Moebius Sperimentale – twelve seats inside a glass box above a Milan warehouse

Twelve seats, six of them set along a counter facing an open kitchen inside a glass box suspended above a converted textile warehouse: that is the whole of Moebius Sperimentale, the fine-dining address chef Enrico Croatti runs within the larger Moebius complex on Via Cappellini, a short walk from Milano Centrale station. Today, Croatti holds three Michelin stars: the first awarded in 2013 at Dolomieu in Madonna di Campiglio, the second in 2018 at Orobianco in Calpe, Alicante, and the third in 2024 at Moebius Sperimentale. Founded by Lorenzo Querci in 2019, Moebius itself resists easy definition – a cocktail bar ranked among the world's best, a tapas bistro, a vinyl record store, and, raised on a suspended platform at its centre, this glass-enclosed room where Croatti cooks what he calls his "Cucina Anarchica", a free-form repertoire built on technique, instinct and the occasional deliberate act of culinary provocation.

01The room and the setting

The building itself is the first surprise: a former textile warehouse where raw iron runs through the interiors, warm wood softens it, and natural materials do the mediation work that a lesser renovation would have left to decoration, with a 700-year-old Andalusian olive tree spanning two floors and anchoring the space to form a striking centrepiece. The design, by Studio Q-Bic, draws on the sci-fi surrealism of the French artist Jean Giraud, known as Moebius — the comic-book creator who gives the whole project its name.

Sperimentale sits apart from all this noise. It occupies a 60-square-metre platform, fully enclosed in glass, suspended four metres above the ground as the building's epicentre, with twelve seats, six of them at the counter, where kitchen and dining-room teams quietly dismantle the rules of traditional fine dining. It is a creative laboratory of just twelve covers, six of them at the «barra» in front of the cooks, led by chef Enrico Croatti, Moebius's gastronomic coordinator and MICHELIN-starred.

02The chef

Born in 1982 on Italy's Adriatic coast, Croatti grew up between Rimini's fish market and the hills of Romagna. The CV that followed is long and international: overseas experience at Angelini Osteria in Los Angeles, a meeting with Paul Bocuse at the legendary Auberge du Pont de Collonges, the three-Michelin-starred Akelarre in San Sebastián, Les Terrasses de Lyon at Villa Florentine in Lyon, and the Grand Hotel Miramonti Majestic in Cortina d'Ampezzo. The first star was awarded in 2013 at Dolomieu in Madonna di Campiglio, the second in 2018 at Orobianco in Calpe, Alicante, and the third in 2024 at Moebius Sperimentale.

Insider tip

Open Thursday to Saturday evenings only; booking by phone or email essential.

Today Enrico Croatti is chef de cuisine and gastronomic coordinator of Moebius, dividing his attention between the ground-floor Tapa Bistrot and this twelve-seat laboratory, where he arrived, in the words of one profile, with three Michelin stars on his résumé and found total freedom to execute what he calls his "Cucina Anarchica."

03The cooking

The kitchen works from three tasting menus that change according to seasonality: Mare, Terra and Libertà, the first two built mainly around fish or meat with vegetables, the third a free-hand sequence for the whole table. The Libertà menu plays a particular game: the dishes themselves are not named on the card, only the main ingredients, one per course, while the rest is a surprise that Croatti narrates and finishes in front of the guest.

The register throughout is deliberately disorienting — ingredients and ideas from an iconic dish rearranged rather than simply reproduced, textures and temperatures chosen to unsettle expectation before they satisfy it.

04What to order

A recent tasting opened with an edible version of a Bloody Mary, served as a cold soup made with piennolo cherry tomatoes, alongside a sourdough focaccia cooked over embers and topped with a fake green olive made from Tuscan olive oil infused with chive. Among the courses that have followed: an "Ex Carbonara" built around hen's egg, sea urchin, guanciale, pecorino di fossa and five kinds of pepper, and an agnolotto dressed with the braising liquid of an ossobuco, saffron sauce and gremolada.

Game and dessert courses have shown the same instinct for contrast: a deer saddle, oxidised outside from its marinade and almost raw within, wrapped in a maple leaf and garnished with pomegranate, followed by a pumpkin tortello with butter, sage and smoked cacioricotta, and a Hokkaido pumpkin dessert with a chestnut aftertaste, caramelised kumquat and shiso leaf, before pralines of single-origin Peruvian chocolate close the meal.

05Wine and drinks

Downstairs, the ground-floor cocktail operation has its own international standing. The cocktail bar, led by Giovanni Allario, offers a seasonal menu blending culinary techniques with the craft of bartending, and in 2026 Moebius was named the second-best bar on the planet by The World's 50 Best Bars, taking the title of Best Bar in Europe.

06When to go and booking

Sperimentale keeps a short week: it is open Thursday to Saturday evenings only, with twelve covers, which makes advance booking by phone or email necessary rather than optional.

07The neighbourhood

Via Cappellini sits in a stretch of central Milan where former industrial fabric has been gradually absorbed into the city's hospitality geography, close enough to Milano Centrale that the station's grand nineteenth-century bulk is a short walk away. The area around Central Station still bears the scars of its industrial past, and the warehouse that now holds Moebius, with its cocktail bar, bistro and this suspended glass kitchen, is one of the more deliberate attempts to turn that history into something worth visiting after dark.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.