La Finestra @ Silo—Kreis 5, Zürich
Babo and Gabi aren’t restaurateurs—they’re people who understand how Italians actually eat: standing up, without ceremony, at the right moment of the day. Two Milanese founders, they started La Finestra as a backyard pop-up, which still feels like the right scale for what they do—intimate, direct, with no distance between kitchen and customer.
The Silo is a natural home. The former Löwenbräu silo behind Löwenbräukunst is one of those Kreis 5 spaces that feels both industrial and human. You can watch things being made, and that transparency matters. La Finestra isn’t performing craft—it’s simply practicing it, every day.
This is food for the in-between moments: a cornetto eaten standing up, an arancino before a meeting, a Negroni that turns a Thursday into something worth having. The range runs from breakfast through aperitivo—cornetti, toasts, panini, arancini, granita, house-made drinks, and a perfectly balanced Negroni to close the day.
Seasonally, they open their window at pop-ups around the city, staying true to how they began: meeting people where they are and keeping things uncomplicated.
They’ve since expanded to Campo in Kreis 4 and Bar45 on Bahnhofstrasse, but the Silo remains the center—the production kitchen, the core of it all.
For us, it’s the place next door, just beside where we swim—the kind of neighbor any neighborhood would be lucky to have.
Why It Matters
Zürich does many things well. Effortless Italian daily life isn’t usually one of them.
What La Finestra understands—and what’s harder to achieve than it looks—is that great Italian food culture isn’t built around occasions, but around rhythm. The quick stop, the unplanned pause, the small daily ritual that fits naturally into how people move through their day.
Babo and Gabi brought Milan’s rhythm with them and found a way to make it land in Kreis 5. But the deeper project reveals itself in their dinner series—a city-by-city exploration of Italian food culture that’s really an exploration of place itself. The third installment is BOLOGNA: city of porticoes, political spirit, the oldest university in the world, and a table culture so deeply rooted it shapes how people think. To understand Bologna’s food is to understand Bologna. That’s the principle La Finestra is working from, and it’s a serious one.
In a neighborhood fueled by coffee and creative energy, a place that carries you from morning to evening—and does it this well—matters more than it might seem. It raises the baseline. It gives the block a pulse.
Support This Work
La Finestra @ Silosilo — Limmatstrasse 254, 8005 Zürich
Also at: Campo, Molkenstrasse 7 · Bar45, Bahnhofstrasse 45
La Finestra Instagram
