Why you should experience La Locanda del Gatto Rosso in Milan, Italy.
La Locanda del Gatto Rosso is a storied Milanese restaurant where Duomo's architectural grandeur meets the Loiacono family's second-generation stewardship, Claudio Covella's regional cooking and more than three decades of hospitality beside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
Set along Via Ugo Foscolo at the edge of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and just steps from Piazza del Duomo, the restaurant occupies an unusually privileged threshold between Giuseppe Mengoni's nineteenth-century arcade and the dense streets connecting Milan's cathedral with La Scala. Its rooms preserve nineteenth-century details within a more intimate arrangement of timber, mirrors, upholstered seating and warm illumination, creating a pronounced change of scale after the soaring iron-and-glass architecture outside. Passing directly from the Galleria into a family-run dining room gives the meal a strong sense of place, particularly when traditional Milanese cooking arrives within meters of the civic center that helped define many of those dishes. The restaurant's long tenure has also allowed the experience to survive successive changes in Central Milan without severing its connection with local culinary customs. The result is a Duomo restaurant where an exceptional position beside the Galleria gains substance through family continuity and a kitchen still committed to recognizable Milanese cooking.
What you should know about La Locanda del Gatto Rosso.
La Locanda del Gatto Rosso is best known for the Loiacono family carrying a restaurant acquired by the parents more than thirty years ago into a second generation led by brothers Andrea and Stefano Loiacono. Their stewardship preserves a direct family connection across the restaurant's modern history at the corner of Via Ugo Foscolo and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Andrea was 41 when a highly unusual episode thrust the family business into Milanese news in December 2022: an electricity bill arrived demanding almost €140,000 after a technical problem prevented a contractual price change from taking effect. Thirty-five jobs were tied to the restaurant at the time, turning the dispute into a consequential challenge for a business already emerging from the pandemic period. The Loiaconos continued operating and subsequently extended the family name beyond the original restaurant through a second La Locanda del Gatto Rosso at Palazzo Bolchini on Piazza Filippo Meda. That newer Caffè & Bistrot introduced contemporary art exhibitions and events into the family's hospitality portfolio, creating a distinct counterpart to the older Milanese dining room. Chef Claudio Covella now directs the kitchen at the historic restaurant, concentrating its strongest regional strand on the cooking of Milan and Lombardy. The house has elevated risotto alla milanese to its signature preparation, specifying organic DNA 100% Carnaroli rice, saffron threads and a Parmigiano Reggiano crust. Andrea and Stefano's continuation of their parents' business, the survival of the 2022 energy crisis, the expansion to Palazzo Bolchini and Covella's stewardship give the restaurant a family history that has developed alongside substantial changes in Central Milan.
Risotto alla milanese provides the clearest route into Covella's cooking, with Carnaroli releasing starch into the saffron preparation before the finished rice is presented inside a crisp Parmigiano Reggiano shell. Ossobuco extends the same Milanese register through veal and gremolada, pairing slow-cooked meat with saffron risotto so marrow, citrus, parsley and rice meet across a single plate. Cotoletta di vitello changes the texture through frying, and rustin negà moves toward another Lombard tradition through veal accompanied by potato purée. Ravioli filled with braised meat carry that deeper meat flavor into pasta, sharpened by fresh tomato sauce and caramelized red onion. The kitchen then widens its Italian range through maccheroni al torchio with baccalà, cherry tomatoes and caper powder, followed by chitarra spaghetti with small squid, bottarga and yellow datterini. Fish reaches a more substantial finish through branzino beneath a potato-and-Parmigiano crust scented with ginger and rosemary. Panettone filled with mascarpone and chocolate pastry cream returns the meal to Milan through dessert, completing a sequence in which saffron, veal, braised meat and the city's best-known festive bread provide the strongest local anchors.
How to fold La Locanda del Gatto Rosso into your trip.
La Locanda del Gatto Rosso works as the meal anchor for a Duomo itinerary connecting the political architecture of Milan's ruling courts, Alessandro Manzoni's literary life and the twentieth-century art collections assembled by the city.
Begin at Palazzo Reale, whose history reaches back to Milan's medieval Broletto before the Visconti expanded it and the French established their court there during the early sixteenth century. Austrian governor Karl Joseph von Firmian approached Luigi Vanvitelli in 1769 for a complete rebuilding, but Vienna rejected the expense and turned to his pupil Giuseppe Piermarini. Piermarini reconstructed the palace between 1770 and 1778, opening its principal courtyard toward the cathedral and creating the Neoclassical residence subsequently occupied under political systems extending from Habsburg rule through Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. Continue to Casa Manzoni, purchased by Alessandro Manzoni in 1813 after his marriage to Enrichetta Blondel and the growth of their family created the need for a permanent Milan home. Manzoni lived there until his death in 1873, and later owners preserved his study and bedroom before Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde acquired the property and assigned it to the Centro Nazionale Studi Manzoniani in 1937; the Museo Manzoniano followed in 1965. Conclude at Museo del Novecento, where more than 300 works selected from Milan's civic holdings of over 4,000 twentieth and twenty-first-century pieces occupy the Palazzo dell'Arengario. Griffini, Magistretti, Muzio and Portaluppi designed the historic building, and Gruppo Rota converted it for the museum inaugurated in 2010, organizing Italian twentieth-century art around a spiral ramp that rises from metro level toward Piazza del Duomo. The progression moves from Piermarini's conversion of Milan's governmental palace through Manzoni's nineteenth-century literary household into Griffini, Magistretti, Muzio and Portaluppi's twentieth-century Arengario and its later museum conversion, tracing political authority, literature and modern art around Duomo.
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