To drink like the Milanese, leave the Duomo behind and head for Ticinese, NoLo, Porta Venezia, Porta Vittoria and Sant’Ambrogio. Our picks start with Bar Cuore, the low lit lounge that helped shape late night drinking in the city, and run to a music bar where a brick staircase serves as seating, and to a rooftop twenty floors up in Portello.
The short list
10 places, in the order they appear below.
- 1Bar CuoreClassic cocktails after dinnerTicinese
- 2The DopingA quiet drink on sofas, Sunday brunchNear Porta Ticinese
- 3SUR Cocktail BarPatagonian ingredients and food to matchPorta Vittoria
- 4DepositoA long natural wine list with a kitchenPorta Venezia
- 5Vigna - Enoteca di QuartiereCoravin pours from a deep cellarSant'Ambrogio
- 6La Manierina MilanoSmall plates in sequence, group table in the vaultPorta Vittoria
- 7Bar NormaleA glass and a filled michettaNoLo
- 8NodoLive music, talks and DJ nightsNoLo
- 9Bulk Mixology BarLow waste cocktails on a terraceChinatown
- 10Voya RooftopDinner with a view, then DJ setsPortello
Where do the Milanese go for cocktails after dinner?
After dinner, the Milanese go to Ticinese and the streets around Porta Ticinese, where Bar Cuore and The Doping take classic drinks seriously. The other direction is east, to Porta Vittoria, where SUR has built a whole bar around Argentine Patagonia. SUR has a kitchen of its own, so you can eat there too.
Bar Cuore is near the San Lorenzo columns, and it was mixing drinks with unusual care long before Milan had a cocktail scene. The list leans classic. The room fills late in the evening, once people arrive from dinner in Ticinese, and they settle in until closing.
Bar Cuore
Hours: Mon–Thu 18:00–01:30 · Fri–Sat 18:00–02:15 · Sun 18:00–01:30
Address: Via Gian Giacomo Mora, 3, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
The Doping is inside a small hotel near Porta Ticinese, dressed as an English sitting room: vintage furniture, plenty of low velvet, music quiet enough to talk over. The sofas are in the second room, and so is the calm. House made spirits go into the classics as well as the stranger drinks. On Sunday there’s a brunch that few people outside the neighbourhood know about.
The Doping
Hours: Mon–Thu 18:00–00:30 · Fri–Sat 18:00–01:30 · Sun 18:00–00:30
Address: P.za Ventiquattro Maggio, 8, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
SUR has fifty seats on a quiet church square east of the centre. The stone and leather interiors read the Patagonian landscape without any gaucho kitsch. Behind the bar they work with yerba mate, calafate berries and Argentine forest honey. The menu is bound like a book that travels south, so you choose a place on the route rather than a spirit. Take a seat at the round bar for a walk through the ingredients, and order the shrimp tiradito, which the kitchen makes to sit alongside the glass.
SUR Cocktail Bar
Hours: Mon closed · Tue–Sun 18:00–02:00
Address: Piazza Santa Maria del Suffragio, 3, 20129 Milano MI, Italy
Where are the best wine bars in Milan?
Deposito in Porta Venezia stacks around seven hundred labels from small producers. Vigna, near Sant’Ambrogio, pours bottles by Coravin that most people would never open for themselves, and La Manierina in Porta Vittoria serves wine in rooms furnished like a private flat. Give each one a slow evening, with a glass and plates to share.
Deposito is a natural wine shop with a kitchen. The walls are exposed red brick, and industrial shelving holds bottles from Italy, France and well beyond. Plates go from raw dishes to pasta. With a list this size, the easiest way in is a blind tasting: the staff pour without telling you the wine.
Deposito
Hours: Mon–Fri 19:00–00:00 · Sat–Sun closed
Address: Via Felice Casati, 1, 20124 Milano MI, Italy
Vigna opened in September 2026 in a room that used to be an Italian American bistro. It carries about two hundred labels, twenty poured by Coravin and around ten by the glass, and behind those Coravin pours sits a cellar of more than two thousand bottles. To eat, there are plates to share, cured meats and cheeses.
