Why you should experience IYO Kaiseki in Milan, Italy.
IYO Kaiseki is a contemplative Japanese restaurant where Porta Nuova's architectural ambition meets Claudio Liu's pursuit of classical kaiseki, recasting his MICHELIN-starred AALTO around Katsumi Soga's command of Japan's seasonal banquet tradition and a highly structured sequence of soup, sashimi, fire, frying, rice and confectionery.
Set along Piazza Alvar Aalto near Viale della Liberazione and just steps from Biblioteca degli Alberi, the restaurant occupies the first floor of Torre Solaria within Porta Nuova's elevated pedestrian landscape. Maurizio Lai conceived the 320-square-meter interior through walnut, porphyry, brass and leather, with bespoke tables divided into geometric fields and butterfly joints accented in brass. Poliform Contract developed custom furnishings, and the dining room shares its structure with the secluded IYO Omakase counter, allowing two highly distinct Japanese formats to inhabit the same architectural project. Thirty-six seats keep the main room relatively concentrated despite its substantial footprint, supporting the measured cadence required by a multi-stage kaiseki dinner. The result is a Porta Nuova restaurant whose architectural precision gives one of Japan's most formal culinary traditions an unusually focused Milanese setting.
What you should know about IYO Kaiseki.
IYO Kaiseki is best known for Claudio Liu's conversion of MICHELIN-starred AALTO into a restaurant devoted to kaiseki, giving his two-decade exploration of Japanese cuisine its most concentrated engagement with classical Japanese culinary tradition. Liu had opened IYO in 2007, earned its MICHELIN star in the 2015 guide and expanded into Piazza Alvar Aalto in 2019 with two distinct projects: Masashi Suzuki's intimate IYO Omakase counter and AALTO, where Takeshi Iwai developed an internationally oriented cuisine. MICHELIN awarded AALTO a star in the 2021 guide, giving Liu two starred restaurants in Milan. He closed that chapter in 2024 and rebuilt the principal restaurant around kaiseki, with the first IYO Kaiseki service held on September 14. Katsumi Soga became executive chef after spending 18 years in Italy and serving from 2020 as supervisor of the kitchen and sushi counter at the original IYO. Takeshi Iwai moved into the wider IYO Group as Travelling Chef, and pastry chef Luca De Santi joined Soga in the new project. Kaiseki changed more than the food itself: the restaurant adopted a prescribed succession of courses rooted in Japanese seasonal cooking, turning the former AALTO format toward a discipline with centuries of development in Japan. Gambero Rosso responded by naming IYO Kaiseki its Novità dell'Anno for 2025. MICHELIN then awarded the transformed restaurant a star, placing IYO Kaiseki beside the original IYO among the tiny number of Japanese restaurants holding the distinction in Italy. The conversion completed an unusual arc for Liu, moving from a family restaurant and the first IYO through omakase, AALTO and finally a dedicated kaiseki restaurant without abandoning the Piazza Alvar Aalto complex he established in 2019.
Owan begins the formal sequence through clear dashi, with a recent version placing suzuki sea bass cut renge-zukuri beside abalone in a shio-jitate broth. Mukouzuke follows through three treatments of white fish, shifting attention from broth to knife work and raw seafood before Hassun gathers four small seasonal preparations around a single natural theme. Yakimono introduces direct heat through carabinero prepared wakasa-yaki, a technique associated with a crisped exterior and carefully controlled grilling. Agemono moves into unagi tempura with lime oroshi and yuzu kosho, bringing eel, frying, citrus and chile together before shiizakana provides a more substantial savory course. Creative nigiri then return rice and seafood to the center of the dinner, linking the kaiseki sequence with the sushi expertise developed across Liu's wider group. Luca De Santi's Zen Garden closes the food through sake panna cotta, tomato gel, strawberry sorbet, strawberry sauce and crystallized shiso. Kuki hojicha and petits fours finish the ordered course structure, giving tea the final position in a dinner governed from its opening bowl to its last confection.
How to fold IYO Kaiseki into your trip.
IYO Kaiseki works as the meal anchor for an afternoon tracing Porta Nuova's reinvention through environmental art, contemporary religious architecture and the preservation of Milan's industrial railway heritage around the former Varesine and Garibaldi yards.
Begin at Biblioteca degli Alberi, where Petra Blaisse and Inside Outside won the 2004 international competition for a new public garden before the project became part of the wider Porta Nuova redevelopment. Agnes Denes temporarily transformed five hectares of the future park into Wheatfield for Expo 2015, reprising the agricultural intervention she had first staged in Manhattan in 1982, and the completed garden opened in 2018 with circular forests, linear paths and botanical fields organized as an urban collection of plant species. Continue to Santa Maria presso San Satiro Incoronata, whose unusual paired façade preserves the union of two adjacent fifteenth-century churches associated with Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. Guiniforte Solari worked on the complex during the Sforza period, the Augustinian library became an important humanist center and frescoes attributed to Bergognone survive inside, carrying the district back to the religious and intellectual culture that preceded its modern towers by centuries. Conclude at Fondazione FS Italiane, whose nearby railway heritage reaches into the transformation of the Porta Garibaldi and former Varesine territories that reshaped northern Milan during the twentieth century. Porta Garibaldi opened in 1961 after the earlier Porta Nuova railway facilities were displaced, consolidating passenger movement around a station that later became one of Italy's busiest rail nodes and a physical catalyst for the surrounding district's redevelopment. The progression moves from Denes and Blaisse's transformation of former railway land through Solari and the Sforza court's fifteenth-century religious patronage into the rail infrastructure that reorganized northern Milan, connecting environmental art, Renaissance culture and transport history across Porta Nuova.
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