Pizza and Via Palermo!
At the center of Milan's fashionable "Brera" area lies via Palermo, host of high-priced shops, hairdressers, condos and --- surprise --- good affordable pizza in an atmosphere that lives up to the elegance of its surroundings. In other words, you're paying just for the fun of it! The most popular seems to be Grand Italia Pizzeria, at number 5, with its wide windows facing the street inviting you inside where locals mix with tourists and the people-watching is as tasty as the generous slices of their specialty. Here, one slice overloads your plate --the classic "Margherita" (tomato, mozzarella) runs under 5 EUR. Bestsellers like the Double Cheese (to satisfy the most cheese-mongering of Americans) to the Bresaola/Rucola (like a cross between salami and ham buried under a forest of the tart leaves of the rucola "lettuce̶ 
all top Grand Italia's thick but fluffy pizza crust and keep you coming back for more.
That said, Grand Italia also offers an array of other daily plates --- from pastas to seafoods --- to keep those non-pizza-party people with their mouths full of everything but complaints. Yet for those craving tradition with their pizza, and that means the true Neapolitan pizza of the wood-burning oven, pizzas individually-sized-and-prepared with the legendary dough that made Naples famous (crispy outside, soft and chewy in), they had better try Fratelli La Bufala, Pizzaioli Emigranti at via Palermo 11. Using bufala mozzarella (bufala-like-buffalo), there's family atmosphere in abundance with all the rustic trimmings. This place looks like a farmhouse cleaned-up for the choosy, discriminating Brera crowd. Highly recommended, with pizzas ranging from 5 - 11 EUR. Buon appetito!
