Where should I eat in Milan, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Milan sits in the Po Valley, in a region of rice fields, dairy and pork rather than olive groves. That geography is the whole explanation for its food. Risotto alla milanese is rice cooked with butter and colored and scented with saffron. Cotoletta alla milanese is a veal cutlet fried in butter. Cassoeula is a winter pork-and-cabbage stew. Ossobuco is a cross-cut veal shank braised long and finished with gremolata, a raw dressing of lemon zest, garlic and parsley. Panettone, the tall domed Christmas bread, is Milanese too.

The surrounding region's charcuterie is protected in its own right, and the specifications are worth knowing because they tell you what good looks like. Salame Cremona, from Cremona elsewhere in Lombardy, was registered as a Protected Geographical Indication by Commission Regulation (EC) No 1362/2007 of 22 November 2007, in class 1.2, meat products. Its specification requires pigs of approved breeds including Large White Italiana and Landrace Italiana, slaughtered between their ninth and fifteenth months at an average weight of 144 to 176 kilograms; prohibits mechanically recovered meat; and demands warm drying at 15 to 25°C followed by maturing in ventilated premises at 11 to 16°C for at least five weeks, in casings of 65 millimeters or more in diameter. That minimum five-week maturing is what separates the registered product from a generic salami.

The gremolata on an ossobuco is not a garnish and should not be stirred in during cooking. It goes on raw at the end, and the point of it is that the lemon zest and garlic stay sharp against three or four hours of braised marrow and veal. A kitchen that cooks it into the sauce has made a different dish — a useful thing to notice when you are trying to judge whether a Milan restaurant is cooking Milanese food or Italian food generally.

• Lunch — Risotto alla milanese or a cotoletta; both are better at midday than late, and both are heavy enough to replace an afternoon.
• Aperitivo — Lombard charcuterie, where a Salame Cremona PGI matured at least five weeks is the benchmark rather than the house salami.
• Dinner — Ossobuco or, in winter, cassoeula; these are the long-cooked dishes that need a kitchen with time.

Much of this is seasonal in a way that is not advertised. Cassoeula is cold-weather food and largely disappears in summer; panettone is a Christmas bread, so a visit in June will find industrial year-round versions rather than the real thing. If you are traveling as a small group and hoping to fold a Last Supper slot into a long Milanese lunch, note that the Cenacolo Vinciano takes group bookings by email only for a minimum of 10 tickets — a party of four has to book as individuals. And the Schengen short-stay rule applies here as across the Area: a maximum of 90 days within any 180-day period, which matters for anyone planning an extended stay built around the region's kitchens.

The Milan things-to-do question in this group sets out the rules inside the refectory and the narrow entry window they create, which is what a long Milanese lunch has to be scheduled around.