Moebius Sperimentale: Anarchy, Technique and a Star

June. Milan was simmering. I arrived on Via Cappellini just after seven. The air was thick — that Lombard heat that glues your shirt to your back the second you leave air conditioning.

The city breathes fashion, design and a permanent sense of restlessness, but the area around Central Station still bears the scars of its industrial past. Inside one of those abandoned textile warehouses now sits a fine-dining restaurant enclosed in a glass box, and downstairs, a bar that has just entered the world’s Top 10. No — subtlety is not the point here.

Lorenzo Querci opened Moebius in 2019. He grew up in Siena working in his family’s restaurant, then spent years in Hong Kong understanding how Asian bars and restaurants truly function. He returned to Milan with a clear conviction: erase boundaries. Between bar and restaurant, between comfort and experimentation, between European rigidity and Asian fluidity. He bought a 700-square-metre warehouse with soaring ceilings.

Florentine studio Q-bic preserved the raw brick, iron and concrete. The name pays homage to Jean Giraud — Moebius — the French illustrator whose science-fiction worlds defied perspective and gravity.

The metaphor could not be more literal: Moebius Sperimentale occupies a 60-square-metre platform, fully enclosed in glass, suspended four metres above the ground as the building’s epicentre. Twelve seats. Six at the counter, where kitchen and dining-room teams quietly dismantle the rules of traditional fine dining.

The Chef and His “Cucina Anarchica”

Enrico Croatti arrived at Moebius with three Michelin stars on his résumé — Dolomieu in the Italian Alps, Orobianco in Calpe (the first Italian Michelin-starred restaurant on Spanish soil). Yet it was here, inside this Milanese glass box, that he found total freedom to execute what he calls “Cucina Anarchica”.

Anarchy, for Croatti, doesn’t mean chaos. It means treating cauliflower with the same respect as truffle. This is simultaneously radical and obvious — which may be the definition of good cooking. In practice, it allows a menu that moves from Romagna-style agnolotti with Milanese ossobuco to cuttlefish prepared with Catalan techniques, finishing with a beetroot dessert and parsley ice cream. Nothing is quite what you expect.

Croatti is from Rimini — Fellini country, and a land of hand-rolled fresh pasta. He worked at Angelini Osteria in Los Angeles, trained at Pedro Subijana’s Akelarre in San Sebastián, and learned classical discipline through the Bocuse legacy.

The Sperimentale kitchen reflects that journey: Romagna as emotional memory, Spain as a motor of flavour and acidity, France and the East as precision technique. The result is a cuisine that resists classification.

In 2025, Michelin rewarded the gamble with a star. That same year, the bar downstairs — led by Giovanni Allario — entered the World’s 50 Best Bars Top 10 at number seven. The building exudes success, but Querci stays restless. That’s his way.

Inside the Aquarium

I climbed the steel staircase after spending a solid stretch with Moebius cocktails downstairs. The lower floor was buzzing — drinks, tapas, loud music, a well-dressed crowd with evident taste and an atmosphere charged with energy.

Upstairs, relative silence. Glass everywhere. I sat at the counter, second seat from the left. The kitchen occupied more than half the space — a central island with ovens, a charcoal-fired Josper, and the pass. Chefs in classic whites, the head chef himself, a young sommelier and the rest of the dining-room team. Soft but present music — not the reverential hush of some starred restaurants, but far removed from the noise below.

The sommelier introduced herself, explained the options, and I chose the Libertà menu — complete carte blanche, a blend of the Terra and Mare menus, eight courses. She asked about wine pairing. I said yes.

Snacks: Peace of Mind

The snacks arrived fast, almost as one, and turned out to be the night’s most emotionally resonant moment. Not because of flavour — which was excellent — but because of what they represented. Two weeks earlier, I’d sat through a starred restaurant where each amuse-bouche came with a three-minute lecture on terroir and technique. Here, none of that.

First came what looked like ricotta with anchovy essence. It wasn’t ricotta. It was cauliflower, worked until it achieved a perfect lactic texture, served with anchovy oil that delivered depth without excessive salt.

Then, slow-fermented bread with what looked like a green olive. It wasn’t that either — it was dense olive oil, almost butter-like, meant to be spread.

The Cinta Senese ham croquette — from an ancient Tuscan pig breed, cured for months — hid a creaminess that defied the laws of frying. I cut it open. Inside, the ham had been transformed into a cream: no béchamel, no cheese, just meat and time. Spanish technique, Tuscan product.

A false Parmigiano made from itself, playing with textures and the right touch of pepper. Finally, green beans with tender leaves, beurre blanc and black olives. Simple on paper, perfect in execution. The beurre blanc was light, the olives delivered precise salinity, and everything rested on herbal freshness.

