Why you should experience Mint Garden Cafè in Milan, Italy.
Mint Garden Cafè is a forward-looking bistro where Porta Venezia's creative culture, the legacy of a flower-filled neighborhood gathering place, contemporary Italian design and MEET's digital-art program converge through a café embedded inside one of Milan's most technologically ambitious cultural centers.
Set along Viale Vittorio Veneto near Via Alessandro Tadino and just steps from Albergo Diurno Venezia, the bistro occupies Porta Venezia on the ground floor of MEET Digital Culture Center, placing daytime dining directly inside a building devoted to digital art, immersive installations and creative technology. Bright furnishings and botanical accents replace the densely planted greenhouse character of Mint's former home, with Kartell Masters chairs and floral cushions connecting the room to the cultural institution surrounding it. Breakfast gives way to lunch, afternoon work sessions, weekend brunch and aperitivo, allowing the space to change function repeatedly across its ten-hour service day. The result is a rare museum bistro whose move into MEET has fundamentally altered its physical character, turning a longtime neighborhood café into part of Porta Venezia's contemporary cultural infrastructure.
What you should know about Mint Garden Cafè.
Mint Garden Cafè is best known for Lucia Tomasello and Roberto Tarricone's transformation of a flower-shop bistro on Via Felice Casati into a new hospitality project inside MEET Digital Culture Center. The earlier Mint was already operating by 2016, when its unusual combination of flowers, plants, food and drinks made the former florist one of Porta Venezia's most recognizable hybrid addresses. Tomasello shaped that original venue around greenery. Tarricone subsequently emerged as her partner behind the bar, developing cocktails inside a room where floral compositions remained part of the concept and were offered for sale alongside food. Their partnership survived the disruption of 2020, when Mint reopened for takeaway and delivery and marked the moment by giving customers apples carrying messages inspired by advertising pioneer Leo Burnett's decision to found his agency during the Great Depression. A much larger change arrived in 2025. MEET announced that Mint would take over its ground-floor bistro from May 5, placing Tomasello, Tarricone and Roberto Filì inside the digital-culture institution founded by Maria Grazia Mattei. The collaboration also brought Kartell into the project as design partner. Tiziano Guardini and Luigi Ciuffreda designed Alice's Flowers cushions for Philippe Starck's Masters chairs, connecting the café's botanical past with Italian furniture design inside its new home. Mint subsequently completed its transfer from Via Felice Casati to Viale Vittorio Veneto, with Tomasello and Tarricone recasting the business as both bistro and creative workspace. Their latest development reached the food itself in 2026 through a wellness-oriented program developed with nutritionist Annalisa Gussoni and brand strategist Chiara Villa. Few Milan cafés have undergone such a pronounced physical evolution: Tomasello's plant-filled former florist has become the hospitality component of a digital-art center, retaining its botanical lineage through a completely different architectural and design language.
Breakfast begins with croissants, pancakes, fruit, yogurt and hot drinks before the daytime selection turns toward sandwiches, salads, savory pies and composed plates. Crudo di Langhirano meets melted brie, arugula, pear, lemon and pepper in one sandwich, balancing cured meat and rich cheese against fruit and citrus. A lighter parmigiana uses eggplant without frying, shifting a familiar Italian preparation toward a less heavy construction. Cabbage velouté supplies a vegetable-led option with a smoother texture, followed by whole-grain combinations structured around fiber and protein. Weekend brunch expands the morning repertoire through small pastries, fruit, yogurt, mini croissants, preserves, savory pies and cured meats before a hot plate completes the service. Gussoni's program divides selections according to nutritional composition, with quarterly limited editions introducing ingredients tied to the changing seasons. Coffee and fresh juices carry the morning service, and aperitivo extends the food program into the evening. The sequence gives the new Mint a markedly different culinary rhythm from its former cocktail-restaurant incarnation, matching the long operating day of the cultural center around it.
How to fold Mint Garden Cafè into your trip.
Mint Garden Cafè works as the daytime anchor for a Porta Venezia route connecting Piero Portaluppi's subterranean metropolitan experiment, Giovanni Battista Bossi's exuberant Liberty architecture and Carlo Ratti and Italo Rota's reinvention of a twentieth-century cultural building for the digital age.
Begin at Albergo Diurno Venezia beneath Piazza Oberdan, created between 1923 and 1926 with Piero Portaluppi responsible for the architectural and decorative work that transformed an underground public-service center into an elaborate expression of modern Milanese life. Its baths, barber facilities and personal-care spaces served residents and travelers until progressive decline ended with closure in 2006; FAI reopened the complex for special access in 2014 and later entered a preservation agreement with Milan. Continue to Casa Galimberti, commissioned by the Galimberti brothers and designed by Giovanni Battista Bossi between 1903 and 1905 on land formerly occupied by horse-tram facilities. Bossi covered extensive portions of the facade with fired polychrome ceramic tiles, commissioning Pio Pinzauti and Ferdinando Brambilla for the ceramic decoration and integrating wrought iron, floral cement ornament and human figures into one of the district's defining Liberty compositions. Conclude at MEET Digital Culture Center, founded by Maria Grazia Mattei in 2018 with Fondazione Cariplo and opened at its present headquarters in 2020 after Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota reworked spaces previously associated with Gae Aulenti's Spazio Oberdan. Their 1,500-square-meter intervention centers on a 15-meter-high inhabited staircase assembled from lightweight steel panels, joined by a 200-seat theater and an immersive room projecting ultra-high-definition imagery across three walls. The progression moves from Portaluppi's underground response to metropolitan life through Bossi's ceramic-rich Liberty residence into Ratti and Rota's architecture for digital culture, tracing a century of Milanese experimentation within the streets surrounding Mint Garden Cafè.
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