Why you should experience Zazà Ramen in Milan, Italy.
Zazà Ramen is a pioneering noodle bar where Brera's creative character, Japanese ramen tradition, Italian seasonality and contemporary art converge around a dish that remained relatively unfamiliar in Milan when the restaurant arrived in 2013.
Set along Via Solferino near Via della Moscova and just steps from Largo La Foppa, the restaurant occupies a handsome Brera corridor where nineteenth-century façades, independent shops, galleries and restaurant terraces carry the district's artistic culture north toward the former city gates. Large street-facing windows reveal a two-level interior by Vudafieri Saverino Partners, with natural timber, stone, Japanese-inspired lighting and an open kitchen drawing preparation directly into view. Fresh noodles emerge from the restaurant's pasta machine before entering broths built around meat, fish or vegetables, bringing Italian ingredients into a Japanese form through a process visible from the counter. The result is a Brera restaurant where architectural authorship, contemporary art and direct views into the kitchen heighten anticipation for one of Milan's formative interpretations of ramen.
What you should know about Zazà Ramen.
Zazà Ramen is best known for chef-entrepreneur Brendan Becht's early role in bringing ramen into Milanese dining culture after a career that connected European haute cuisine with extensive professional experience in Japan. Born in the Netherlands to a family of contemporary-art collectors, Becht trained professionally in London and Paris before reaching Milan and working with Gualtiero Marchesi, whose restaurants helped establish modern Italian haute cuisine internationally. His career subsequently moved toward Japan through the opening of Italian restaurants there, developing the cultural connection that led him and Japanese partner Kevin Ageishi to create Zazà in 2013. Ramen remained relatively unfamiliar in Italy at the time, giving their Via Solferino project an early position in the Milanese expansion beyond sushi and tempura as the dominant reference points for Japanese dining. Vudafieri Saverino Partners founders Tiziano Vudafieri and Claudio Saverino developed the restaurant with Simona Quadri, Roberta La Vena and Sabrina Sala, connecting the open kitchen and noodle-making process with raw timber, natural stone and Japanese-inspired lighting. Becht's upbringing around contemporary art produced another sustained strand through site-specific exhibitions, including Goldschmied & Chiari's 2018 Untitled Views, which brought Sara Goldschmied and Eleonora Chiari's images of colored smoke into the dining room. The restaurant marked its tenth anniversary with Yuzuzazà, a panettone flavored around yuzu, extending Becht's Japanese-Italian approach into one of Milan's most established holiday baking traditions. Gambero Rosso subsequently included Zazà among its recommended international restaurants in Lombardia, with its 2025 evaluation extending the critical recognition of a project that helped ramen acquire a durable place in Milanese dining.
Fresh noodles establish the central sequence of a Zazà meal through dough made in-house with Molino Quaglia flour and offered in conventional and wholemeal forms. Their texture meets broths developed separately around meat, fish or vegetables, allowing the noodle to remain the recurring foundation as umami, richness and aromatic character change from bowl to bowl. A meat ramen deepens that structure with seven beef-and-pork meatballs seasoned with shichimi togarashi, goma-ae green beans and ajitsuke tamago, carrying sesame, spice and marinated egg into the broth. Vegetable ramen moves toward atsuage, Romanesco broccoli, striped zucchini, yellow and red datterini tomatoes, mizuna and a vegetable broth scented with lemongrass and leek, producing a lighter route through the same noodle-centered format. Hiyashi chuka changes the temperature completely through cold Sanuki udon, kinshi tamago, cucumber, tomato, ham, kanikama and wakame dressed with Tokyo-style tare. Zazà Ramen makes the noodle the stable center of the meal, then changes broth, temperature, seasoning and seasonal produce around it to reveal how broadly one Japanese form adapts to Becht's Italian ingredient base.
How to fold Zazà Ramen into your trip.
Zazà Ramen works as the dining destination within a northern Milan route connecting an Ambrosian basilica, a nineteenth-century city gate and the sculptural ambitions of Milan's industrial families.
Begin at Basilica di San Simpliciano, whose origins reach the fourth-century Basilica Virginum commissioned by Saint Ambrose and completed under his episcopal successor Simplicianus, who was buried at the church that later received his name. Its ancient Christian foundation survives through a Latin-cross form developed across centuries of reconstruction, carrying one of Milan's earliest strands of sacred architecture into the northern edge of Brera. Continue to Porta Garibaldi, where Giacomo Moraglia constructed the present Neoclassical arch between 1826 and 1828 on the ancient road toward Como, with Giambattista Perabò creating four crowning figures representing the Po, Adda, Ticino and Olona. Originally dedicated to Emperor Francis I of Austria, the gate acquired its present name in 1860 after Giuseppe Garibaldi entered Milan through it in 1859 following victories at Varese and San Fermo. Conclude at Cimitero Monumentale, where Carlo Maciachini's winning project emerged from a competition for a new Milanese cemetery before construction began during the 1860s and burials commenced on November 2, 1866. Maciachini developed an eclectic architectural composition drawing upon Gothic, Lombard Romanesque, Pisan and Byzantine forms, and the Famedio completed in 1887 established a ceremonial focus subsequently associated with Milanese figures including Alessandro Manzoni, Carlo Cattaneo and Salvatore Quasimodo. The progression moves from Basilica di San Simpliciano's fourth-century Christian origins through Porta Garibaldi's passage from Austrian dedication to Risorgimento memory and Cimitero Monumentale's nineteenth-century architecture of civic commemoration before closing at Zazà Ramen for a Japanese noodle tradition reshaped through Brendan Becht's European and Japanese career.
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