The Michelin Guide in Milan is Off – Andrea Aprea

I usually trust the Michelin Guide, find it to be useful, and is generally well calibrated. However, in some cities, using the guide has me wondering how inspectors are assigned. For example, if an inspector is from one region only, then he or she is really only rating restaurants in a “bubble” and two restaurants rated with the same number of stars, in two different regions, could have vastly different quality levels. I believe that inspectors, in order to gain a truly accurate rating, need to approach the ratings from a global perspective.

Anyway, Milan is one such city where I believe that the ratings are not accurate, and are inflated. Andrea Aprea is a 2 Michelin Star restaurant in Milan. To give an example of what I am talking about, Speisemeisterei is also a 2 Michelin Star restaurant but located in Stuttgart, Germany. However, the experience is vastly different. Andrea Aprea (AA) was OK. Speisemeisterei was amazing! To put it in another perspective. If I was a football (soccer) coach and I have only ever watched my team play and beat local teams, I could not say that my team is the best in the world. I would not even be able to rate my team out of 10, and then have another coach in another region rate their team and then be able to compare the ratings. The only time this would work, is if both coaches had seen the other team play. Lets have a look.

AA offers a couple of different options for tasting menus. I don’t really like this. The point of a tasting menu is to leave everything up to the chef. To show off the best ingredients and dishes. Asking guests to choose between different tasting menus kind of defeats this purpose. I understand having extended versions of a tasting menu or adding optional items like truffle; but having different tastings menus doesn’t make sense. On this night, I went with the “Neapolitan” menu. Now, this might be why I was not blown away by the meal, because I “chose the wrong menu”, but then should the restaurant even offer a “wrong” menu? Which is why I am saying that it defeats the point of the tasting menu.

Here was the menu:

Before getting into the meal, I should mention that the dining room was lovely and we had a nice table in front of the kitchen.

The meal started off with some amuse:

…and various breads…

The first course, mullet:

Selva egg – I don’t like the use of the cracker cover on dishes. I remember going to an ameteur chef fine dining competition and this was used over and over again. I think its just a lot of show without adding value to a dish.

The pasta, as like many of the dishes I remember, just tasted like a mix of basil and tomato. Now, these are what Neapolitan is, basil, tomato, and mozzarella, but a lot of the dishes just reminded me of “chef boyardee” or canned tomato sauce and paste.

The pork pasta:

The salt cod:

The pre-dessert which I did enjoy as it made for a beautiful table:

…and the dessert and petite fours:

Overall, service was very good, and the food WAS good. Don’t get me wrong, the food was good. The presentation was, for the most part good as well, and the atmosphere was worthy of a Michelin starred restaurant. I just don’t think it is on the level of other 2 Michelin star places around the world. It was a much better than the dinner I would have on the following day at Sadler which I didn’t enjoy at all, but I would not go back and would not recommend someone as a “must visit”. I think one star would be appropriate for AA. Then expectations and experience would be in line.