[bu:r] – Eugenio Boer's Milanese comeback, written in phonetics

On a quiet street between the Crocetta and Porta Romana, a few steps from Piazza Cardinal Ferrari, [bu:r] is the restaurant Eugenio Boer built for himself after the abrupt closure of Essenza cost him, within a week of winning it, his first MICHELIN Star. He named it [bu:r] – the phonetic spelling of his own Dutch surname, so no guest need stumble over it again – and opened it in July 2018 as sole chef and owner, running the room with his partner Carlotta Perilli. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, part of a creative, international kitchen that now works almost exclusively with Italian produce. The address sits in a converted corner space near the churches of San Calimero and San Celso, and the cooking still carries the dishes that made Boer's name in this city a decade ago – deer, risotto, three-cooked pigeon – alongside a newer, more introspective idea built around scent rather than protein.

01The chef

Eugenio Boer was, in his own words, accidentally born in Italy: half Dutch, half Ligurian, he spent his first seven years in Voorburg before his family settled in Sestri Levante. He started kneading dough with his maternal grandmother, a professional cook, at the age of three, and was already angling for kitchen work by twelve, though his father insisted he finish school first.

His apprenticeship took him through L'Osteria dei Vespri in Palermo, two years at Vau in Berlin, a stint under Gaetano Trovato at Arnolfo, and a formative period with Norbert Niederkofler at St. Hubertus in Alta Badia. In Milan he helped pioneer the natural-wine project Enocratia and co-founded Fishbar de Milan before opening Essenza in December 2014, which brought him his first MICHELIN Star in November 2017 – only for the restaurant to close within weeks.

Rather than join another kitchen, Boer, then forty, built his own: [bu:r] opened on Via Mercalli in July 2018, with sous chef Francesca Russo at the stoves and Carlotta Perilli running the floor, a partnership that still defines the restaurant today.

02The room and the setting

The [bu:r] mark itself is a small piece of design history: Boer worked with designer Gianluca Carone to turn the phonetic transcription of his surname into a logo, its two red colons becoming a recurring motif through the restaurant's identity, later developed further by art director Eleonora Moretta.

Insider tip

Closed Sunday and Monday; weekday lunch menu available Tuesday to Friday at €45.

After almost seven years in business, the dining room was recently reworked by kick.office, the studio led by Mario Abruzzese, which has shaped the restaurant's architecture since its opening. The renewed space leans into warm, earthbound tones suggested by architect Leandro Fedele, new solid-beechwood tables by TON, and a play of textured surfaces and soft light designed to shift through the hours, keeping the room intimate rather than merely decorative.

03The cooking

Boer's proposition today is built entirely around Italian ingredients. Eugenio Boer offers a 100% Italian menu which focuses on local ingredients, with the aim of showcasing some of Italy's favourite dishes while at the same time supporting small-scale producers, and this philosophy is in no way limited to respecting traditions – on the contrary, it offers the chef the freedom to express his own creativity via a selection of dishes which combine past and present. Guests can choose between a concise à la carte and two different tasting menus: 'I Classici' (meat-based dishes) and 'Le Aromatiche', which changes perspective by placing aromatic plants centre stage.

Le Aromatiche inverts the usual grammar of a plate: instead of starting from a protein, Boer begins each dish from a single scent, herb, flower, root or spice – ginger, fenugreek, jasmine, sumac, tarragon – and only afterwards decides which fish or vegetable it should meet. I Classici, by contrast, keeps the dishes regulars return for: deer, the restaurant's risottos, and pigeon served in three cookings remain, as the restaurant itself puts it, load-bearing columns of the kitchen even as the newer menu plays with what usually sits at the margins of a plate.

04What to order

The pigeon in three cookings is one of the dishes Boer carried over from his earlier Milanese restaurants and still serves at [bu:r], alongside the amuse-bouche sequence built around a macaron filled with chicken liver and pigeon heart and finished with cacao nibs – a near-signature bite tracing back to his years at Enocratia. Risotto Nino Bergese, named for the Piedmontese chef considered a father of modern Italian haute cuisine, is another constant on the Classici route.

At lunch from Tuesday to Friday, the restaurant runs a faster weekday menu of a starter, a main and a small dessert, priced at 45 euros including water and coffee, with dishes that change quickly to keep the kitchen's creativity moving even within a set format.

05Wine and drinks

The wine list is curated by sommelier Leandro Cunha, built to move between the restaurant's two culinary registers – structured enough for the meat-driven Classici, light and aromatic enough to sit alongside a plate built around jasmine or sumac.

06When to go and booking

[bu:r] opens Tuesday to Friday for lunch from 12:30 to 14:00 and dinner from 19:30 to 21:00, with Saturday service for dinner only; it is closed on Sundays and Mondays. The restaurant also takes private events and corporate dinners, handled directly by Carlotta Perilli.

The street itself was part of the appeal when Boer chose it: tucked just off the busier Corso Italia, Via Mercalli is quiet, close to Piazza Cardinal Ferrari and within sight of the churches of San Calimero and San Celso – a residential pocket of the Crocetta-Porta Romana district rather than a tourist thoroughfare.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.