Asina Luna – the hinterland's shrine to seawater-aged beef

Asina Luna sits in Mezzate, a quiet residential pocket of Peschiera Borromeo between Linate airport and the Idroscalo, in a dining room that reveals its ambition only once you are through the door. Behind the bar, a lit cabinet of hanging cuts and a glass-walled cellar signal what this address is really about: meat, sourced and matured with an obsession rare even in a country full of steakhouses. The restaurant takes its name from a line sung by Fabrizio De André, a songwriter chef Riccardo Succi studied closely enough to write his university thesis on him. It holds a listing in the MICHELIN Guide, noted for Meats and Grills and Contemporary cooking, in the special-occasion price bracket. The kitchen works almost entirely in protein — Piedmontese Vicciola raised on hazelnuts, Spanish Rubia Gallega, Japanese A5 Wagyu, Austrian beef aged eighty days in veal fat — cut, weighed and finished over an open charcoal fire in full view of the room.

01The room and the setting

The dining room is built for familiarity rather than spectacle. The space feels warm, with handcrafted pieces and paintings carrying the mark of Italian artisanship, some of the furniture belonging to the chef's family for generations. In the first room an imposing glass-walled cellar displays the wine selection, which guests can browse on a tablet at the table. Tables are laid without cloths, in teak reclaimed from old Indonesian fishing boats, under soft lighting in rooms built to keep conversation private even with the grill working a few metres away.

Dominating the entrance is the refrigerated cabinet of cuts that doubles as the restaurant's calling card — Florentine steaks resting under noble veal fat beside slabs of Japanese Wagyu — with the wood-fired grill visible just behind it, fuelled with Cuban hardwood charcoal.

02The chef

Riccardo Succi's devotion to the songs of Fabrizio De André ran deep enough that he wrote his university thesis on the songwriter and spent time working at the Fondazione De André alongside Dori Ghezzi. He met Tiziana Dinoia, who had grown up around the stoves of a family restaurant on the edge of Milan, between Linate and the Idroscalo, and together they built Asina Luna. Succi now runs the kitchen while Dinoia oversees the dining room and the wine list.

Insider tip

Closed Sundays; Saturday dinner only. Book via the restaurant's own website.

During the 2020 lockdown, rather than stand still, Succi turned to experimenting with ageing techniques. The result was Da Màr®, a registered beef that, after the usual dry-ageing period, undergoes a further maturation of around ten days in purified Mediterranean seawater, the only meat in the world treated this way. The process was studied by the Department of Veterinary Science for Health, Animal Production and Food Safety at the University of Milan.

03The cooking

Every cut on the menu carries a passport. The house's own list runs from Piedmontese Vicciola fed on hazelnuts to Galician Rubia Gallega, Austrian loin aged eighty days in veal fat, Piedmontese Fassona from the Langhe, American Black Angus from Nebraska, Portuguese Mertolenga and German Simmental, alongside Japanese Wagyu "Ginkakuji Onishi" graded A5/BMS 10-12. A separate line, named not for farms but for the individual selectors who source it exclusively for Asina Luna — among them Paolo Tucci, Sergio Motta and Belgian ager Hendrik Dierendonck — pushes prices as high as €360 a kilo for the finest Wagyu striploin.

The theatre is deliberate: cuts are weighed and carved within sight of the dining room before they reach the grill, a ritual the house calls its brace a vista. That rigour has been noticed outside Milan too — chef Riccardo Succi's restaurant took eleventh place in Italy's 21 Top Steakhouses ranking after having already been named among the world's 101 best meat restaurants.

04What to order

Start with the Carpaccio di Da Màr®, the seawater-aged beef served simply with lime oil, or the tartare of Japanese wagyu from an old Juku-farm cow, dressed with kimchi and furikake. The Hoshigyu — sliced aged A5 Wagyu with caramelised radicchio — and a knife-cut 100% bellota Pata Negra ham are built for sharing before the grill arrives at the table.

From the pasta list, the carob-flour tagliolini with burrata cream, Pata Negra crumble and raspadura, or fagottini filled with a white ragù of old cow and toasted almonds over a light saffron cream, are the house's answer to a menu otherwise ruled by fire. To finish, a dessert made exclusively for the restaurant by pastry chef Ernst Knam: a three-chocolate mousse hemisphere with an exotic-fruit and yuzu insert on a cocoa shortcrust disc, paired on the menu with a seven-year Banyuls from Gaby Vial.

05Wine and drinks

The glass-walled cellar in the first room holds the bulk of a list that favours the great reds of Piedmont and Tuscany, alongside a selection of whites from the north-east and a small run of foreign labels, all browsable from the table via tablet. A second, separate list covers passiti, distillates, amari and spirits for guests who want to end the meal somewhere other than the Banyuls already suggested with dessert.

06When to go and booking

Asina Luna opens Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner, 12.00–14.30 and 19.30–22.30, switches to dinner only on Saturday from 19.30 to 22.30, and closes entirely on Sunday. The menu lists a coperto of €3.50. Tables are booked directly through the restaurant's own website; given the theatre of the grill station and the limited covers around it, reserving ahead for weekend evenings is the safer course.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.