The first time I went to Latteria was with my father at the end of the 1960s, when I was a long-haired beatnik studying at the Brera Academy. He was an Italian dandy. From that day right up to its closure I became an active player in the life of this famed Milanese restaurant. It was an exciting and quite unexpected vortex of encounters, creative intersections, cultural and emotional passions, all under the watchful eyes of owners Maria and Arturo Maggi.
As was the rule under her perfect stewardship, it was never possible to reserve a table, no matter whether you were a film star, president or mere mortal. That said, in recent years it became an unofficial annex to my office nearby. Without fail I would pitch up at dead on 11.55am, seek out my favourite spot in a corner behind a decoupage screen and there host friends, as well as perfect strangers with whom I might have struck up a conversation over lunch. There was some alchemy at work here, not just in the kitchen. For whatever reason, you felt the people you met in Latteria were precisely those you’d like to know, people who might enhance your present and future.
I realise that I never went there simply to eat, but to breathe the air. It was a familial place and Maria was never one to hide her disappointment or a bad mood, scolding you affectionately like a mother of yesteryear because you had delayed her by chatting or hesitated over the menu.
I felt at home in what was surely one of the most sparsely, casually furnished places in the world, but it had so much character that you weren’t in the least bit disorientated. This informality even stretched to the vinyl ‘delft’ tiles covering the marble-topped bar.
Just as Lucio Quinzio Cincinnato, the fifth-century BC Roman commander, retired to the countryside to live off nature’s bounty, so Arturo Maggi has gone off to tend his plot in the Piacenza area after a lifetime toiling at the stove in Latteria’s kitchen.
La Latteria served its last meal on Christmas Eve, 2023
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