Why you should experience Eppol in Milan, Italy.
Eppol is a characterful bistrot and cocktail bar where Porta Venezia's Liberty architecture meets Andrea Chiozzi and Sara Monza's combination of food, liquor and nightlife, vintage-industrial interiors and a bar program that has grown from the founders' original Navigli experiment.
Set along Via Marcello Malpighi near Via Sirtori and just steps from Casa Galimberti, the bistrot occupies a Porta Venezia street distinguished by Giovanni Battista Bossi's richly decorated Liberty residences and the former horse-tram land that enabled their construction. Exposed beams and brickwork establish the room's industrial register, joined by vintage furnishings and antique pieces collected across different periods. A counter built from wooden strips and Carrara marble sits beneath an eight-arm Maria Theresa chandelier, concentrating the room's strongest decorative contrast around the bartenders. Marble-topped tables with English references, Italian design pieces, flowers and a vertical garden extend that combination of older objects and contemporary hospitality beyond the bar. The result is a Porta Venezia address whose layered interior supports a full day of coffee, food, aperitivo and cocktails without surrendering the founders' original connection to nightlife.
What you should know about Eppol.
Eppol is best known for Andrea Chiozzi and Sara Monza's 2013 creation of a hospitality project that began on the Naviglio Grande before moving to Via Malpighi in 2015 and developing into a more complete bistrot-and-cocktail-bar format. The original Eppol Natural Lounge Bar previewed on September 29, 2013 and formally opened on October 4 at Ripa di Ticinese, with music, fashion, design and contemporary art embedded in its programming from the beginning. Its opening events paired VoodooDeluxe Burlesque Agency with DJs Virgil DeNice and Tiny Bin playing original 78- and 45-rpm jazz, foxtrot, swing and R&B discs, followed by an exhibition organized with Galleria Deodato Arte around twelve Helmut Newton photographs and a set by Dolce & Gabbana digital-magazine contributor Ben Taylor. Chiozzi and Monza subsequently relocated Eppol across the city to Porta Venezia, carrying their interest in cooking, liquor and nightlife into the Via Malpighi operation and later adding Maximiliano Ruiz to the team. That partnership became the foundation for another Milan venture when Chiozzi, Monza and Ruiz created Dhole, an Asian-fusion restaurant and cocktail bar whose drinks were developed by Ruiz with Milo Occhipinti around twelve Asian countries. Eppol continued its own event-driven drinks work during Milan Glass Week in 2021 through VTR Glass Week, combining diamond-filtered vodka with a cordial of birch resin, citric acids, sugar crystals and purified water, clear ice and an edible colored-glass crystal. More than a decade after the Navigli opening, the project remains under the Eppol name at Via Malpighi, connecting the founders' first nightlife venture with the larger hospitality portfolio that followed.
Big Crash pushes the drinks program toward gentian, blood-orange liqueur and coffee gin soda, joining bitter herbal character to citrus and roasted notes. Timeless moves into rye whiskey, Madeira and Angostura, giving fortified wine and bitters a darker structure around the grain spirit. Chantico takes another route through rum, mezcal, lime, grapefruit, roasted-pineapple syrup and pimento dram, finished with habanero bitters and a crust of salt, pepper and breadcrumbs that shifts aroma and texture at the rim. Food extends the same preference for layered combinations through seafood wrapped in kataifi with prawns, octopus and vegetables, then into tartare, burgers and Milanese preparations. Breakfast and daytime dishes precede the later aperitivo service, allowing the kitchen to change register as the bar becomes more prominent after dark. Gentian, Madeira, coffee, mezcal, roasted pineapple and spice give Eppol's cocktail work enough range to distinguish the evening program from the food service that precedes it.
How to fold Eppol into your trip.
Eppol works as the endpoint for an afternoon tracing the immediate Porta Venezia streets through the technological obsolescence of horse-drawn transport, the Liberty building boom that followed and the subterranean infrastructure created for Milan's twentieth-century metropolitan ambitions.
Begin at Casa Galimberti, commissioned by brothers Angelo and Emilio Galimberti from Giovanni Battista Bossi and constructed between 1903 and 1905 on property formerly occupied by the Società Anonima degli Omnibus. Bossi covered more than 170 square meters of its façades with figurative ceramic tiles developed from his designs and executed by Pio Pinzauti and Ferdinando Brambilla, joining them to floral cement decoration and wrought iron; central heating and an elevator placed modern domestic technology behind the elaborate exterior. Continue to Casa Guazzoni, another Bossi commission constructed between 1904 and 1906 for master builder Giacomo Guazzoni on land released after Milan's horse-tram infrastructure became obsolete. The former Via Sirtori depot had accommodated 280 horses before Edison won Milan's 1900 electric-tram competition; redevelopment produced a residence distinguished by sculpted cement, wrought iron associated with Alessandro Mazzucotelli, paintings attributed to Paolo Sala and an unusual hexagonal staircase. Conclude at Albergo Diurno Venezia, built beneath Piazza Oberdan between 1923 and 1926 with Piero Portaluppi contributing to a metropolitan service center that combined public baths with facilities for personal care and travelers. Closure followed in 2006 after decades of decline, and the city subsequently entrusted the surviving complex to FAI, preserving barber chairs, manicure stations, long bathing corridors and decorative elements from an urban institution conceived for a rapidly modernizing Milan. The progression moves from the Galimberti brothers' technologically advanced Liberty residence through Guazzoni's redevelopment of obsolete horse-transport property into Portaluppi's subterranean service center, compressing three phases of Milanese modernization into the streets surrounding Eppol.
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