Vigna - Enoteca di Quartiere
Hours: Mon–Fri 12:00–15:00, 18:00–23:00 · Sat 12:00–23:00 · Sun closed
Address: Via Vigna, 6, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
La Manierina was opened by Francesco Germani, a cook who decided the neighbourhood needed a cellar with a kitchen rather than another restaurant. Forget the main course. Small plates called manierine come out of the kitchen in sequence, with cured meats, Mangalica pork and baccalà mantecato on wholemeal bread. If there are more than four of you, book the long wooden table in the eighteenth century brick vault downstairs. It’s the one spot where you can talk at full volume.
La Manierina Milano
Hours: Mon 18:00–23:30 · Tue–Sun 18:00–00:00
Address: Via Benvenuto Cellini, 21, 20129 Milano MI, Italy
Where do locals drink in NoLo?
NoLo has two rooms for two kinds of night, one for talking and one for listening. Bar Normale keeps things simple: a glass of wine and a filled michetta. Nodo brings the city’s music scene in front of a small stage, with acoustic sets, talks and DJ nights.
Roberta Viale and Vincenzo Todaro opened Bar Normale in the summer of 2026. It’s a small wine room with an open kitchen, and the list leans hard on small Italian and European growers. Nearly every table ends up with a michetta, the bread brought in from Panificio Danelli and stuffed with coppa, mortadella or salame Milano. The name sums up the idea of the place, which is somewhere to sit and talk over a glass with none of the theatre.
Bar Normale
Hours: Mon 18:00–00:00 · Tue closed · Wed–Sun 18:00–00:00
Address: Via Giulio e Corrado Venini, 71, 20127 Milano MI, Italy
Nodo opened at the end of 2024. There’s a brick counter, and a brick staircase that doubles as seating. Natural wine and cocktails made with herbs and infusions share the menu with a few seasonal plates. The crowd is musicians, radio people and NoLo locals meeting friends. Check the programme before you go, because the mood changes completely from one night to the next.
Nodo
Hours: Mon–Wed 08:00–00:00 · Thu 08:00–01:00 · Fri–Sat 18:00–02:00 · Sun closed
Address: Via Marco Aurelio, 8, 20127 Milano MI, Italy
Which Milan bars have a terrace or a view?
For a drink outdoors or up high, we have two very different addresses. Bulk Mixology Bar, at the Hotel Viu on the edge of Chinatown, opens onto a leafy terrace and serves a low waste cocktail list. Voya Rooftop in Portello is on the twentieth floor of a tower, eighty five metres up, and the view turns from the Duomo to San Siro, CityLife and the Alps.
The drinks at Bulk are inventive and built around their ingredients, and the setting is more relaxed than most hotel bars. The sustainability angle holds up: the bartenders can tell you exactly what was salvaged to make each drink. In warm weather, ask for a table on the terrace.
Bulk Mixology Bar
Hours: Mon–Thu 18:00–00:00 · Fri–Sat 18:00–01:00 · Sun closed
Address: Via Aristotile Fioravanti, 4, 20154 Milano MI, Italy
Voya opened at the end of 2025 in the World Join Center tower. The kitchen does contemporary Milanese plates such as ossobuco and cotoletta, and Satoshi Hayashi runs a sushi counter. Book so you are at the table while the light goes off the Alps, then move to the bar side when the DJ sets start. There’s secure parking at the base of the tower, and few Milan rooftops are this easy to reach by car.
Voya Rooftop
Hours: Mon closed · Tue–Thu 20:00–00:30 · Fri–Sat 20:00–02:00 · Sun 20:00–00:30
Address: Viale Achille Papa, 30, 20149 Milano MI, Italy
Which Milan bar suits which kind of evening?
Start with the evening you want. The wine bars can carry a whole night with food. NoLo covers music, and the two terrace addresses give you outdoor tables and views. In the table below, each place sits next to its neighbourhood and the kind of night it suits.
Most of these are evening places, so plan them for after dark and pair the ones that share an area: Bar Cuore with The Doping, SUR with La Manierina, Bar Normale with Nodo. Book ahead for Voya and for the cellar table at La Manierina. Keep weeknights for the smaller rooms.
