Bulgari Hotel Milano has opened Da Niko, a restaurant built around chef Niko Romito and redesigned to feel less like a hotel dining room and more like a private Milanese home. Silvio Ursini, executive vice president of the Bulgari Group, says the atmosphere has changed: less formal, more convivial.
The name itself signals the shift from the previous restaurant at the address, Il Ristorante Niko Romito, which opened with the same chef a decade ago. Ursini says the new name is reminiscent of a friendly, genuine trattoria, chosen because today's guests seek experiences that are more spontaneous and less bound by ritual than a formal hotel restaurant traditionally offers.
Bulgari, the Rome jeweler and watchmaker behind the hotel, was founded in 1884 by Sotirio Bulgari and is now part of the LVMH Group. It was among the first luxury houses to move into hospitality, a bet that has since grown into hotels and resorts far beyond Milan.
Nothing about the cooking has been diluted to get there, according to Ursini, who insists there has been no compromise on quality, on Romito's rigorous selection of ingredients or on his pursuit of the purest expression of flavor. Bulgari, he says, stays away from passing trends.
What is on the menu
Romito describes his own aim as a warmer, more direct tone rather than a change of philosophy. The research and rigor behind selecting and transforming ingredients remain exactly the same, he says, now expressed through what he calls a more convivial dimension.
That conviviality shows up as sharing. A trolley brings tableside preparations of the catch of the day, milk-fed Milanese veal cutlet and traditional Piedmontese fried chicken with roasted potatoes and seasonal vegetables to the table.
Appetizers range from oysters and amberjack carpaccio with lemon and chili to tuna carpaccio with basil-scented tomato, langoustine cocktail with lettuce, herb-marinated beef with mixed greens and fried pizza with tomato, mozzarella and Parmesan.
First courses include tomato spaghetti, paccheri with langoustines, lemon and tarragon, and a cold legume soup with Swiss chard and lemon. Mains run to Dover sole meuniere, beef tenderloin with green pepper sauce and eggplant parmigiana.
Ursini calls Romito, the Michelin-starred chef, a mad scientist, always open to experiment and attentive to the minutest detail, adding that the chef fully embraced this new project rather than treating it as a side commission.
The room ACPV Architects built around him
Da Niko was redesigned by ACPV Architects Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, the studio behind the hotel's original interiors, with what Ursini calls the idea of creating an elegant Milanese home rather than a conventional hotel dining room.
The room seats around 100 guests across tables of different sizes. Armchairs designed by Philippe Starck for Driade, out of production and revisited in soft leather for this project, are paired with cozy green velvet sofas.
Warm teak runs throughout, including bookshelves opposite a cocktail bar with an oval black resin counter, facing expansive windows onto the garden. Six large mirrors framed in willow, made by artist Emy Petrini, line the walls.
At the center of the room is La Venatoria, a rare Richard Ginori vase from the late 1920s made during Gio Ponti's period as artistic director and decorated with a Triumph of the Amazons motif. Ursini says Bulgari is a major collector of Ginori pieces by Ponti.
The tableware extends the collaboration: an exclusive variation of Ginori 1735's Diva collection was created specifically for Da Niko, in a terracotta hue that recurs across the room. Staff uniforms and linen aprons were revisited in the same palette.
Bulgari's hospitality business beyond Milan
Ursini says the Da Niko concept will likely be exported to other Bulgari Hotels, though he kept the details to himself. Bulgari built that early move into a business now spanning Bali, Dubai, London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo, with five more hotels and resorts expected in Miami, Bodrum, the Maldives, Cave Cay and Abu Dhabi between 2026 and 2031.
The Milan property, the brand's first Bulgari Hotels & Resorts address, marked its 20th anniversary in 2024, three years after the overall hospitality project was launched. Da Niko is its most significant culinary overhaul since it opened.
Sources
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Image: Bulgari Hotels
