Man, oh Milan

I'll just say it: risotto milanese is one of the most boring dishes on the planet.[[Before any Italians threaten to attach bricks to my feet and chuck me into the Naviglio Grande, I know quite a few locals who – off the record – agree with me.]] The first bite is great: creamy, savoury and – if served in actual Italy – so shockingly al dente that the chef seems to be daring you to complain that it's undercooked. But then you take your second bite. And your third. And your seventeenth. You can kid yourself that you're savouring the 'earthy' taste of the saffron (are you? If you're honest?) but let's be real: you're just eating a plate of perfectly pleasant, entirely one-note rice.

Luckily, Milan has plenty more to eat than yellow rice, and plenty of atmospheric places to eat it. For starters, you should base yourself at the exceptional Portrait Milano, part of the Lugarno Collection with sibling properties in Florence and Rome. Its on-site restaurant, the somewhat awkwardly-named 10_11, does a very good job of a plain-but-not-so-plain Italian dish, a version of pasta in bianco that it claims to have pioneered. It is tubular fusillone pasta with a parmigiano reggiano sauce, but the secret is the way they cook the pasta: the pasta water is loaded with parmigiano rinds, giving the entire dish an addictive cheese overload and much more palate interest than risotto.

You really should stay at Portrait rather than just visiting the restaurant. Unlike the relatively ostentatious Rome or Florence, Milan hides much of its architectural beauty behind demure facades, a sleight of hand that Portrait manages particularly well. The entryway feels like a narrow driveway (it was once used to wheel in gurneys during the brief time the property was a military hospital) until you step through and an ethereal hidden world emerges: towering granite pillars surrounding a sun-drenched quadrangle, baroque and baronial. You half expect to see an archbishop stalking across the courtyard.