Why you should experience My Kimchi in Milan, Italy.
My Kimchi is a distinctive Korean restaurant where Sarpi's cross-cultural dining scene, proximity to Milan's historic Chinatown, the communal rituals of tabletop barbecue and a repertoire spanning fermented vegetables, stews and grilled meats bring Korean cooking into one of the city's most internationally inflected quarters.
Set along Viale Montello near Via Paolo Sarpi and just steps from Fabbrica del Vapore, the restaurant occupies Sarpi's southwestern edge, where the dense commercial streets of Chinatown meet the avenues surrounding Cimitero Monumentale and the former industrial territory beyond. Timber tables incorporate individual grills beneath suspended extraction hoods, placing cooking directly between diners and giving groups control over the final searing of beef, pork and vegetables. Korean lettering, dark surfaces and warm timber keep the visual emphasis close to the tables, with the compact arrangement intensifying the shared rhythm created by barbecue, banchan and dishes arriving for the group. The result is a socially driven Korean restaurant whose built-in grills and communal table structure turn dinner into a sequence of shared cooking, fermentation and contrasting preparations.
What you should know about My Kimchi.
My Kimchi is best known for building its Viale Montello restaurant around Korean barbecue and the fermentation tradition represented by kimchi, placing two foundational strands of Korean food culture at the center of its Milan operation. The restaurant belongs to the earlier generation of dedicated Korean addresses that helped establish the cuisine beyond the smaller community that had supported it in Milan during preceding decades. Its name places kimchi itself at the forefront, connecting the restaurant to a practice in which vegetables are salted, seasoned and fermented to develop acidity, heat and depth over time. UNESCO inscribed kimjang, the Korean tradition of making and sharing kimchi, on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. The practice historically brings families and neighbors together to prepare substantial quantities for winter, passing recipes and techniques through generations and giving the food a social role extending well beyond accompaniment at the table. My Kimchi translates another Korean dining custom through barbecue equipment incorporated directly into its tables, allowing meat to move from raw selection to final cooking in front of the diners. Charcoal grilling has formed part of the restaurant's specialization, with beef and pork arriving in cuts designed for rapid cooking and sharing across the table. Korean diners have also formed an important constituency for the restaurant, strengthening its position as a specialist address within Milan's relatively compact Korean dining scene. The combination of fermentation and tableside grilling gives My Kimchi a clear culinary focus rooted in practices central to Korean communal eating.
Banchan establish the opening rhythm through small vegetable preparations served around the table, with kimchi supplying fermented acidity beside milder, sweeter and sesame-led accompaniments. Samgyeopsal places thick slices of pork belly over the grill, allowing rendered fat to crisp the exterior before the meat is wrapped in lettuce with sauce, garlic and accompanying vegetables. Bulgogi takes a sweeter direction through thin marinated beef, using soy, aromatics and sugar to caramelize rapidly against high heat. Galbi brings marinated beef ribs into the barbecue sequence, adding a cut whose connective tissue and fat produce a richer texture under direct cooking. Bibimbap shifts toward rice through vegetables, egg and chile paste assembled in a bowl, with the hot-stone version developing a crisp layer where the rice contacts the heated vessel. Japchae combines translucent sweet-potato noodles with vegetables and sesame, introducing springy texture between heavier grilled portions. Kimchi jjigae turns fermentation into a hot preparation by cooking aged kimchi into a deeply seasoned stew, and seafood pajeon binds spring onion and seafood into a pan-fried pancake with a crisp exterior. Soju completes the Korean table through a clear distilled spirit traditionally poured among companions, extending the meal's emphasis on sharing from the grill into the glass.
How to fold My Kimchi into your trip.
My Kimchi works as the meal stop for a Sarpi route connecting Milan's industrial expansion, a vast creative complex recovered from railway manufacturing and the sculptural experimentation concentrated inside one of Europe's great nineteenth-century cemeteries.
Begin at ADI Design Museum, housed in a former industrial territory where Milan's relationship with manufacturing eventually provided a permanent home for the Compasso d'Oro collection. Gio Ponti helped establish the award in 1954 through La Rinascente before responsibility passed to ADI in 1958, creating a chronology of Italian design that now encompasses products and projects by generations of architects and designers and entered the museum's permanent home in 2021. Continue to Fabbrica del Vapore, created from facilities developed around the turn of the twentieth century for the Carminati, Toselli & C. company, a manufacturer of railway and tram equipment that later became Carminati & Toselli. The industrial works produced rolling stock before closing in 1935, and Milan eventually converted the surviving complex into a center for visual art, performance, music and creative production, preserving the large workshops as spaces for contemporary cultural activity. Conclude at Cimitero Monumentale, opened in 1866 from Carlo Maciachini's competition-winning design and developed into an immense open-air collection of Italian funerary sculpture and architecture. Families including Campari, Falck, Bocconi and Branca commissioned monuments from practitioners such as Giannino Castiglioni, Adolfo Wildt, Pietro Cascella and Gio Ponti, turning private commemoration into a century-spanning encounter with changing artistic movements. The progression moves from the Compasso d'Oro's union of industry and Italian design through Carminati & Toselli's railway works and their cultural afterlife into Maciachini's cemetery and its succession of major sculptural commissions, tracing the creative transformation of Sarpi's western industrial territory around My Kimchi.
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