Awards · 02
The Green Star, a measure of responsibility.
In 2024, just one year after opening, the Michelin Guide awarded us the Green Star, the distinction that measures a restaurant’s sustainability. Not a statement of intent, but a practice we live out every day, in the kitchen and in the dining room.
It arrived in 2024, alongside the Michelin star, and it does not replace it: it completes it. One speaks of what happens on the plate, the other of what happens before and around the plate.
It rewards care for those who grow, fish and rear, respect for the seasons, and a stretch of country that asks to be crossed slowly.
That thinking runs through the rooms as well. Wood from old vinegar barrels; walls finished in a render made from rice husks; and at the centre, a great table cut from a Lebanon cedar brought down by a storm in Puglia. Materials given a second life inside a building restored to the highest standards of environmental sustainability.
Then there is the water, and it tells the whole story. Gone are the bottles to make, move and dispose of: filtering it and adding the sparkle is our own work. And every glass poured up here travels a long way, because through the B.Water Mission project it becomes a well sunk in the African countryside. The first one already stands in Singida, Tanzania.
A sustainability made of choices.
The small producers
Farms, dairies and independent growers no more than an hour from the centre. A loose consortium holds them together: shorter journeys, fewer emissions, relationships that last. Not suppliers. People.
The time of the seasons
What reaches the table is what the land is giving now, at its own hour. Time as a cycle rather than a clock, and the pleasure of going slowly in the middle of Milan.
Everything is close by
The conviction that moves Horto. What we need grows close by: the country around us as the first larder, distance as the last resort.
The ethical balance
Experiment and sustainability walking together. A kitchen that searches and tries again without ever losing sight of the people.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Michelin Green Star?
- It is the Michelin Guide’s award for a restaurant’s sustainability. Horto received it in 2024.
- When did Horto receive the Green Star?
- In 2024, together with the Michelin star.
- Does the Green Star replace the Michelin star?
- No. Horto has both, both since 2024: the star for the cooking, the Green Star for sustainability.