Hanoi, Milan

Why you should experience Hanoi in Milan, Italy.

Hanoi is an unpretentious Vietnamese restaurant where Porta Volta's passage into Chinatown meets a focused repertoire of phở, fresh rice-paper rolls and southern Vietnamese preparations built around herbs, broths and bright acidity.

Set along Piazzale Antonio Baiamonti near Via Paolo Sarpi and just steps from Porta Volta, the restaurant occupies a distinctive northern-center pocket where Chinatown's commercial streets meet the surviving line of Milan's Spanish fortifications and the sharply pitched contemporary architecture of the Feltrinelli complex. Tall arched windows bring daylight into a simple dining room whose lotus imagery, pale timber and large wall painting introduce Vietnamese visual references. Broth supplies the primary encounter through beef phở and a spicy seafood variation, using rice noodles as the base for meat, fish, aromatics and fresh garnishes. Gỏi cuốn, lemongrass chicken, filled squid and seafood preparations broaden the meal through raw herbs, steaming, sautéing and sharper chile-driven seasoning, creating pronounced changes in temperature and texture around the soups. The result is a straightforward Vietnamese restaurant whose strongest dishes rely on the contrasts fundamental to the cuisine: hot broth against fresh herbs, soft rice noodles against raw vegetables and chile heat against citrus, mint and aromatic spice.

What you should know about Hanoi.

Hanoi is best known for concentrating its Vietnamese cooking around phở and other preparations that depend on the interaction of rice, broth, herbs and aromatic seasoning. The restaurant has maintained that focus since 2019, when its early repertoire already extended beyond familiar noodle soup into spicy whole-fish broth, fresh summer rolls, filled beef rolls and several snail preparations. Phở became the clearest constant, with beef and chicken versions joined by seafood broth and rice noodles across later iterations of the kitchen. Gỏi cuốn established a second Vietnamese foundation through uncooked rice paper wrapped around rice vermicelli, carrot, cucumber, lettuce, mint and basil, preserving the cool herbal character that distinguishes the preparation from fried spring rolls. Lemongrass chicken carries those aromatics into hot cooking, using the citrus perfume of the stalk against chile and sautéed meat. Filled squid and steamed spicy snails push the repertoire toward seafood preparations less ubiquitous in Milan, expanding the restaurant's Vietnamese range beyond the dishes most immediately recognizable outside the country. Desserts continue through cassava cake, banana cake and sweet tapioca with coconut milk, bringing two ingredients deeply embedded across Southeast Asian cooking into the final course. Hanoi has consequently retained a compact culinary concept across years of operation: Vietnamese rice noodles, broths, herbs, seafood and tropical starches developed through preparations that move between the freshness of gỏi cuốn and the deeper heat of phở.

Beef phở organizes the meal around rice noodles submerged in hot broth with sliced beef, spring onion and the aromatic structure created by ginger and warm spices, before fresh garnishes alter the bowl at the table. Spicy seafood broth changes the same noodle format through fish and shellfish, introducing chile and marine salinity where the beef version relies on meat richness. Gỏi cuốn then cools the sequence completely, enclosing vermicelli and crisp vegetables with mint and basil inside translucent rice paper before a dipping sauce supplies sweetness and acidity. Lemongrass chicken returns to direct heat, carrying the stalk's citrus aroma through sautéed meat and chile without the liquid structure of the soups. Cassava cake shifts the texture toward a dense tropical starch, and sweet tapioca with coconut milk closes with softer pearls against the richness of coconut. Hanoi is most compelling across these changes in temperature and composition, using rice in several forms alongside herbs, broth, seafood, lemongrass, cassava and coconut to reveal the range possible inside a relatively concentrated repertoire.

How to fold Hanoi into your trip.

Hanoi works as the dining anchor for an afternoon moving from contemporary architecture at Porta Volta through an exposition-era scientific institution into Milan's Napoleonic architecture of public performance.

Begin at Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, where Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron completed the foundation's new headquarters in 2016 as the principal element of their Porta Volta project. The architects drew the long, narrow, steeply roofed composition from Milanese precedents ranging from rural cascine to large historic institutional buildings, aligning it with the former course of the sixteenth-century Spanish walls; the upper reading room houses access to a historical collection devoted to political, social and cultural movements. Continue to Acquario Civico di Milano, designed by Sebastiano Locati as a pavilion for the 1906 Milan International Exposition and donated to the city after the fair closed. Its Viennese Liberty architecture survives as one of the exposition's rare permanent structures, with aquatic decoration integrated into a building created to present freshwater and marine life; a major 2006 renewal marked its centenary and reorganized the collection around the movement of water from Alpine sources toward the sea. Conclude at Arena Civica, where Luigi Canonica converted Napoleonic ambitions for the Castello district into a vast neoclassical arena conceived in 1805 and inaugurated in Napoleon's presence in 1807. Stone recovered from dismantled fortifications entered the construction, and Canonica studied ancient Roman circus architecture for a venue capable of mass public spectacle; the arena later crossed into modern sport, becoming Inter's home ground from 1930 to 1947. The progression moves from Herzog and de Meuron's architectural response to the former Spanish walls through Locati's surviving pavilion from the 1906 exposition into Canonica's Napoleonic arena, connecting three radically different moments in Milanese architecture within walking distance of Hanoi.

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