The Round Canteen That Became Sushi World

Sushi World is an all-you-can-eat restaurant in Lainate, near Milan, serving fresh fish, oysters and scampi alongside Japanese and Chinese cuisine.

The building is round. That is the first thing anyone notices driving up to Sushi World in Lainate, a quiet town on the industrial edge of Milan. Long before it served salmon, the curved structure was a self-service canteen for the workers of the local industrial zone. When Stefano found it, the previous owner was worn out — running the restaurant in the morning and going to university in the evening — and ready to sell. Stefano took the place, and on 19 August 2024 he opened his own.

Two years on, he runs the kitchen, the floor and, just as importantly, the money. He pays roughly twenty employees and a rotating list of suppliers, files his taxes through an accountant, and watches his margins closely. Somewhere in that daily arithmetic sits a financial platform he found the way he finds most things — on Google.

A canteen with a curved roof

Stefano did not grow up dreaming of Lainate. He grew up in restaurants. His parents have worked in hospitality for more than thirty years, and he was helping in the dining room and serving customers while he was still a child.

“The passion comes from my parents,” he says. “I felt good doing it. I liked the work.”

When it came time to open his own place, he had two options — a busier location in Cornaredo, on a state road with heavy passing traffic, and the round building in Lainate. He chose Lainate, and he chose it on feeling.

There are other all-you-can-eat places nearby and there’s competition, but working somewhere like Lainate is a beautiful experience.

Stefano, Owner, Sushi World

The early days were slow. The area is nearly deserted — barely a car passes, which is exactly what Stefano likes about it — so he launched a 20 percent discount to pull people in. They came, they liked the food, and they stayed. There was even a stretch of about a month when the town hadn’t yet approved his signage and he had to cover it up entirely; for a while, the only way people knew Sushi World existed was through social media.

A small room, twenty pairs of hands

Ask Stefano what sets his restaurant apart from the many sushi places around Milan, and he does not reach for the menu first. He reaches for the service.

“As sushi restaurants in Italy go, they’re generally very similar,” he says. “We’re a small restaurant with a lot of staff, so the service is definitely a step higher. In very large places, you can’t look after every customer.”

All the customers say the restaurant is very, very good. No one has ever complained about the food.

Stefano, Owner, Sushi World

Then there is the food. The dish he is proudest of is a salmon marinated with beetroot, fennel and parsley — a preparation he describes as well known in Western Europe and eaten by Norwegians exactly this way. Salmon comes mostly from Norway; the tuna is Sicilian; the sea bass, Italian. With fish, freshness is not a slogan but a daily inspection: every morning the salmon is checked for firmness, because firmness tells you whether it came in that day or has been sitting in storage. If a delivery isn’t right, he flags it, and if it isn’t fixed the next day, he switches supplier. Having several suppliers, he explains, is the whole point.

The lunch that never pays

For all the calm of the dining room, the business behind it is unforgiving. Lunch, Stefano says plainly, barely earns a cent. He keeps the midday all-you-can-eat at a low fixed price because the restaurant has to be open to serve dinner anyway — and dinner, at nearly double the price, is where the margin lives.

Lunch has always been the hardest part, because at lunch you essentially don’t make a single cent. But to serve the dinner customers, the restaurant absolutely has to be open all day.

Stefano, Owner, Sushi World

The bigger pressures are staff and taxes. Because an all-you-can-eat crowd eats more, it needs more hands — around twenty people, and managing them is, in his words, the single hardest challenge, organizationally and financially. On top of that sits the Italian tax system, which he finds punishing for a young business: in his first year he says he carried more than 300,000 euros in costs, took in less than half that in revenue, and still owed roughly 10,000 euros in taxes, because the losses are amortized over years rather than deducted at once. His advice to anyone opening a restaurant is shaped entirely by that experience — calculate very carefully how much money you will have left to keep the place running after the doors open.

Competition has tightened too. Several new all-you-can-eat restaurants have opened nearby in the past year, and margins have thinned. It is, he says, an exhausting sector — one where you have to be good at the food, the staff and the service all at once.

A search that started on Google

Stefano handles the restaurant’s payments himself, and he handles almost all of them by transfer — suppliers, employees, everything. So when he went looking for a better account, his criteria were exact: no fees, and interest paid on the balance sitting in it. He typed it into Google and found Vivid.

What he values most are three things: the cashback, the interest-bearing deposit, and transfers with no commission. The transfers alone add up. With his previous provider he paid 1.50 euros per transfer; with twenty employees that is already 30 euros, and once suppliers are included he reckons the old fees ran 50 to 60 euros a month.

Mid-conversation, he pulls out his phone to check the exact figure. “I open the Vivid app,” he says, “and I see 491 euros in cashback” — earned, he estimates, in about six months. Add the transfer fees he no longer pays and the return on his deposit, and he tallies it up on the spot: somewhere around 740 euros saved in half a year. He is on the paid Enterprise plan, which runs him about 70 euros a month, but he is quick to note that even the free plan lets you make transfers without commission.

He is not uncritical, and that is part of why the praise lands. His main complaint is the lack of a phone line — support is by message only, which becomes a problem when something is urgent. He has also noticed that transfers sent on a Saturday don’t clear until Monday, which unsettles newer recipients until the money appears. He would like a phone service that could simply reassure people the funds will arrive. It is the kind of specific, lived-in feedback that only comes from someone actually running a business on the tool.

Ask the cook

Stefano would not open a second restaurant — too tiring, and in Italy, he says, there are simply too many of them. His next venture will be something else, perhaps a proper games hall with bowling and billiards, or a supermarket; something, in his framing, that answers a basic need. Betting halls he rules out entirely.

But the first restaurant, he is sure, was worth it. He is, above all, a man who loves to eat.

“When I want something to eat, I just ask the cook, and the cook makes it,” he says. “For me, that’s a very good thing.”

Disclaimer: This article reflects the individual experience of a Vivid customer and is provided for general information only. It is not legal, financial, investment or tax advice, and it is not a guarantee of future results. Where a return on funds is involved, the value of investments can go up as well as down, and you may get back less than you invested. Product availability, rates and conditions depend on your plan and may change. Information is current as of July 2026. Please seek qualified professional advice before making financial decisions.