Why you should experience Parco Sushi Sashimi in Milan, Italy.
Parco Sushi Sashimi is an enduring Japanese restaurant where Magenta's patrician architecture, Milan's first generation of sushi culture, Alessandro Garzillo's Mediterranean crossover and a deep à la carte repertoire of raw fish, rolls and cooked dishes converge within a concept whose original branch dates to 1998.
Set along Corso Magenta near Via Nirone and just steps from Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano, the restaurant occupies one of Central Milan's richest historic corridors, where seventeenth-century palaces, former monastic buildings and discreet residential facades lead west toward Santa Maria delle Grazie and east toward the commercial center. A substantial sushi counter runs along one side of the intimate dining room, placing preparation in direct view of closely arranged tables and giving the narrow interior a clear focal point from arrival through service. Nigiri and sashimi establish the raw-fish cadence before tartare, rolls, tempura, noodles and composed hot dishes widen the meal, allowing the kitchen to alternate precise individual pieces with larger preparations built for a conventional seated dinner. The result is a Magenta restaurant where the close relationship between counter and table gives a long-running Milanese sushi operation the intimacy of a neighborhood Japanese dining room.
What you should know about Parco Sushi Sashimi.
Parco Sushi Sashimi is best known for extending one of Milan's earlier dedicated sushi-bar concepts from its original Piazza Cavour restaurant into Corso Magenta, where Japanese cooking subsequently acquired a pronounced Italian and Mediterranean branch. The Piazza Cavour restaurant began in 1998 and became part of the first wave of sushi bars introducing Japanese specialties to Milan. The Corso Magenta branch followed as the second address, giving Parco two distinct settings in Central Milan and establishing a format that combined restaurant service, sushi bar, takeaway and delivery. Valerio M. Visintin later characterized Parco as a historic name in Milanese sushi and identified Piazza Cavour as the original branch. Corso Magenta developed a different culinary chapter under chef Alessandro Garzillo, who had previously led the kitchen at Gold, the Dolce & Gabbana restaurant opened in Milan during the fashion house's expansion into hospitality. Garzillo moved Parco beyond a strictly Japanese concept by introducing Italian and Mediterranean reinterpretations alongside sushi and sashimi. The Corso Magenta room reinforced that divergence through prized modernist furnishings and an atmosphere conceived closer to a contemporary Milanese or New York restaurant than a conventional Japanese dining room. Parco simultaneously developed takeaway and home delivery, extending the sushi-bar model beyond seated service at a comparatively early stage of Milan's Japanese restaurant market. The two-address operation survived into the following decade, with Piazza Cavour continuing beside Corso Magenta as the original branch. More than a quarter-century after the first Parco opened, Corso Magenta retains the à la carte format and broad Japanese repertoire that grew from that early Milanese sushi culture.
Raw fish drives the current menu through a route beginning with individual nigiri and sashimi cuts of tuna, salmon, sea bass, yellowtail, octopus, eel and raw or cooked shrimp. Mixed sashimi increases the scale through nine- and twenty-piece combinations, and the chef's composition brings fifty pieces of sushi, sashimi, uramaki and gunkan into a single selection. Tartare pushes those ingredients toward sharper combinations, with the tuna version pairing rice and pineapple with tobiko, mayonnaise, Tabasco and ponzu as yellowtail takes strawberries through the same spicy-acidic structure. Uramaki introduce another set of contrasts through Tiger, Lobster, Miura and yellowtail with jalapeño before white, fresh and light rolls change the balance among rice, fish, seaweed and vegetables. Heat enters through scallop cooked on the griddle with coriander pesto, citrus sauce and toasted almonds, then tempura, wok vegetables, noodles and cooked fish carry the meal beyond the sushi counter. A fifty-piece chef selection allows those different raw preparations to arrive as a single composed centerpiece, giving the kitchen freedom to move among nigiri, sashimi, uramaki and gunkan without fixing the table to one format. Parco Sushi Sashimi builds the meal through cut, temperature, acidity and changing proportions of fish, rice and vegetables, preserving classical sushi-bar forms before opening them toward the fusion cooking long associated with the Corso Magenta branch.
How to fold Parco Sushi Sashimi into your trip.
Parco Sushi Sashimi works as the meal anchor for a Magenta itinerary tracing Corso Magenta from the remains of imperial Mediolanum through the city's most important female monastery and into one of the great aristocratic residences of Spanish and Austrian Milan.
Begin at Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano, where collections with origins in Giuseppe Bossi's 500-plus-piece acquisition of 1814 now inhabit the former Monastero Maggiore and preserve Greek, Etruscan, Roman and medieval works beside physical remains of ancient Milan. The Regio Museo Patrio di Archeologia followed in 1862, the collections moved to Castello Sforzesco in 1900 and the present institution reached the restored monastic complex in 1965, placing the museum directly among surviving Roman walls and towers. Continue to San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, whose adjoining female monastery arose between the eighth and ninth centuries around substantial Roman structures and survived Frederick Barbarossa's assault on Milan in 1162. Papal intervention imposed enclosure in 1447, the church was reconstructed in the early sixteenth century and Bernardino Luini and his workshop covered much of its interior with frescoes; Gian Giacomo Antegnati added the nuns' choir organ between 1554 and 1557 before Francesco Pirovano completed the facade in 1574. Conclude at Palazzo Litta, commissioned by Bartolomeo Arese from Francesco Maria Richini and constructed between 1642 and 1648 as the residence of a statesman who became president of Milan's Senate in 1660. The palace passed through the Visconti Borromeo Arese line to the Litta family, Carlo Giuseppe Merlo created its theatrical staircase, Giovanni Antonio Cucchi contributed Rococo decoration and Bartolomeo Bolli completed the exuberant Corso Magenta facade in 1761, transforming the seventeenth-century residence into one of the fullest surviving expressions of Milanese barocchetto. The progression moves from the archaeological remains and collections of ancient Mediolanum through the medieval and Renaissance layers of the Monastero Maggiore and culminates in Richini, Merlo, Cucchi and Bolli's successive transformation of Palazzo Litta.
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