Why you should experience Kathay in Milan, Italy.
Kathay is a storied international food market where Sarpi's Chinese heritage meets the Sun family's transformation of a tiny neighborhood grocery into a vast gateway to culinary traditions spanning Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.
Set along Via Luigi Canonica near Via Morazzone and just steps from the western edge of Milan's Chinatown, the store occupies the transition between Sarpi's dense commercial streets and the residential blocks approaching Parco Sempione. Two expansive levels replace the compressed proportions of its original neighborhood shop, with fresh produce, frozen foods, spices, tea, cookware and Japanese porcelain extending the experience far beyond a conventional supermarket run. Geographic organization turns browsing into an exploration of distinct culinary traditions, placing specialist ingredients within broader families of regional cooking. The scale is substantial without erasing the curiosity associated with the small import shops that helped shape Sarpi's commercial culture. The result is a Sarpi institution whose physical expansion mirrors the extraordinary widening of Milanese interest in international cooking since the late twentieth century.
What you should know about Kathay.
Kathay is best known for Luigi and Nina Sun's journey from a small family-run Chinese grocery opened in 1989 into one of Italy's most substantial international food stores. The couple began with China Food Store on Via Rosmini, concentrating on Chinese ingredients that were difficult to obtain in conventional Milanese supermarkets and serving a clientele drawn largely from the surrounding Chinese community. Demand was immediate enough for the original shop to double its surface in less than a year, beginning a long expansion that paralleled profound changes in how Milan ate and shopped. Luigi subsequently developed Uniontrade around the import and distribution of Asian foods, connecting the family's retail experience with a much wider supply operation for oriental ingredients in Italy. By the 2000s, customers arriving from outside the Chinese community were changing the possibilities of the original concept, and the Sun family began widening both the geographic range and intended audience of the store. The decisive transformation arrived in 2016: China Food Store became Kathay, a name derived from the historical European term for China, and the business moved from Via Rosmini to a vastly larger Via Canonica home. The new store opened with 10,000 products across 1,000 square meters, extending the original Chinese specialization through foods and culinary objects associated with Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Korea, India, the Middle East, Latin America and other regions. A second generational turn followed in 2019 when Alessia Sun entered the family project and drove its digital expansion through social media, e-commerce, collaborations and cooking initiatives. During the pandemic era she joined Vittorio Castellani, better known as Chef Kumalé, on a series of food boxes devoted to pad Thai and dishes from Japan, India and China, pairing specialist ingredients with video instruction for home cooks. Gambero Rosso later awarded Kathay its Premio Foglia, carrying the family business that began as a tiny Chinese neighborhood shop into another chapter of Italian food culture.
The strongest way to experience Kathay is to follow one cuisine deeply enough to understand how many specialist ingredients sit behind dishes that appear simple at the table. Japanese cooking opens through kombu and katsuobushi for dashi, several forms of miso, mirin, rice vinegar, sesame, noodles and sake before porcelain, bamboo implements and tea ware extend the same tradition beyond ingredients. Korean shelves shift toward kimchi, gochujang, noodles and pantry seasonings, placing fermentation and chile at the center of a markedly different collection. Thailand brings curry pastes, fish sauce, coconut products, rice noodles and aromatic condiments into another tightly connected group, with India extending the journey through basmati rice, pulses, flours, spices and chutneys. Fresh tofu, tempeh, vegetables, refrigerated noodles and fermented foods introduce ingredients whose textures depend on storage and preparation far more than pantry longevity. Frozen sections deepen the possibilities through dumplings, wrappers, seafood and prepared components suited to techniques difficult to reproduce entirely from scratch. Tea, Japanese ceramics, woks, bamboo steamers and tableware complete the movement from ingredient selection toward preparation and service, making Kathay most rewarding when the shopping basket becomes a practical map of how another culinary tradition works.
How to fold Kathay into your trip.
Kathay works as the shopping anchor for an afternoon tracing Milan's nineteenth-century culture of commemoration, its industrial mastery of tram production and the emergence of Italian design as an internationally recognized creative discipline.
Begin at Cimitero Monumentale, created after Milan launched a competition in 1860 for a great unified cemetery and selected Carlo Maciachini's eclectic architectural project, approved in 1863 and opened for burials in 1866. Maciachini had arrived in Milan from Induno Olona as a woodcarver before studying architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera; his complex developed through the central ossuary completed in 1873 and the Famedio finished in 1887, which became the resting place of figures including Alessandro Manzoni and later Salvatore Quasimodo, Bruno Munari and Carla Fracci. Continue to Fabbrica del Vapore, where Antonio Carminati, Giuseppe Pozzi and Carlo Toselli founded Carminati, Toselli & C. in 1899 to construct and repair railway and tram rolling stock during Milan's rapid transport modernization. Reorganized as Società Italiana Carminati Toselli in 1907, the company expanded across the block and later built tramcars derived from the American Peter Witt model through engineering work by D'Alòi and Cuccoli; production ended in 1935, yet its industrial buildings survived to begin a new cultural chapter after restoration work launched in 2000. Conclude at ADI Design Museum, home to the historical collection of the Compasso d'Oro, the prize established by La Rinascente in 1954 from an idea developed by Gio Ponti and Alberto Rosselli to advance the emerging discipline of Italian industrial design. Albe Steiner created its visual symbol using Adalbert Goeringer's golden-section compass, ADI assumed responsibility for the prize in 1959 and acquired full ownership in 1967, and the collection has grown across more than seventy years of furniture, vehicles, graphics, household objects and industrial products. The progression moves from Maciachini's architecture for Milanese remembrance through Carminati Toselli's engineering response to metropolitan transport into Ponti, Rosselli and Steiner's elevation of industrial design through the Compasso d'Oro, tracing the city's movement from nineteenth-century craft through mechanical production to internationally influential design culture.
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