italian cooking, and A5 Ozaki Wagyu shoyu ramen adds shiitake, watercress and furikake. Robatayaki extends from sea bass with fennel and lemon dashi to eel with foie gras, crisp grilled rice and yakitori tare. Black-miso pigeon arrives with Sicilian broccoli and ginger, followed elsewhere by lamb saddle with chicory, black garlic and katsuobushi. Piccolo Ronin downstairs works at a more informal register through hand rolls, karaage, gyudon and bao, accompanied by listening sessions on Klipsch La Scala speakers. Upstairs, Nakaji takes the opposite route through ten-seat Edomae omakase, creating a building where tabletop beef grilling, izakaya cooking and one of Tokyo's oldest sushi lineages operate within separate culinary worlds.

How to fold Ronin into your trip.

Ronin works as the evening anchor for an afternoon tracing Napoleonic ambition, Milan's nineteenth-century commemorative culture and the tram-building industry that accompanied the city's emergence as an industrial power.

Begin at Arco della Pace, commissioned from Luigi Cagnola in 1806 during Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy and begun the following year as an entrance celebrating Napoleonic victories along the route toward Paris. Napoleon's fall halted construction in 1814, and the political reversal changed the monument itself: work resumed under Austrian rule with a new iconographic program dedicated to European peace. Cagnola died in 1833 before completion, leaving Carlo Londonio, Domenico Moglia and Francesco Peverelli to finish the project for its September 1838 inauguration before Emperor Ferdinand I. Continue to Cimitero Monumentale, designed by Carlo Maciachini during the 1860s as Milan consolidated burial grounds into a vast new civic complex. The Famedio became its central commemorative structure, receiving Alessandro Manzoni and later honoring figures including Carlo Cattaneo, Luca Beltrami and Salvatore Quasimodo. Subsequent generations turned family tombs into major artistic commissions, including Giannino Castiglioni's 1935 Campari monument with its bronze interpretation of the Last Supper and Leonardo Bistolfi's memorial for the Toscanini family. Conclude at Fabbrica del Vapore, where Antonio Carminati, Giuseppe Pozzi and Carlo Toselli founded a mechanical workshop in 1899 for railway and tram vehicles. Municipal engineers D'Alòi and Cuccoli later adapted the American Peter Witt tram concept for Milan, and Carminati Toselli built prototype 1501 before producing more than five hundred cars of the 1928 series. The company closed in 1935, yet surviving factory buildings became a municipal cultural center and the Peter Witt cars remain active on Milan's streets. The progression moves from Cagnola's Napoleonic gateway through Maciachini's nineteenth-century civic complex into Carminati Toselli's tram works, tracing political ambition, commemoration and industrial production across the districts surrounding Ronin.

MAKE IT REAL