Café Milano is the 24-hour café serving breakfast, lunch and dinner anytime at Peppermill Resort-Spa-Casino, 2707 S. Virginia St. in South Reno.
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The business model of the 24-hour restaurant is familiar to anyone who has lived in a major city, although Café Milano is a classier version and is located within a casino environment.
In my hometown of Chicago, my friends and I spent many “wee hours” unwinding from nightclubbing at unfussy neighborhood restaurants that never closed or at least stayed open extra-late on the weekends. Besides the customers who’d just left the bars, there’d be diners who worked night shifts at factories, hospitals, police stations and so on. You could fill up on patty melts or pancakes and copious refills of hot coffee, for very little money.
Café Milano’s clientele at 2 or 3 a.m. more likely consists of Peppermill Hotel guests — convention-goers and tourists. The surroundings at Café Milano reflect that. The large, black-and-red carpeted dining room is appointed with plush, gold-trimmed booths, dim lighting (all the time!), flowers, soft music, and of course, Keno games.
A Comfort Foods Menu is available at Café Milano, 24 hours Monday-Friday. The list of $6.95 specials includes a Farmer’s Skillet breakfast, Milano Spaghetti, Old Fashioned Beef Stew, Mama’s Fried Chicken, Chili Burger, Turkey Pot Pie and more.
Café Milano’s regular menu is exhaustive, with seemingly hundreds of choices: breakfast foods, burgers, salads, sandwiches, steaks, seafood, Asian noodles, etc.
No one in my family likes pot pie, except for me, so I grabbed the opportunity to order the Turkey Pot Pie ($6.95) on a Thursday afternoon visit.
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| Turkey Pot Pie from the Cafe Milano Comfort Foods Menu |
The pot pie was generously filled with chunks of moist turkey, both white and dark meat, peas, carrots, potatoes and a creamy sauce. In other words, it was a very typical presentation of a pot pie. Additional vegetables such as mushrooms and broccoli would have been a welcome surprise. And the crust was decent, but I would have preferred more of it. The crust only covered the top of the pie.
Oh, and at my old hangouts in Chicago, the pot pie would have been served with a little something on the side, such as salad and/or a wedge of melon. At Café Milano, the pot pie flew solo. I considered ordering a cup of soup for an extra $1.25 but the soup of the day, Navy Bean, didn’t appeal to me.
My lunch buddy’s Saucy Burger ($10.95) was topped with BBQ sauce, bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles and a fat onion ring and served with a side of fries. Potato salad or pasta salad could have been substituted for the fries. An extra $1.95 would have bought a side of onion rings.
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| Saucy Burger and Fries from the regular Cafe Milano menu |
The Saucy Burger was so immense that it had to be eaten with a knife and a fork. Sloppiness aside, the burger tickled my companion’s tastebuds. But for $10.95, at a less-spiffy 24-hour restaurant, there would have been a cup of cole slaw thrown in for good measure.
I suppose I’m nit-picking, and after all, the setting of Café Milano is geared more to people on expense accounts or vacations. I also suspect that our server would have been more attentive if we had ordered cocktails with our meals. Refills on water and iced tea were slow.
To be fair, however, Peppermill and other South Reno casinos lure in locals and thank them for their business with coupon mailers and rewards cards. I used a “locals” coupon for $10 off a Café Milano tab of $20 or more, so our lunch in this elegant café was a bargain.
For a dose of trivia, Peppermill’s 24-hour restaurant dates back to 1971, was formerly called the Coffee Shop and has a loyal following among people who grew up or worked in Reno. To see a vintage photo and read the back story, visit
To view the modern-day menu for Café Milano, visit http://www.peppermillreno.com/dining/casual-dining/cafe-milano .
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