A friend invited us to be her guest for dinner at Cooperative La Liberazione, a restaurant in Milan that has a most interesting history. It was originally founded in 1945, by resources gained through the will of a family whose young partisan son was killed during the Resistance. It was conceived, at the time, to be a small club with a bowling alley and billiards that also served as a meeting place for the neighborhood and for those who remained tied to the Resistance period. The apartment on the upper floor has, since that time, served as the seat of the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) and of various movements and parties in the area.
Since May 2013, the restaurant has been owned and operated by Rudy and Elia Sforza. Rudy and Elia came to own and operate the restaurant through what they describe as a “fortuitous and fortunate case in life.” As Rudy tells the story, he had been a restaurateur in other owners’ premises and, for several years in the summer, he managed a restaurant in Palau, in Sardinia, together with other people. But it was while working in Switzerland in a completely different sector that a recently reunited old school friend asked Rudy to get in touch with the man who ran the Cooperative La Liberazione.
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