Why you should experience Wadi Rum Milano in Milan, Italy.
Wadi Rum Milano is a Jordanian-rooted restaurant where Washington's residential elegance, Khaled Awamleh's connection with his homeland, Saieed Alshedat's Levantine culinary background and the communal traditions of mezze converge through a project inspired directly by Jordan's Wadi Rum desert.
Set along Via Antonio Cecchi near Via Giorgio Washington and just steps from Piazza Piemonte, the restaurant occupies a composed western Milan pocket where early-twentieth-century apartment houses, tree-lined residential streets and surviving traces of the district's industrial development extend between Washington and De Angeli. Dark carved chairs, patterned ceramics, lanterns and desert-inspired decorative elements establish a distinctly Middle Eastern interior, placing the shared-table traditions behind the cooking inside a room developed around Jordanian cultural references. Mezze, manakish, grilled meats and rice preparations move through sesame, sumac, za'atar, yogurt, charcoal and slow-cooked lamb, creating a progression that shifts naturally between cool spreads, oven-baked dough and deeper roasted flavors. The result is a deeply personal restaurant where Awamleh's Jordanian background and Alshedat's Syrian-Jordanian culinary formation give Milan a concentrated encounter with the food traditions of the Levant.
What you should know about Wadi Rum Milano.
Wadi Rum Milano is best known for Jordanian entrepreneur Khaled Awamleh's effort to build a Milanese restaurant project around the culinary culture of his homeland, taking its name and central inspiration from the desert valley of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan. The Via Antonio Cecchi operation was established by 2023, with Wadi Rum S.r.l. registered at the address that November and the restaurant's own publishing activity already connecting its cooking with Lebanese traditions and the desert that supplied its name. Chef Saieed Alshedat subsequently became central to the kitchen, bringing an unusual professional route shaped by birth in Syria, upbringing in Jordan and seven years working at a prominent restaurant there. Alshedat also trained in pharmacy before entering professional cooking, a background followed by work establishing several Lebanese restaurants in Milan before assuming leadership of Wadi Rum's kitchen. Awamleh expanded the project in November 2025 through a second restaurant on Viale Tunisia, conceived as a more contemporary counterpart to the original Cecchi location and presented at launch as Italy's first specifically Jordanian restaurant. The new opening brought Awamleh and Alshedat's work into wider national attention, with the chef developing a program centered on Jordanian and Levantine cooking and the owner framing the project around cultural exchange between Jordan and Italy. Another consequential chapter followed in 2026 when Prince Faisal of Jordan visited Wadi Rum Milano, giving Awamleh's project a direct connection with the Jordanian royal family less than three years after the Via Cecchi operation emerged. The desert inspiration, Awamleh's Jordanian background, Alshedat's Syrian birth and Jordanian upbringing, his seven-year restaurant apprenticeship, Milanese Lebanese-restaurant experience, the 2025 expansion and Prince Faisal's 2026 visit give Wadi Rum a factual history unusually concentrated within its first several years.
Mezze provide the strongest entrance into the kitchen, moving among hummus, smoky baba ghanoush, muhammara, foul mudammas, tabouleh and labneh before patate harra introduce chile and warm spice against the cooler spreads. Manakish shift the meal toward bread baked with minced seasoned meat and tomato, za'atar or cheeses including labneh and halloumi, using the dough as a carrier for sesame, herbs, dairy and spice. Mansaf brings the Jordanian emphasis into sharper focus through lamb and rice, drawing on a preparation whose communal significance in Jordan earned inscription on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022. Warak enab and rice-filled vegetables extend the rice component through leaves and vegetables, then shish kebab moves toward grilled beef or chicken and the concentrated flavor of direct heat. Whole stuffed lamb, prepared for groups with advance arrangement, enlarges the same tradition into a centerpiece built explicitly for collective dining. Baklava and basbousa close the progression through syrup, pastry, semolina and nuts after the acidity, sesame, herbs and roasted meat of the savory courses. Wadi Rum Milano develops its cooking through mezze sharing, baked bread, stuffed vegetables, rice and lamb, preserving the communal structure that connects Alshedat's kitchen with Jordan and the wider Levant.
How to fold Wadi Rum Milano into your trip.
Wadi Rum Milano works as the meal within a western Milan route connecting Giuseppe Verdi's final philanthropic project, Giuseppe Sommaruga's Liberty architecture and Mauro Rota's century-old effort to establish major theatrical performance beyond Milan's historic center.
Begin at Casa Verdi, where Giuseppe Verdi's concern for less fortunate professional musicians developed into a purpose-built home conceived during the final phase of his life. Verdi met architect Camillo Boito in Milan in 1895, construction followed under the Noseda firm, and the composer formally established the foundation on December 16, 1899 before leaving capital and operatic royalties toward its support. He required the residence to receive its first musicians only after his death; nine entered on his birthday, October 10, 1902, and Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi now rest together in the crypt of the building he regarded as his finest work. Continue to Villa Romeo Faccanoni, commissioned by engineer Luigi Faccanoni and constructed between 1912 and 1914 by Giuseppe Sommaruga, with Eugenio Quarti responsible for interior decoration and Alessandro Mazzucotelli contributing wrought iron. Ernesto Bazzaro's female sculptures arrived from Sommaruga's Palazzo Castiglioni after controversy had led to their removal from the earlier façade, physically joining two major Milanese Liberty projects. Nicola Romeo acquired the villa in 1919, and Gio Ponti, Antonio Fornaroli and Eugenio Soncini later participated in its conversion and expansion for medical use before Clinica Columbus opened there in 1949. Conclude at Teatro Nazionale, where Mauro Rota commissioned Mario Borgato to create a reinforced-concrete theater near Piazza Piemonte when the surrounding district still approached open fields. The house inaugurated on December 20, 1924 with Sem Benelli's La cena delle beffe, passed through decades of cinema and returned to theatrical performance under Giordano Rota and former Piccolo Teatro director Roberto Rindi, whose period brought Rudolf Nureyev back to an Italian stage. Piero Lissoni led the extensive reconstruction preceding its 2009 reopening, carrying Rota's original project into an era of large-scale musical productions. The progression moves from Verdi and Boito's philanthropic architecture through Sommaruga, Quarti, Mazzucotelli and Ponti's successive work at Villa Romeo Faccanoni into Rota, Borgato and Lissoni's century of theatrical development, tracing music, Liberty design and performance through the western Milan neighborhoods surrounding Wadi Rum Milano.
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