Our “first time” with starred kitchen: Ristorante D’O

“We are cooks and we have to remember this. It is our job to nourish, the best way we know how and to make whoever is seated at our table feel welcome and looked after, so that when they go home they are happy about the way they ate and the experience. Even before they leave the restaurant, they should have the desire to come back. As they leave the restaurant, they should already have a sense of nostalgia.”

(Davide Oldani, from D’O restaurant website)

There are experiences that leave their mark, moments that remain inside us, from which there’s no going back.

For us, food lover to many time ago, our “first time” with the great kitchen coincided with lunch at the D'O restaurant, the house - but at the same time the kingdom – of Davide Oldani.

Even if it isn’t an experience of these days (and how could it, given the moment ...), since more or less a year has now passed, more times we remember the episodes lived that day, especially the wonderful dishes tasted.

For this reason, it seemed obligatory to write our first post in the culinary field starting from the restaurant that actually represents for us a model of excellence, a reference, also by virtue of an attention about prices very uncommon in Michelin-star restaurants.

D’O is located in Cornaredo – the chef’s birthplace- in the central square of the small and characteristic village of San Pietro all’Olmo, and just from the entrance you immediately understand the sober style and philosophy of the Chef.
 

No spangles and unnecessary tinsel, everything you see - from the decor of the room passing through the style of the tables and arriving to the table equipment (with the "total" cutlery, knife, fork and spoon at the same time) - is minimal but at the same time rich in precision and functionality.

Also the service is in tune with the rest: perfect but not intrusive and obsessive, exhaustive in the explanations without appearing pompous and long-winded.

So, the dishes….simply unforgettable.

Sober, balanced and reserved like the chef but with inside his heart, his personal history and that talent that has led him to become (year after year) one of the most important star of Italian restaurant district . An endless gustative explosion, a pleasure and a caress for the eyes but also – and above all - for the palate.

 

Davide Oldani offers a kitchen that lives on the search for balance and harmony of contrasts: hot-cold, sweet-salty, soft-crisp. Furthermore, it is a noble cuisine but at the same time popular, because it uses raw materials that belonging to our tradition, also apparently poor (or in any case less valuable than others) but blended with unparalleled skill, creating small taste masterpieces.

 

How can we forget the "caramelized onion", its most known plate, a dish that alone explains the trip. For us, it is a course that lives over the senses, even leaving to tradizional kitchen pattern. Considering tasting experience it’s thinked as an appetizer, but for the richness and strength showed it could be a second, but at the same time considering its gustatory nuances it might even suggest a dessert.

Or the stratospheric risotto with marsala, black pepper and bread, a masterpiece of taste and sensory balance, which we could have eaten to exhaustion without ever being satisfied.

But also through its “cotechino”, a traditional dish that we don’t love and which - probably - was what least impressed us. With this plate we been able to understand that even a simple and popular product, if treated with respect and wisdom, can become a little prince.

A great restaurant, a nice person (Chef Davide Oldani), a wonderful pop experience.

Ristorante D’O

Piazza della Chiesa, 14

San Pietro all'Olmo, Cornaredo (MI)