Joia

I can’t even write this review because it’ll make me sad.
So all I’m going to say is that this is hands down the best meal I’ve had in my life, and it is certainly worth every euro (and it’s expensive).
DEF recommend for everyone, and especially for vegetarians. Do the wine pairing too! I’d probably fly to Milan just for this place.

A very refined vegan restaurant with very elaborated and well conceived dishes. I had the 12 course tasting menu and I should say it was one of the best meals of my life. The wine pairings are excellent and service is absolutely professional.

We had heard good things about the only gourmet vegetarian Michelin star rated restaurant in Europe, hence we made our way to Joia during our short stay in Milan. Its located in the downtown/​official area of Milan away from Duomo or El Castille.
Our overall experience was very unique and interesting. The staff and the chef were friendly and helped us understand the menu. The chef shared an interesting story with us, he was an Italian chef making French cuisine for several years, then became a follower of ISCON (Hare Ram Hare Krishna) and became a vegetarian by choice. He decided to invent a fully vegetarian gourmet menu in his restaurant. The chef doesn’t have a fixed menu, infact he told us he changed it based on seasonal availability. So we had the summer menu to choose from. They also had a wine guy who came in and advised us on a nice lite white wine, which wasn’t too expensive either. The restaurant (as expected) was full of old rich men with seeming younger, hotter wives in jackets and boat shoes — we seemed to be the only people who actually came for the vegetarian food and not the Michelin star (if you catch my drift) …
Now, setting the interesting story aside. let me comment on the food. We tried about 5 dishes, couple of which were really interesting, the rest were average. Our appetizer was a unique watermelon dish, but the texture was so much like having meat (something like prosciutto or a thin ham slice), but it’s a burst of fresh watermelon when you taste it — it messes with your brain, pretty ingenious and tasty. We also had a soup (either pumpkin or squash). It was tasty but nothing I had not tasted before at other high end venues. The pasta dish was pretty average — we had much better pasta in Venice and Rome for far fewer Euros. It’s probably my palette which loves street food more than gourmet. For my entrée I tried an entrée called Summer field; it was just a glorified salad with some cool iron chef type things like pumpkin foam etc. the dish had 3 – 4 different textures, crispy, foamy, saucy and more. It was light and sparse, not heavy at all — but hey, that is not the intention with gourmet fine dining. What I didn’t like is that very basic veggie dishes (like soup and pasta) had long descriptions and the waiters pointed out almost each ingredient to make you feel you got something fancy. The chef certainly plays well with colors and textures but seemed to have very less experience with spice, most dishes were on a bland side and none had a pop of acid or spice.
The highlight was the «Gong» dessert. It was some kind of vanilla foam with strawberries in a mason jar, but was pretty cool. The waiter came with an actual gong and played it once as he served it, which was cool. All the food was dainty, delicate, layers of flavor and textures. you could tell it was no home cooking, it was certainly something made by an iron chef (or something). Of course, I do feel that the place was overpriced, especially since it is a vegetarian place and the portions were very small (even from European standards). My main complaint with the restaurant was the ambiance. it was very simplistic. If I am spending € 150+ for a dinner, I do expect some candles or fresh flowers or white gloves; none of which existed. I don’t know much about Michelin stars and they will certainly be hard to get, but the bottom line is always about the food and not about pretentious ratings usually obtained by networking and contacts; I rate this place ³⁄₅ stars and probably a one-​time visit at best.

The chef is creative and uses fresh seasonal ingredients.
That being said, the service is incredible slow, which leaves a lot of room to be desired.

Hats off to the chefs who can create such unique elegant dishes with such wonderful combination of ingredients without using any meat. It was a very pleasant experience and discovery.