EBG Rating: 7.7/10

Choice/Quality of Drinks:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
A surprising selection of craft beer with an Italian focus, with a well stock back bar for a Tabacchi too.

Style/Décor:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
It looks like a standard Tabacchi from the exterior with a small sign in classical script. Inside, narrow dimensions also fit the genre, but then you’ll notice the exposed beams, neon signs and collections of magnets which burnish its identity. Limited seating opposite the bar counter.

Atmosphere/Character:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
On a quiet afternoon you can enjoy a jazz soundtrack, but you may also wonder what the fuss is about. Return later when the Aperitivo crowd assemble.

Amenities/Events:
❤️❤️❤️
Snacks, tobacconist, takeaway

Value For Money:
❤️❤️❤️
Decent value overall, standard pricing for beers but fairly cheap for coffee.

Description:
One of Milan’s most interesting cultural artefacts (in our view), La Darsena is a Tabacchi, formerly places to pick up cigars and cigarettes, lottery tickets, place bets, which branched out to small snacks and drinks where you could enjoy these while listening to the radio (often with some greyhound or horse racing). Usually humble and at the time of their inception functional, not especially interesting. Over time, their function and need to exist has faded, and as their owners have retired or died out, the business has followed them.

Milan has a particular record for harshly discarding anything deemed of no economic use, and so its selection of surviving businesses are like gold dust.

La Darsena, also known as Peppuccio, is a business that has cannily pivoted towards attracting a younger audience, with a selection of craft beers available in bottles and cans, snacks and aperitivo meaning that a bar that looks like a forgotten relic as you pass on the street front can look like the place to be in Milan when you return later in the day. I am not joking – along with Bar Basso, Camparino et al.

So for now, it is very much the place to be at Aperitivo time, around 6-7pm before a night out around Navigli district. Its position is almost ideal, at the point where the canals intercept.

Out front there is a small awning with classical script signage. Inside you’ll find a basic but well preserved, small narrow bar accented with chandelier, exposed beams and neon signage. By the pile of cigs there is a wall of magnets.

La Darsena runs to a blissful soundtrack of Jazz and Soul, and is entering over 70 years of service.

(Added December 2025)