Why you should experience Pisco Cucina di Mare in Milan, Italy.
Pisco Cucina di Mare is a sophisticated seafood restaurant where Arco della Pace's cosmopolitan character, Fabio Acampora and Sebastian Bernardez's hospitality careers, Mediterranean cooking and a strong connection with South America converge beside Parco Sempione.
Set along Via Agostino Bertani near Corso Sempione and just steps from Arco della Pace, the restaurant occupies the ground floor of a nineteenth-century building at the edge of Parco Sempione, where the broad pedestrian expanse of Piazza Sempione meets the residential streets running toward Chinatown and the Arena Civica. Wood flooring and colorful Vietri ceramics establish the interior, joined by an original late nineteenth-century stone basin, marine photography and fishing traps converted into adjustable pendant lamps above the tables. A glazed kitchen exposes the preparation area across from the raw-seafood display, and two large chalkboard walls carry changing dishes and handwritten phrases as the dining rooms extend toward a plant-lined outdoor terrace facing the park. The result is an Arco della Pace restaurant where preserved architectural elements, southern Italian decorative craft and direct visual contact with the kitchen establish a coastal atmosphere within one of Central Milan's principal green districts.
What you should know about Pisco Cucina di Mare.
Pisco Cucina di Mare is best known for Fabio Acampora and Sebastian Bernardez, whose restaurant emerged from a hospitality partnership that had already helped reshape Milanese drinking and dining across almost two decades. Bernardez arrived from Argentina in 1991 during a planned sabbatical and found work behind a Milan bar despite having no previous bartending experience, gradually building relationships through the city's nightlife before meeting Acampora. Acampora, born in Monza in 1966, had developed his own position within Milan nightlife and later brought his interests in art, vintage furnishings and interior design directly into the physical conception of the pair's businesses. Their partnership took shape around Mamma Mia in the mid-1990s, followed by Exploit in 1999 and Living in 2002, before collaborations with Renzo Rosso's Diesel on Circle and Robert Duffy on a Marc Jacobs project connected their hospitality work with international fashion. Argentine cooking became the next major chapter through El Porteño in 2010, after years centered heavily on bars and cocktails. Pisco emerged from Acampora's desire to pursue seafood after the success of Argentine meat, with the founders developing a Mediterranean counterpart within the same expanding group. Diego Macchi became the restaurant's founding culinary figure after seven years working across Acampora and Bernardez's businesses. The Milan-born chef had previously cooked at MICHELIN-starred La Piazzetta in Brescia and La Fornace in San Vittore Olona before taking command of the new seafood kitchen. Macchi remained with the group as executive chef, and by 2024 resident chef Davide Stroppolo shared responsibility for Pisco's cooking with him. Their collaboration marked a substantial culinary continuity from the restaurant's first generation into its second decade, while Acampora, Sebastian Bernardez and Alejandro Bernardez expanded Dorrego Company into a hospitality group spanning Milan, Rome and Porto Cervo.
Raw seafood establishes the opening register through oysters, purple prawns, razor clams, sea urchins, scallops, scampi and red prawns assembled into customizable plateaux. Sea bass enters ceviche with the acidity and chile profile associated with the South American preparation, connecting the cooking with another geography central to the founders' history. Amberjack takes a different route through aji amarillo, whose fruit and heat sharpen the raw fish. Tuna tartare meets tomato gazpacho and basil cream, then salmon moves toward passion-fruit sauce and crisp onion. Pasta shifts the kitchen toward Italy through Verrigni spaghetti with clams and bottarga, tagliolini with raw seafood and bottarga and paccheri carrying baby octopus through an amatriciana treatment. Low-temperature cuttlefish introduces chimichurri and sautéed escarole. Sea bass receives a potato crust with vegetable tagliatelle, and prawns arrive beside zucchini alla scapece. Almond semifreddo with bitter-orange preserve closes the sequence through sweetness, citrus and the toasted character of nuts.
How to fold Pisco Cucina di Mare into your trip.
Pisco Cucina di Mare works as the meal anchor for an Arco della Pace itinerary tracing Napoleonic urban ambition, the ceremonial architecture of the Arena Civica and Milan's surviving pavilion from the 1906 International Exposition.
Begin at Arco della Pace, commissioned from Luigi Cagnola after his temporary triumphal arch created for Eugène de Beauharnais and Augusta of Bavaria in 1806 led Milan's municipal authorities to pursue a permanent structure. Construction of the new monument began in 1807 as an Arco delle Vittorie celebrating Napoleonic power, stopped after the collapse of the Kingdom of Italy in 1814 and resumed under Austrian rule in 1826 with its political program redirected toward peace; Cagnola died in 1833 before Carlo Londonio, Domenico Moglia and Francesco Peverelli carried the work to its 1838 inauguration before Emperor Ferdinand I. Continue to Palazzina Appiani, developed by Luigi Canonica beside the Arena Civica during Milan's Napoleonic reorganization as a royal viewing pavilion connected with the imperial court. Andrea Appiani created the interior frieze celebrating Napoleon's victories, placing painted political imagery inside an architectural complex conceived for public performance and elite observation before later restoration returned the pavilion to public cultural use. Conclude at Acquario Civico di Milano, designed by Sebastiano Locati for the 1906 International Exposition celebrating completion of the Simplon Tunnel and preserved as the only exposition pavilion still standing in Parco Sempione. Giuseppe Crivelli Serbelloni financed the aquarium, aquatic sculptures by Chini populate the exterior and Richard Ginori maiolica panels depict freshwater plants between the upper windows, while a major 2003 to 2006 restoration renewed the interior tanks and recovered the building's original decorative program. The progression moves from Cagnola's Napoleonic triumphal project and its Austrian rededication through Canonica and Appiani's architecture for imperial performance into Locati, Chini and Richard Ginori's surviving contribution to Milan's 1906 International Exposition.
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