MILANO

Owner of Corey's Soul Chicken in Milan, Italy

BLACK CUISINE

“I really wanted to bring and represent Black American culture here,” said Corey McCathern, the owner of Corey's Soul Chicken.

Kentucky-born and Milan-based, Corey McCatharan serves traditional soul food – from fried chicken to collard greens – in the heart of Milan's Chinatown.

Corey prides himself on blending African-American and Italian flavors. In this sense, his restaurant is unusual. While African flavors can be found throughout Italy, the majority of Afroitalian cuisine originates from Ethiopia and Eritrea – a shadow of Italy's imperial past

Savana Ristorante Eritreo Via Luigi Canonica, 45, 20154 Milano MI, Italy

Warsà Cucina Eritrea Viale Certosa, 153, 20151 Milano MI, Italy

Mosobna Via Alessandro Tadino, 9, 20124 Milano MI, Italy

Il Fondaco Largo Fra Paolo Bellintani, 1, 20124 Milano MI, Italy

SAMBUUS Milano Via Giulio e Corrado Venini, 58, 20127 Milano MI, Italy

Balafon Via Teodosio, 6, 20131 Milano MI, Italy

NEIGHBORHOOD SPOTLIGHT:PORTA VENEZIA

The area has been a hotspot of LGBTQ+ culture for many years. During the ‘80s the first gay-friendly pubs and meeting places opened right here, and in the past few years Porta Venezia’s Bastioni have become the backdrop to many Gay Pride celebrations: these are always preceded by a month of colourful events and parties all over the neighbourhood.

LGTBQ+ hangouts share these streets with Eritrean and Ethiopian restaurants and bars, which have chosen this part of the city as their own.

The district has a long history of foreign immigration and has developed over the last decades as one of the multi-ethnic areas of Milan, to the point that it is sometimes referred to as Milan's 'African district' or Milan's 'casbah'

ASMARINA (2015) by Alan Maglio and Medhin Paolos

"Asmarina (2015), by Alan Maglio and Medhin Paolos, explores the multiplicity of Eritrean migratory experiences and tells the many stories of Milan’s Habesha community. . . Asmarina takes as its starting point a series of photographs of the Habesha diaspora living in Milan, published in L’Espresso magazine in the 1980s. The photo essay is one of the first and only records of Habesha life published in mainstream Italian media – Asmarina may well be the second. The documentary begins with Maglio and Paolos returning these photographs to their subjects, asking them to enliven these images of the past with their memories of Milan in the 1980s. The film takes on the ambitious challenge of representing a broad community and the filmmakers gather documents and stories of a distinctly varied set of diasporic experiences – from second or third generation Eritreans, refugees who have just arrived, to white and multiracial Eritreans now living in Milan." -Rebecca Wilkins, Another Gaze

Angela Davis, distinguished professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has written on "Asmarina," the habesha (Eritrean/Ethiopian community) of Milan, Italy, participates in a discussion with filmmaker Medhin Paolos and Lorgia García Peña, the Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard.