Why you should experience Roppongi in Milan, Italy.
Roppongi is an immersive Japanese izakaya where Porta Nuova's contemporary cityscape, Jieni Hu and Marco Iannone's eight journeys through Japan, Suzuki's reconstruction of a Tokyo yokocho and regional cooking from Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka converge across 120 square meters assembled from objects sourced in Japan.
Set along Via Amerigo Vespucci near Via Marco Polo and just steps from Piazza Gae Aulenti, the restaurant occupies a street-level space transformed into a sequence of narrow passages and food counters modeled on the small restaurant alleys Hu and Iannone repeatedly encountered in Japan. Lanterns, vintage signs, old Tokyo Metro maps, irregular paving and an enormous octopus above the Osaka counter establish the streetscape, with an imitation tobacconist incorporating period cigarette packages collected specifically for the project. Suzuki, the founders' Japanese partner, directed the design, and the team spent eight months installing details after a year and a half developing the restaurant. The result is a Porta Nuova izakaya where Hu and Iannone's years exploring Japan become physical architecture, allowing regional cooking and sake to unfold inside a meticulously reconstructed fragment of Tokyo.
What you should know about Roppongi.
Roppongi is best known for Jieni Hu and Marco Iannone's transformation of a personal relationship spanning China and Italy into a Milan restaurant group before eight journeys through Japan led them to create their first Japanese project. Hu came from Changsha in Hunan and studied at Università Bocconi before working at Class TV. Iannone was a management engineer from southern Italy whose professional work took him to Hunan, where he met Hu during one of her returns to China. Food soon redirected both careers. Hu missed the cooking of her childhood and wanted to bring Hunanese dishes to Milan, so she joined Iannone and fellow Bocconi graduate Angela Lai in creating Mao Hunan. The restaurant opened on Via Porpora in June 2015 with a repertoire drawn directly from Hunan, including preparations that its founders knew would challenge diners unfamiliar with the region. Success pushed the trio into further projects. Maoji followed with Hunan street food, Mini Maoji specialized in bao near the Navigli, and Hu and Iannone later developed Mood Market on Via Paolo Sarpi as an Asian food shop incorporating Mama Tteokbokki. Japan became a separate obsession for the couple. They traveled there eight times and grew particularly attached to the narrow yokocho lined with tiny counters, stalls and illuminated signs. Roppongi became their sixth Milan restaurant and their first Japanese one, requiring eighteen months of development before opening in spring 2024. Hu and Iannone returned to Japan to search historic archives for old signs and Metro maps and collected minute objects such as cigarette packages for the reconstructed tobacconist. Japanese partner Suzuki directed the spatial design, which required another eight months of work. The kitchen was entrusted at opening to Japanese chefs Saito and Taiko. Roppongi later gained a national screen appearance when the opening sequence of the second season of Netflix's Nuova Scena placed Fabri Fibra, Geolier and Rose Villain inside the restaurant, extending Hu and Iannone's reconstructed Tokyo alley into Italian popular culture.
Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka organize much of the culinary geography inside Roppongi, with individual counters and dishes carrying different regional references through the reconstructed alley. The Kyoto counter prepares gyudon by placing beef marinated in sake and vegetables over white rice. Osaka appears through takoyaki, cooking pieces of octopus inside rounded batter before finishing the spheres with their characteristic toppings. Hiroshima enters through okonomiyaki, built here as a thick griddled preparation with spring onion and bacon beneath tomato sauce, mayonnaise and katsuobushi. Tokyo contributes its own ramen, extending the menu from griddled and rice-based cooking into broth and noodles. Gyoza, karaage, tonkatsu, yakitori, tempura, udon, soba and sukiyaki widen the izakaya repertoire through dumpling, frying, grilling and hot-pot techniques. Unagidon places grilled eel over rice, and sashimi introduces raw fish without turning the restaurant toward a conventional sushi format. Twenty-five sake labels occupy their own counter, giving rice wine a dedicated physical station within the room. Japanese beer extends from widely distributed producers into smaller craft breweries, with shochu and ramune adding further drinking traditions. The arrangement makes eating inseparable from the room itself, moving among dishes associated with several Japanese cities as their corresponding counters emerge along the recreated street.
How to fold Roppongi into your trip.
Roppongi works as the meal anchor for an afternoon tracing the architecture, landscape design and residential experimentation that remade Porta Nuova during Milan's twenty-first-century expansion.
Begin at Piazza Gae Aulenti, designed by Argentine architect César Pelli as the raised civic center of the wider Porta Nuova redevelopment and inaugurated on December 8, 2012. The circular piazza spans 2,300 square meters and rises above the surrounding streets through several levels, with fountains occupying its center and the UniCredit Tower rising beside it. Its dedication to architect and designer Gae Aulenti connected the new district with the Milanese practitioner whose work had ranged from industrial design to museum conversions across Europe. Continue through Biblioteca degli Alberi, whose international competition was won by Dutch studio Inside Outside and Petra Blaisse in 2004. The park opened on October 27, 2018 after the surrounding Porta Nuova development had substantially reshaped the former Varesine railway territory. An earlier chapter arrived during Expo 2015 when American artist Agnes Denes planted the five-hectare Wheatfield across land destined for the park, temporarily turning one of Milan's largest redevelopment sites into cultivated farmland. Conclude at Bosco Verticale, designed by Boeri Studio under Stefano Boeri with Gianandrea Barreca and Giovanni La Varra as two residential towers carrying 800 trees and 14,000 plants above the city. The project received the International Highrise Award in 2014 after a jury considered more than 800 recently completed towers, then received the CTBUH worldwide award in 2015. The progression moves from Pelli's elevated piazza through Blaisse and Denes's transformed railway terrain into Boeri, Barreca and La Varra's planted towers, tracing the architectural experiments that remade Porta Nuova before the reconstructed Tokyo streetscape inside Roppongi.
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