Belé – a cocktail bar's kitchen comes of age on the Navigli

Belé stands on Via Angelo Fumagalli, a quiet side street a few paces back from the crowds that gather along the Naviglio Grande on any Milan evening. It opened in January 2018 as the restaurant wing of Pinch, the 1930s-and-'40s-style cocktail bar with which it shares its address and its founding family on the Naviglio Grande, built on the idea that the Navigli, a district better known for aperitivo crowds than serious kitchens, could support something more considered. Today Belé is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a distinction for contemporary Italian cooking rather than a star, with the Guide noting a moderate spend and an interesting wine list among its details. At the stoves is chef Giulia Ferrara, who owns the restaurant as well as running it, building a menu that turns with the seasons and leans on handmade pasta, risottos and regional Italian dishes, each one reworked with a contemporary hand rather than served as found.

01The room and the setting

Dinner at Belé starts at the bar rather than the table. Guests are welcomed at the entrance counter, long run by bartender Nicola Trespi, with a considered list of pre- and after-dinner drinks to sip while waiting to be seated. Beyond it, the dining room is kept deliberately calm: soft, low lighting, minimal furnishings and a muted palette that give the space an intimacy at odds with the bustle of the canal outside. The room and its sheltered outdoor dehors together hold around sixty covers, and in the warmer months that terrace becomes the better seat, open for both lunch and dinner. Even the name carries a clue to the mood the owners were after: in Milanese dialect "belé" is a term of affection meaning pretty, beautiful or precious.

02The chef

Giulia Ferrara is both chef and owner. She trained at ALMA, the Italian culinary school, and worked through the kitchens of Sarri, Ratanà and Al Pont de Ferr before taking over the stoves at Belé. The dining room answers to Sergio Sbizzera, a familiar face from the Pinch days and now the restaurant's owner on the floor, while Dionigi De Scisciolo runs service as maître and sommelier. Ferrara's own account of her approach, published on the restaurant's site, sets out a short manifesto: respect for raw materials, close attention to seasonality, curiosity about independent producers, and a deliberate effort to recover tastes that modern Italian cooking has let slip — all treated as tools for reworking tradition rather than a reason to leave it alone.

Insider tip

Closed Mondays; tasting menu needs two guests minimum; parking arranged with the Art Hotel garage opposite.

03The cooking

The card changes with the calendar rather than by season in name only. The current autumn menu builds around chestnuts, mushrooms, cabbage, leeks, fennel and root vegetables, set against smoky and spicy notes that carry the kitchen's taste for contrast from starter through to dessert. Pasta is made by hand, risottos are built to take a single ingredient somewhere unexpected, and dishes drawn from different Italian regions sit beside others closer to Ferrara's own invention — vegetarian, fish and meat options running in parallel rather than one style dominating the card.

04What to order

From the current à la carte: spaghettoni "Cavalieri", dressed simply with fresh tomato and basil; a leek risotto creamed with hazelnut butter and lifted with fresh kiwi; tagliolini with daikon marinated in Lapsang tea, chestnut cream and toasted yeast; a beef tartare with celeriac cream, roasted Borettane onions and a beer-and-chestnut-honey gel; and a braised lamb shank with fennel-and-liquorice cream. To finish, a pumpkin pie with whipped mascarpone and rosemary syrup.

05Wine and drinks

The list leans into northern Italy, with bottles such as a 2019 Sassella "Stella Retica" Valtellina Superiore DOCG, a 2018 "Gumbe di Amirai" red IGT, a 2022 Dolcetto d'Alba Superiore "Amaranto" and a 2023 Langhe Nebbiolo "Cua Rusa". Pairings for the tasting menu run at three, four or five glasses, priced accordingly, and the cocktail habit the restaurant inherited from Pinch survives at the entrance bar, where a drink before or after dinner is as much a part of the evening as the meal.

06When to go and booking

Belé serves dinner Tuesday to Sunday from 7.30pm to 11pm, with lunch added on Saturdays and Sundays from 12.30pm to 3.30pm; Monday is the only closed day. The seven-course tasting is offered for dinner bookings made for before 9.30pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, and for lunch bookings before 1pm at the weekend; it runs for the whole table, with no substitutions beyond serious allergies, and only for parties of two or more. Drivers can use the Art Hotel's garage on Via Fumagalli, directly opposite the restaurant, on a flat-rate arrangement. The nearest stop is Porta Genova on Milan Metro's Line 2, a short walk from the restaurant's door along the Naviglio Grande.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.