House of Ronin is a venue full of facets in Via Alfieri 17, cwhich transports the guest to Japan and its capital, Tokyo. A surreal Tokyo, seen through the eyes of Salva tu Alma and their action group who absorbed it and made it their own with research and study at the highest levels, giving an ambitious and unparalleled project to the city of Milan, to Italy and Europe.
The lucid dream of a Tokyo bathed in a shower of neon lights, dreamlike and seductive, muffled by an atmosphere retro futuristic, where future and past coexist in a present yet to be revealed. We could start by describing it like this House of Ronin, the ambitious, visionary project of the entrepreneurial group Save you Alma, led by Guillaume Desforges and the brothers Jacopo and Leonardo Signani, already known for their restaurants Pacific. The result of a path of study and research that lasted five years, House of Ronin - it would be an understatement to define it as a Japanese restaurant, as the souls that characterize it are many and multifaceted - was born from the passion of a Westerner who looks at Asia with great admiration, embodying its essence in a real tribute.
The House Of Ronin project
The heart of the project beats in a neo-liberty building in the eclectic Chinatown district of Milan. The location is made up of four levels, a vertical sequence shot that passes through different settings, in which the central element of the staircase represents the fulcrum of the camera: you are catapulted into a post-modern Tokyo, seen through the eyes of Save you Alma and from their action group, where Japanese and Italian cultures proceed in sync. The entire architectural project (conservative restoration of the building) and interiors was carried out by Design Unit of Salva Tu Alma (www.salvatualma.com) together with Study SC+ (Architects Simone Colombo and Michela dell'Orto). The third floor was curated by designer Marsica Fossati. Each element was designed to be functional in transporting the customer to a glimpse of Japan between the 70s and 90s, a time period in which the Japanese minimalist aesthetic was enriched with modernist ideas, European and European colors and compositions. Americans. All furnishings, accessories, fabrics and accessories are custom made. No furnishing element inside the building is present in an industrial catalogue.
The local
Each floor of the venue incorporates a sub-plot, specifically designed to offer the customer a unique and peculiar experience. On the ground floor there is theIzakaya of the Little Ronin: here it is possible to taste small specialties of Japanese gastronomic culture revisited in a Ronin key, such as Bao, Yakitori and Gunkan, accompanied by a varied offer of drinks, twists on classics of Japanese inspiration. All while letting yourself be enveloped by the musical background coming from Listening Bar.
Going up to the first floor, the guest is welcomed into the restaurant Robatayaki by Ronin. Here chef Gigi Nastri offers his guests gourmet cuisine with osmotic features: it presents points of contact with Japan, but retains the refined mix of cultural and anthropological elements typical of the Ronin project. A symbolic dish of the restaurant's culinary offering is risotto, an authentic Milanese tradition, made with eel cooked first stuffed (Japanese grilling technique, which gives the restaurant its name) and then lacquered with a mandarin reduction. Or miso grilled cauliflower with mizuna, sake and sesame. The peculiarity of Robata it is the protagonism of the grill, where the chef, with shots of shabu shabu, communicates with his hands, with the fire and with the raw material in a flaming cooking show. The furnishings tend towards compositional rigor, clean geometries, clear and flat surfaces that recall the Japanese modernism of the 60s mixed with strong color choices, such as the red of the fire to emphasize the centrality of the grill.
On the second floor, the property extends over 200m2 Madame Cheng's. Here guests can entertain themselves and forget themselves, for an evening, in one of the 4 karaoke rooms available, which can be rented by the hour, each dedicated to a different theme. In all rooms it is possible to order Bento Boxes studied by chef Gigi Nastri and the best of late night drinks and finest mixology at the cocktail & sake bar, managed by bar manager Riccardo Speranza. For those looking for a premium experience, Madame Cheng's bar is certainly the right place to drink a cocktail of the finest quality, made using only Asian and Japanese products. On the same level, the other side of Japanese ultra traditionalism, theOmakase, a restaurant that maintains the typical furnishings of Japanese culture, with twenty seats per evening. It will start in the second phase of the project, and you will be able to enjoy the premium fine dining experience offered by a Japanese sushi master.
Finally, the journey comes to an end with the last floor, theArcade, a large intimate and private environment - composed of a "box" with oriental geometries within which vintage furnishings with a vaguely English classic taste stand out - which represents an interruption of the syncopated narrative of the other floors, an embassy within Ronin, a safe space in which to breathe. Access to this floor is currently restricted to eighty-eight named individuals crazy, inspired by the eighty-eight warriors of the army of Kill Bill. Each of them will be able to extend access to others, with an important role in the most disparate sectors: from architecture to design to music. But you can also apply. The important thing is to bring added value. L'Arcade it will be a sort of creative hotbed where events will also be organised. On this floor there will be a premium bar, again managed by Riccardo Speranza.
In addition to the majesty of the project, the integrated communication that is created to support it also stands out, and which reflects the philosophy and imagery of House of Ronin in an original and transversal way.
“We believe that after the pandemic, the audiovisual and communicative language must evolve and change, therefore ours is no longer a shouted and sensationalistic communication, but translates into an elegant, unique and highly recognizable form of expression in terms of contents that tell the story project identity. Our keywords are study and research. The communication we carry out does not want to reveal Ronin, but aims to offer users cultural insights on the different topics of the project. We look to the past and the future, but we are well rooted in the present: the result is a hybrid communication mix rich in cultural ideas. From the outside it must be clear that the project has been taken care of in every detail, from the architecture to the design, up to the food & beverage offering. We take advantage of all communication tools: from digital to paper, we leave nothing to chance. For the Listening Bar, for example, every month an illustrator will be chosen to take care of the graphics for the events, and a comic signed with Space Delicious has been created (https://spacedelicious.com) which winks at the world of manga and represents a further communication channel with which to talk about the project”, Alberto Bloise of Cultivar Agency tells us (www.cultivaragency.it), the creative agency that deals with Ronin's digital communication and press office, and which works alongside the internal unit of Salva Tu Alma.
Music Entertainment, Interior Design, Food and Spirits, Japan Culture, Art, Fashion, Movies: all this is Ronin.
Contacts
Address: Via Alfieri 17
Telephone: +39 0289367101
