Sadler – Claudio Sadler's Milan kitchen, now led by Lovato

Sadler holds one MICHELIN Star inside Casa Baglioni, the five-star hotel built around a wonderful 1913 Art Nouveau building in Brera, the city's most bohemian district. Chef Claudio Sadler, born in Milan in 1956, brought his flagship restaurant here, after sixteen years on the Naviglio Pavese, and since 2023 this has been Sadler's evolving culinary home in the historic centre. The star itself goes back further: Sadler first won it in 1991 at his Osteria di Porta Cicca, and it has followed him through four further Milan addresses and three decades of a very recognisable style. In February 2026, as he approached his seventieth birthday, Sadler formally handed day-to-day command of the kitchen to Giacomo Lovato, the Varese-born chef who trained alongside him and Carlo Cracco — a change built, by Sadler's own account, on continuity rather than rupture.

01The room and the setting

The dining room sits on the ground floor of Casa Baglioni, in a space that borrows its grammar from the hotel itself: elegant and contemporary, with nods to 1960s art and design folded into thoroughly current furnishings. Housed in the same Art Nouveau building dating from 1913, the room is finished with colourful armchairs rather than the stiff formality fine dining often defaults to.

A wine cellar at the back of the room works as a private space for smaller parties when needed. In the warmer months, the experience extends upward: the hotel's rooftop opens for a chef-devised aperitif with 360-degree views across Milan's skyline, a different register entirely from the hushed dining room seven floors below.

02The chef

Claudio Sadler's own path began in Pavia, where he opened the Locanda Vecchia Pavia once he had finished catering school. His Milan debut came in 1986 with Osteria di Porta Cicca on Ripa di Porta Ticinese, where a first MICHELIN Star arrived in 1991. The restaurant moved to via Troilo in 1995, still in the Navigli district, earning a second star there in 2002; in 2007 it moved again, to via Ascanio Sforza on the Naviglio Pavese, where Sadler opened the more informal Chic'n Quick alongside his main dining room.

Insider tip

Dinner Monday–Saturday; book by phone or online; two tasting menus.

The address changed once more in 2023, when Sadler's evolving cuisine found its new home at Casa Baglioni. In January 2026 the hotel presented Giacomo Lovato, born in 1990 in Varese, as the restaurant's new Executive Chef. Lovato trained at hotel school in Varese and at ALMA in Colorno before working in the kitchens of both Sadler and Carlo Cracco; he became executive chef of the Snowflake restaurant in Cervinia while still in his twenties, then spent four years running the kitchen at Borgia in Milan before Sadler called him back. By February, with Sadler turning seventy that June, the title had formally passed: Sadler has said he chose Lovato precisely because he already understood his style and working method.

03The cooking

Sadler started cooking as a boy of fourteen, making pasta for family and friends, and has refined a repertoire built on Mediterranean fish, saffron and olive oil ever since. Many of his dishes are designed on paper before they ever reach a pan: pastel sketches let him balance the colour of ingredients before a recipe is tested in the kitchen, a working method that has defined the house style for decades.

Lovato's own cooking is described as cleaner and more essential, built around seasonality and a particular attention to vegetables. Sadler has framed the handover as a dialogue between generations — fresh instincts allowed to run, but without unpicking the dishes that carry his name.

04What to order

The bronze-die pacchero with a saffron scorfano brodetto, Piccadilly tomatoes, lemon and bay-leaf oil is among the most immediately convincing dishes on the current menu. Sadler's long-running pan-fried crustaceans and a tagliolini made with forty egg yolks, finished with Asetra caviar, remain points of reference for regulars.

At midday a lighter business-lunch menu brings in Milanese staples: riso al salto, a veal cutlet alla milanese, and a Valtellina-inspired plate of buckwheat tagliatelle with Casera cheese, veal polpette and black truffle, alongside gourmet sandwiches such as a lobster roll and a Super toast made with Carpegna ham.

05Wine, drinks and booking

The wine list matches the room's ambitions: a classically built cellar enriched with prestigious labels and particular attention to Italy's great denominations, versatile enough to carry both the classic plates and the more structured, adventurous ones.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.