To drink: a lemon, lime and Sichuan pepper kombucha — fermented, gently spicy, refreshing. It also set up expectations — naively — for what I thought the wine pairing might become later. Wrong. But we’ll get there.

Sea and Memory

The first main dish was titled “Raw Bites, Times and Places of the Sea”. Red prawn — likely from Mazara del Vallo, though I didn’t ask — whole, raw, cold. Beneath it, sashimi of white fish, fresh seaweed and herbs, all anchored by a sauce that formed the dish’s structural backbone.

I tasted the sauce alone. Sweet at first, deeply umami in the middle, without the citrus-salty punch of ponzu that appears in ninety per cent of raw fish dishes. Perhaps mirin, perhaps dashi, certainly some unidentified ferment. Fresh herbs cut through the richness with every bite.

I closed my eyes for a second. Spanish coast, August 2023, hot sand underfoot, salt in the air, Francisca shouting for more prawns as the fishermen pulled up to shore. I opened my eyes: Milan, glass, steel, air conditioning at twenty degrees. The dish worked in both places.

Served alongside: cuttlefish “risotto” with oyster and peas, confirming the Spanish influence. The cuttlefish was finely diced — perfect brunoise — mixed with oyster and peas, bound by a creamy sauce that visually mimicked Italian risotto without sacrificing cuttlefish texture. Finished with black lime zest. Familiar and strange at once.

Subijana’s Catalan avant-garde was there, tempered by Italian restraint. Croatti doesn’t chase shock for shock’s sake. He seeks balance within imbalance.

I ate slowly, cleaned the plate with good bread — scarpetta, as Italians say — an obvious act, Transmontanos would argue.

The third course — prawn, white asparagus, passion fruit — surprised through its improbable harmony. In practice, it was one of the night’s most intelligent combinations.

White asparagus halved and finished in the Josper, firm, almost crunchy, of excellent quality. The prawn arrived raw, large, and naturally sweet. Beneath, a sauce that bridged land and sea with tropical acidity and vegetal sweetness: passion fruit and roasted yellow pepper.

The passion fruit didn’t compete — it connected. Technique stepped aside, and intuition took over.

The Problem with Perfection

Agnolotti has been Croatti’s signature since 2007. It travelled with him across three continents, four restaurants, and three Michelin stars. Now it returned to Milan, the city that gave it its name.

Fresh pasta concealed braised ossobuco, bound by three sauces: gremolata, braising jus and saffron sauce. The filling was deep, flavourful, and technically flawless. The problem lay in the pasta.

The pasta had been passed over Josper embers. The intention was clear: add smoke and a toasted texture to contrast the creamy filling. In theory, it works.

In practice, the texture lost me. The smoke impregnated the surface, but the pasta sat somewhere between dry, hard and almost gummy. The aroma was magnificent. The flavour was integrated. But harmony was missing.

Sometimes, simpler is better. I ate slowly, trying to decide whether it was expectation or execution. I concluded: execution. A dish that has crossed continents shouldn’t fail at its most basic element — pasta texture.

Croatti seems to agree. The agnolotti no longer touches the embers. Great chefs adjust. Average ones insist.

Successful Anarchy

If Croatti’s cuisine is anarchist, it fully proved the concept in the fifth course. He closed the savoury section with a Chianina beef tartare — Tuscan cattle, aged 130 days — served, of course, cold. Knife-cut, simply seasoned, no mayonnaise, no mustard seeds. On top: raw sea urchin and a light honey sauce.

Initial reaction: confusion. Finish with a cold dish? Honey in tartare? But Milan was forty degrees outside. The cold dish felt like a blessing.

The sea urchin became the seasoning’s centrepiece — its creamy sweetness fused with honey, contrasting the ferrous minerality of aged beef and the marine iodine of the sea. Land and sea in perfect balance.

One of the night’s best dishes. Not because of technique — tartare is about cutting and seasoning correctly — but because of conceptual courage. No traditional Italian chef would serve this. No classical French chef either.

Croatti did it anyway. He isn’t bound by tradition. There’s rare honesty in serving something that could fail spectacularly, but that the chef believes in. And it worked!

When Dessert Isn’t Sweet

Desserts at Sperimentale avoid sugar as a dominant tool. Croatti prefers bitterness, acidity, salt, and herbal notes. The first dessert was a salad that wasn’t a salad.

Parsley root ice cream — sweet enough to be dessert, but herbal enough to feel vegetal. Beetroots in multiple forms: thinly sliced raw, pickled, cooked. Fresh herbs and edible flowers. Cucumber granita on top.

