Milan: Hotels offering organic breakfast

An environment-friendly hotel for smaller budgets, the Eco Hotel Milano in the non-touristy neighbourhood of Affori doesn't boost with its design style. It may even remind the older of you of childhood holidays. But before complaining about plastic chairs and the like remember that it's better to use long-living items as long as they do not deteriorate. Clean, odour-free and equipped with a heat pump for the winter the rooms may not invite to spend the entire day here, but are very much okay when you spend the day in town anyway. Unfortunately the Enrico Fermi road in the backyard is very noisy so that you are well advised to keep the windows shut during the night.

The hotel consists of the main house, and a few appartments with double beds and a small kitchen (the "camere matrimoniale") in the residential building next door.

The sumptious organic breakfast buffet is located in the basement. Longsleepers should be aware that the breakfast closing time (9:30 am on weekdays and 10 am on weekends) is quite sharp.

In the evening the breakfast facilities are used as a fully organic restaurant, open to the public: Bioriso, also serving as the hotel bar during the (early) night.

More to try

There are more central eco-friendly hotels, boutique hotels with more sophisticated interior design. While the affordable Biocity Hotel seems to full-heartedly embrace an organic and eco approach (and definitely offers organic breakfast), I'm not so sure with Hotel Milano Scala near the famous opera house: The key words "bio" and "organic" disappeared from the hotel website bragging to be Milan's first zero emission hotel: There's a certain chance that the focus on short-travelled food ("dal km zero"), including herbs from the rooftop garden, indicates products from near-organic or even organic, yet non-certified agricultural methods. If you want to stay in any of these two places make sure to book well in advance, especially during the main tourist season.