WAU opens as Milan's first Malaysian restaurant
Chef Fairuz Zani Bin Ahamad leads a 60-cover dining room on the Naviglio Pavese, built around the communal hidang style of serving and Malaysia's blue-tinted rice.
WAU, Milan's first Malaysian restaurant, opened on 17 September 2026 on the Naviglio Pavese, built around the sharing-based hidang style of serving in a 60-cover dining room.
The restaurant is at Via Ascanio Sforza 65 and was brought to Milan by Dato' Freida Pilus and her son Fareed Hamzah, a mother-and-son team from Kuala Lumpur. Executive chef Fairuz Zani Bin Ahamad, who built his career in luxury hotel kitchens across Asia, is cooking his first menu in Europe with a team of six young international cooks who trained together ahead of opening night.
Inside the WAU Milan restaurant
Milan gets its first full Malaysian menu, not a shortcut version dressed up for the Navigli crowd.
The menu is built around hidang, the Malaysian tradition of setting dishes at the centre of the table for everyone to share, rather than plating individual courses. Dishes lean on spices, slow-cooked meats and fresh, often fermented, condiments drawn from the Malay, Chinese and Indian influences that shape the country's everyday cooking.
One dish drawing local attention is a blue-tinted rice, coloured with butterfly pea flower the way it is served in Malaysian markets and homes, paired with the fried and grilled proteins typical of a hidang spread.
Why the name WAU matters
WAU refers to a traditional Malaysian kite, built by hand and flown only after long, patient preparation, a name the owners chose to signal the craft behind the kitchen rather than a shortcut version of Malaysian food for an Italian audience.
The opening adds a rare full Malaysian menu to a city where Southeast Asian cooking is still mostly filtered through Thai or Vietnamese restaurants. It follows Enrico Bartolini's opening of Monsieur Dior a few streets away, part of a wider run of high-profile restaurant launches in Milan this September.
WAU is currently open for dinner service only, seven nights a week, on the Naviglio Pavese, with its founders saying they intend to keep the menu close to home cooking in Kuala Lumpur rather than adapting it for Italian palates.