Refreshing. Surprising. Alongside the snacks, the most emotionally striking moment of the meal. Because it was both familiar — everyone knows beetroot, parsley, cucumber — and entirely strange.

The cold temperature made sense with the heat outside. Beetroot’s natural sweetness was enough. No added sugar needed.

The second dessert made me hesitate when the sommelier described it: asparagus ice cream, caviar, wasabina leaf salad, yoghurt, and passion fruit sauce. Asparagus, wasabi greens and caviar for dessert? I wanted to see where this would go.

The asparagus ice cream was pale green, creamy, subtly vegetal. Caviar on top brought salt and marine lift, enhancing the ice cream’s sweetness. Wasabina leaves were fresh, with a gentle heat that appeared only at the end.

Passion fruit and yoghurt acted as bridges — acidity preventing heaviness or confusion.

It was excellent. Completely improbable. It worked because every element had a reason. Caviar was structural salt. Wasabina prevented monotony. Croatti knows precisely what he’s doing!

The final dessert was called “Milk & Cookies”, a tribute to Santiago, the chef’s son. I imagine he approved at age three. I would have too — at the same age. Two ice creams made from koji-fermented rice — one creamier, one firmer — stacked and covered with milk skin, evoking a morning glass of milk with biscuits.

For the chef, likely the menu’s most emotional dish. For me, technically sound but emotionally distant. Not a criticism. Just not my memory.

Petit fours arrived as a solid cube of gin with lemon zest and powder — another Spanish-inspired technique, turning liquids into solids, playing with temperature and texture. It cleansed the palate and closed the meal.

The Pairing: Conceptual Incoherence

The wine pairing was the only element truly out of step. Not because the wines were bad. They weren’t. The 2019 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione was very good — firm but silky tannins, ripe fruit, long finish.

But the overall selection was overly conservative, heavily centred on Tuscan producer Castello di Bossi, and conceptually misaligned with everything Moebius represents.

The initial kombucha promised a direction: experimental ferments, low-intervention wines, perhaps even cocktails integrated into the pairing. The bar downstairs had just entered the World’s 50 Best Bars Top 10. Giovanni Allario won Identità Golose’s Creativity Award in 2024.

Before dinner, I had cocktails at the bar — technically impeccable, conceptually bold, ideally suited to half the menu.

Instead, the pairing felt like it ignored Moebius’s identity entirely. Vermentino is a good wine. Chianti Classico is a great wine. But in a restaurant that calls its cuisine anarchist, serves cuttlefish risotto and meat tartare as main courses, plays electronic music, and places a 700-year-old olive tree at its centre, serving only conservative Tuscan wines is like playing Mozart in a techno club.

Technically acceptable — both have rhythm — but you’re wasting the sound system and confusing the audience.

The sommelier did her job well. The issue wasn’t service. It was strategy. There is room for daring. Exceptional low-intervention wines exist. There are ferments beyond wine. Cocktails can pair beautifully with food.

Moebius has all of this under one roof. It just didn’t reach the Sperimentale pairing.

I finished late and descended the iron staircase. The bar was still packed — thirty- and forty-somethings, stylish but not formal, drinking cocktails, eating, celebrating. No one seemed to know there was a Michelin-starred restaurant upstairs. Or they knew and came for the bar anyway.

Moebius functions as a mix of worlds and audiences in one building, without a clear hierarchy of importance.

A Final Note

Croatti cooks without a safety net. No dish is exactly what you expect, but all follow a rigorous internal logic. Italy, Spain and France are blended with precision. Technique serves flavour, not spectacle. No excess — in ingredients or presentation.

What was missing was a moment of pure comfort. A dish that warms, slows the pace, calms. That might have been the agnolotti — which didn’t quite work — or perhaps Croatti and Querci don’t want comfort in the traditional sense.

They want you to leave unsettled, curious, slightly destabilised. And that works — otherwise Sperimentale wouldn’t be in the name.

Querci and Croatti are different in many ways, but together they’ve built something unique in Milan, perhaps even in Italy. The restored space is brilliant. The 700-year-old olive tree, the suspended glass platform, the vibrant music, and the globally recognised bar below.

A building everyone wishes they had nearby — but often doesn’t know exists.

Querci understood that Milan didn’t want another hushed, formal starred restaurant where people whisper and eat in silence. It wanted a place where you can have a cocktail, eat something experimental and delicious, and leave without feeling like you’ve been to a museum.

I left happy, wanting to return. I walked down Via Cappellini as the heat eased and Milan exhaled. Moebius Sperimentale proves that radical experimentation and Michelin stars can coexist — as long as technique is solid and honesty is present.

With the determination shown by Querci and Croatti, the future looks bright here. Unmissable in Milan. Worth repeating — without hesitation.