Why you should experience Casa Ramen Super in Milan, Italy.
Casa Ramen Super is an inventive Japanese restaurant where Isola's independent culinary culture meets Luca Catalfamo's Italian interpretation of the izakaya, a communal room built for ramen, shared plates and drinks shaped by his years of immersion in Japanese food.
Set along Via Ugo Bassi near Via Luigi Porro Lambertenghi and just steps from the historic streets surrounding Isola, the restaurant occupies a northern Milan quarter where old workshops and workers' housing now sit beside contemporary architecture and independent food businesses. The compact 25-seat room places a visible kitchen behind a counter, giving cooking a direct presence throughout dinner. A large communal table establishes the principal social element, accompanied by smaller tables and counter seating that preserve the close physical relationship of Catalfamo's original ramen operation. Warm timber, bright accents and a restrained decorative scheme keep attention on the bowls and small plates moving outward from the kitchen. The result is an Isola restaurant whose intimate scale translates the communal rhythms of an izakaya into a distinctly Milanese neighborhood setting.
What you should know about Casa Ramen Super.
Casa Ramen Super is best known for extending Luca Catalfamo's un journey from running a cleaning company into one of Italy's pioneering careers devoted to ramen. Born near Milan in 1977, Catalfamo founded a cleaning business at 20, grew it to 60 employees over twelve years and handed it to his brother when he decided to enter professional kitchens and travel. Restaurant work took him abroad, and an encounter with ramen at Ippudo in New York redirected his ambitions toward the Japanese dish; he subsequently studied dashi at a London udon restaurant and traveled through Japan for a month eating three or more bowls a day to understand regional approaches. He opened the original 20-square-meter Casa Ramen in Isola in September 2013 without a conventional publicity campaign, developing his recipes through Italian ingredients and the lessons accumulated during those journeys. Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum subsequently invited him to Japan, where Casa Luca made him its first non-Japanese ramen operator and placed his Milan interpretation before a Japanese audience. Catalfamo returned to Isola with a broader ambition and opened Casa Ramen Super in early 2017 as an izakaya-inspired second project, using its larger kitchen to move beyond the narrow repertoire possible at the original address. Identità Golose included the restaurant among its new Milan selections that year, and 50 Top Italy placed Casa Ramen Super sixth in its 2022 ethnic-restaurant category with the Latteria Sorrentina Award. Catalfamo and journalist Chiara Patrizia De Francisci later consolidated years of work into Casa Ramen. Tecniche, ingredienti, cultura, published by Giunti, carrying a career begun with one New York bowl into restaurants, Japanese residency and a dedicated book.
Paitan ramen develops depth through chicken cooked into an opaque, concentrated broth before noodles, marinated egg and pork introduce successive layers of wheat, richness and salinity. The Triple Chashu version expands the meat component through three pork cuts, turning differences in fat and texture into part of the bowl itself; its hotter variation adds chile. Bao introduce softer steamed dough around fillings such as barbecue mushrooms, mayonnaise, toasted cashews and pickled cucumber, shifting from broth toward sweetness, acidity and crunch. Chawanmushi takes another route through steamed egg custard, scallop and black truffle, joining Japanese technique to an ingredient strongly associated with European cooking. Italian sourcing reaches the seasonings themselves through domestically produced soy sauce and miso, with local producers supplying principal ingredients as Japanese seaweed and selected spices retain a direct connection with the cuisine that initiated Catalfamo's work. White-bean daifuku with yuzu marmalade closes through soft rice dough, mild bean sweetness and citrus, carrying the Italian-Japanese approach from the broth through dessert.
How to fold Casa Ramen Super into your trip.
Casa Ramen Super works as the dining endpoint for an exploration of northern Isola through a Renaissance healing complex, the bronze works that replaced part of its religious estate and the planted towers that later altered Milan's approach to high-rise residential architecture.
Begin at Santa Maria alla Fontana, where construction began in 1508 around a spring long associated with curative powers and a Marian shrine outside Porta Comasina. Giovanni Antonio Amadeo was named architect in a March 1508 contract, resolving centuries of attribution to figures including Leonardo and Bramante; his original complex placed a twelve-part low dome above the spring chamber and opened surrounding porticoes toward the people who arrived to use its water. Continue to Fonderia Napoleonica Eugenia, created in 1806 after Eugenio di Beauharnais assigned former convent buildings beside Santa Maria alla Fontana to the Manfredini brothers, metalworkers summoned from Paris. Their furnaces moved from clocks, furniture bronzes and decorative objects into major casting, producing Abbondio Sangiorgio's enormous sestiga for the Arco della Pace in 1835; the Barigozzi family later developed the works into an important bell foundry before production ended in 1975. Conclude at Bosco Verticale, designed by Boeri Studio-Stefano Boeri, Gianandrea Barreca and Giovanni La Varra, between 2007 and 2014 as two residential towers rising 110 and 76 meters. Approximately 900 trees reaching heights of nine meters were incorporated across projecting terraces alongside shrubs and smaller vegetation, translating the area of almost 10,000 square meters of woodland into vertical residential construction. The progression moves from Amadeo's architecture organized around a healing spring through the Manfredinis' conversion of neighboring religious property into a bronze foundry and Boeri Studio's relocation of extensive planting onto residential towers, tracing five centuries of technical reinvention across Isola.
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