Why you should experience The Brisket in Milan, Italy.
The Brisket is a devoted Texan smokehouse where Navigli's canal-side dining culture, Lucas Pablo Duretti's months of practical training in Texas, American-built smoking ovens and a decade-long commitment to low-and-slow barbecue converge around the beef cut that gave the restaurant its name.
Set along Ripa di Ticinese near Via Angelo Fumagalli and just steps from Vicolo dei Lavandai, the canal edge combines narrow historic passages, waterside façades and remnants of the washing trades that occupied the Naviglio Grande through the mid-twentieth century. Dark tones, subdued lighting, timber tables and a purpose-built backlit marble table establish a smokehouse interior with a heavier physical character than the bright canal frontage outside. Dinner develops around long-smoked meats arriving in substantial portions, with brisket, ribs and pulled pork establishing the principal sequence before American desserts close the meal. The result is a deeply committed Navigli restaurant whose founder learned Texas barbecue inside American smokehouses before building an entire Milanese operation around fire, smoke, time and meat.
What you should know about The Brisket.
The Brisket is best known for introducing a dedicated Texan smokehouse to Milan in 2015 after founder Lucas Pablo Duretti traveled to Texas to master its barbecue methods firsthand. Duretti, an Argentine-born professional cook and self-described globetrotter, had encountered this style of cooking during earlier travels through the United States. Curiosity became apprenticeship. He spent several months working inside prominent Texas smokehouses, learning smoking techniques directly in their kitchens before returning to Italy. The Milan restaurant opened on the Naviglio Grande in 2015, at a moment when brisket, pulled pork and American smokehouse culture remained relatively unfamiliar within the city's restaurant scene. Duretti imported dedicated ovens from the United States for the project. American Angus brisket entered those smokers for more than eight hours, with national pork selected for pulled pork and ribs. A later architectural intervention reworked the restaurant structurally and introduced a custom backlit marble table. Ten years after opening, Duretti marked The Brisket's first decade in 2025 as the founder and creator of what specialist meat publication Eurocarni described as Milan's first Texan smokehouse.
Beef brisket begins with the point cut of the chest, coated in a personalized spice rub before prolonged low-temperature cooking and smoking. The process stretches toward twelve hours, and the choice of smoking wood contributes another aromatic layer to the finished meat. Pulled pork uses Italian pork, and smoked pork ribs bring the same technique to a fattier cut. House sausages introduce cheddar and jalapeño. Bone marrow arrives gratinated with beef tartare, and brisket reappears inside baked empanadas, allowing smoke to move from the principal cuts into smaller opening dishes. Pork belly adds crispness to the smoked-meat sequence before grilled fillet, American Black Angus entraña and other steak cuts shift toward direct heat. Churros with dulce de leche, pecan pie, peanut-butter cheesecake and salted-caramel brownie carry the American reference through dessert.
How to fold The Brisket into your trip.
The Brisket works as the dinner anchor for a Navigli and Tortona route connecting David Chipperfield's conversion of the former Ansaldo industrial site, Giorgio Armani's reuse of a 1950 granary and the medieval-to-Renaissance architecture preserved beside the Naviglio Grande.
Begin at Mudec - Museo delle Culture, developed after Milan launched the City of Cultures project in 1999 across disused buildings belonging to the former Ansaldo factory. David Chipperfield Architects worked on the complex from 2000 to 2015, arranging the museum behind existing industrial façades around an internal courtyard and a luminous central hall. The institution opened during Expo 2015 and brought Milan's ethnographic collections into a dedicated cultural complex in the former manufacturing district. Continue to Armani/Silos, which Giorgio Armani opened on April 30, 2015 to mark forty years of his career. The four-level, 4,500-square-meter building originated as a granary in 1950. Armani retained its unusual beehive-like form and reorganized the interior around geometric order; the exhibition program subsequently expanded from his ready-to-wear work into photography, architecture and design. Conclude at San Cristoforo sul Naviglio, a pair of adjoining churches whose older component was rebuilt in 1192 and extensively altered during the fourteenth century. Pietro Franzoni di Tavernasco added a pilgrims' hospital in 1364. The fifteenth-century Cappella Ducale followed under Visconti patronage after the plague of 1399, and Ludovico il Moro met Beatrice d'Este here in 1491 as she arrived from Ferrara. The progression moves from Chipperfield's conversion of former Ansaldo buildings through Armani's reuse of a mid-century granary into San Cristoforo's medieval and Visconti architecture, framing dinner at The Brisket through three distinct chapters of the canal district's physical history.
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