Arturo and Maria Maggi in front of their Milan restaurant.

Hundreds of paintings of roses, La Latteria’s symbol, adorn the walls of the restaurant.

Arturo and Maria, opposite the entrance to the kitchen. The restaurant looks the same as it always has, minus the white tablecloths.

*Top,* the dining room on an evening before the restaurant closed; *above,* the ceramic-tiled bar.

A grandfather clock presides over the dining area.

Arturo in the kitchen he cooked in for 58 years.

A portrait of Maria and Arturo in Renaissance garb, which also graced the covers of the restaurant’s menus.

*Top,* Maria in the bar area; *above,* a stencil of Arturo and Maria in the dining room.

A photograph of the couple from an early newspaper article on La Latteria.

Arturo holding the plate Keith Haring gave to the Maggis when he visited the restaurant, in 1988.

Maria’s teacup collection, in the apartment she and Arturo share, above the restaurant.

A fondant tribute to Arturo, Maria, and their son Marco, given to them by a client after they announced they’d be closing up shop.

*Top,* a plaque on the restaurant doorway that translates to: “In 1998, the tradition of cooking in silver pots started here”; *above,* a portrait of the couple in their living room.

The restaurant’s signature rose, spray-painted by a client onto La Latteria’s shutter last year.

Long Live La Latteria

Over six decades, the couple behind this quaint Milanese spot served spaghetti al limone to Kennedys, Agnellis, artists, and locals alike

By Elena Clavarino

Photographs by DANIEL PAIK

As artists and gallerists prepare their booths at warehouses across Milan for the Salone del Mobile design fair next week, one storefront on Via San Marco, in the Brera neighborhood, remains conspicuously empty. Locals know it as the former site of La Latteria di San Marco, Arturo and Maria Maggi’s restaurant, which shut down permanently in December.

Ever since it opened, in 1965, La Latteria was widely considered the city’s best restaurant. Patrons dined on simple foods—local vegetables, grilled Piedmontese beef, and their signature dish, spaghetti al limone (pasta with lemon zest). Seating consisted of eight small two-tops situated under an emergency-room glare. The restaurant was closed on weekends, and if you tried to call, more often than not you were greeted by an unintelligible Italian grumble followed by the click of the receiver.

Teatime with the Maggis, who live just above their restaurant.

Despite all this, over its 58 years in operation, La Latteria developed a cult following. Keith Haring and Elio Fiorucci ate there in the late 80s. Members of the Kennedy and Agnelli families were regulars, as were the filmmakers Roman Polanski, Roberto Benigni, and Luca Guadagnino.

They didn’t take reservations, so no matter who came in, if a table wasn’t available, they had to wait. “[Donald Trump’s] security detail called to reserve five tables,” Maria told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in 2000, “but we don’t make exceptions for anyone.”

Inside the shuttered 800-foot space, relics still hang from patrons past. Hundreds of paintings of roses—La Latteria’s symbol—pepper the walls. There’s a drawn-on tablecloth by Rita Ackermann, a Haring-designed plate, and a stencil by Geoffrey Hendricks, who created album covers for the Beatles. News articles from The New York Times, Corriere della Sera, and the Italian magazine Oggi are framed.

Closing was a difficult decision. Maria, 77, and Arturo, 85, were tired. “I did it for him,” Maria tells me when I visit the couple in their apartment, just above the restaurant. “We were working 16-hour days.”

Their sons, Roberto and Marco, who waited on tables there, won’t be taking it over. Though there was talk of a sale and reopening, a deal has yet to materialize.

The couple now spends quiet afternoons in the apartment, watching TV, writing, and sipping tea. The phone in the restaurant still rings every few minutes, and wayward tourists knock on the blinds from time to time. There won’t be a reply.

Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL