Why you should experience Poporoya in Milan, Italy.
Poporoya is a pioneering Japanese restaurant where Porta Venezia's international character, Minoru Hirazawa's culinary legacy, traditional sushi craft and Milan's first sustained encounter with Japanese food converge along Via Bartolomeo Eustachi.
Set along Via Bartolomeo Eustachi near Via Plinio and just steps from Corso Buenos Aires, the restaurant occupies a residential pocket shaped by early twentieth-century apartment blocks, independent neighborhood businesses and the nearby Liberty architecture spreading through Via Malpighi and Via Melzo. The 2026 move across Via Bartolomeo Eustachi transferred Poporoya from its famously compressed former premises into the larger room previously occupied by sister restaurant Shiro, preserving the close visual relationship between diners, counter and Japanese food preparation inside a more expansive setting. Tables remain closely connected to the working counter, and the restaurant's straightforward physical composition keeps attention on the movements of the kitchen as the room fills and queues develop along the street. The result is a Porta Venezia restaurant where nearly five decades of accumulated history remain physically connected to Via Bartolomeo Eustachi even after one of Milan's most consequential Japanese dining institutions crossed the street into its next chapter.
What you should know about Poporoya.
Poporoya is best known for Minoru Hirazawa, known as Shiro, whose journey from Nagano Prefecture to Milan helped establish sushi and traditional Japanese cooking within Italian dining culture. Born in 1946, Hirazawa studied Japanese cooking at Osaka's Tsuji Culinary Institute before moving to Italy in 1972 and working as one of the early sushi chefs at Restaurant Tokyo in Rome. He reached Milan in 1977 to manage a Japanese grocery on Via Bartolomeo Eustachi, where a sushi counter followed in 1984 and Poporo Srl became his company in 1987 before he assumed independent control of the business. The early challenge extended far beyond persuading Milanese diners to eat raw fish: Hirazawa confronted unsuitable local rice, difficulty obtaining Japanese equipment and tuna preparation practices that did not meet his needs, leading him to pursue Japanese ingredients and teach fish vendors how he needed tuna cut for sushi. Italian diners initially objected to the small dimensions of traditional nigiri, prompting Hirazawa to enlarge portions and develop the oversized sushi style that became associated with Poporoya. His influence subsequently moved beyond his own counter when he helped establish the Associazione Italiana Ristoratori Giapponesi in Milan in 2003 and became its president, using the organization to advance Japanese culinary education across Italy. Daughter Mami Hirazawa joined Poporo Srl in 2004, developed experience across Japanese food retail and restaurant management and eventually assumed a leading role beside her father; her work surrounding Expo Milano 2015 opened continuing commercial relationships with producers from Yamaguchi Prefecture. The Milan Chamber of Commerce honored Poporoya in 2008 for twenty years of operation, and Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries later recognized Minoru and Mami Hirazawa for their contribution to spreading Japanese food overseas and advancing Japanese products in Italy. Gambero Rosso subsequently placed Hirazawa among its Maestri del Sushi, an award honoring chefs who helped establish sushi culture in Italy. In 2026 father and daughter carried Poporoya across Via Bartolomeo Eustachi into the former Shiro premises at number 20, extending a family enterprise that began with a Japanese grocery into a second generation.
Hirazawa's chirashi concentrates the restaurant's culinary philosophy into a bowl of vinegared rice covered with an unusually abundant arrangement of raw fish, a preparation he developed personally and associates with the romantic music he plays during his work. Salmon, tuna, amberjack and other cuts change with the fish available to the kitchen, creating contrasts between lean flesh, richer pieces and the seasoned rice beneath them. Nigiri carries the enlarged proportions Shiro developed after his earliest Italian customers demanded more substantial portions. Gyoza enter a different register through dumpling wrappers enclosing a filling still prepared by Hirazawa from his own recipe. Takoyaki brings octopus into soft spherical batter with a browned exterior. Katsudon layers breaded pork and egg over rice, shifting the meal from raw seafood toward the comfort of a Japanese donburi. Tempura develops another texture through vegetables or prawns enclosed in a light fried coating. The sequence preserves the directness that made unfamiliar Japanese preparations intelligible to generations of Milanese diners while keeping Hirazawa's own adaptations embedded within the food.
How to fold Poporoya into your trip.
Poporoya works as the meal anchor for a Porta Venezia itinerary tracing the conversion of Milan's horse-tram infrastructure into Liberty architecture before reaching one of the city's great twentieth-century private art collections.
Begin at Casa Galimberti, commissioned from Giovanni Battista Bossi by brothers Angelo and Emilio Galimberti and constructed between 1903 and 1905 on territory previously occupied by the Società Anonima degli Omnibus, whose horse-tram facilities disappeared as Milan electrified its transport network. Bossi covered more than 170 square meters of the facade with figurative ceramic tiles executed by Pio Pinzauti and Ferdinando Brambilla, then integrated floral cement ornament and elaborate ironwork into a building whose central heating and elevator placed contemporary technology behind its richly decorated exterior. Continue to Casa Guazzoni, another Bossi project developed from 1904 to 1906 for builder Giacomo Guazzoni on land released by the same former horse-tram operation. Paolo Sala contributed painted decoration, Tarcisio Pogliani created sculptural models for the facade and wrought iron enriched balconies, gates and the hexagonal staircase, while restorations in 1982, 1997 and 2022 recovered successive portions of the decorative program. Conclude at Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano, housed in the Via Giorgio Jan building designed by Piero Portaluppi between 1929 and 1931 for the family of Marieda Di Stefano. Marieda and her husband Antonio Boschi assembled more than two thousand works and formed close relationships with artists, then Antonio donated the collection to Milan through gifts in 1974 and 1988; the apartment opened as a municipal museum in 2003 with three hundred works spanning Novecento Italiano, Mario Sironi, Corrente, Giorgio Morandi, Filippo De Pisis, Lucio Fontana, Spatialism and Informal art. The progression moves from Bossi and the Galimberti brothers converting former horse-tram territory into a major Liberty commission through Guazzoni's neighboring collaboration with Bossi, Sala and Pogliani into Portaluppi's Via Jan residence and the extraordinary twentieth-century collection assembled there by Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano.
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