Cafezal Torrefazione Specialty Coffee

Coffee roasted under its own name

Cafezal calls itself a specialty coffee roaster, and the Brera café is the public end of that. House-roasted coffee is what the bar pours, and the same coffee lines the wall behind it as whole beans, capsules, drip bags and cold brew. Subscriptions and brewing kit follow: grinders, kettles, espresso machines, moka pots and servers, so home brewing is treated as seriously here as the counter. The drinks run from flat whites and iced coffee through pour-overs across several origins to cortados made with Brazilian and Ethiopian coffee, with salted caramel and tiramisu lattes at the sweeter end of the board.

A small blue room off Via Solferino

The room is modern and design-led, blue-toned, with quirky detail and seating both inside and out on the pavement. It is genuinely small: one communal table and a few little ones, which makes it better for a short coffee than for a group or a laptop afternoon. The baristas are quick and easy with it, and the pace suits people who are on their way somewhere else in Brera.

Cafezal is bigger than the one room, though. The company runs the Milano Coffee Academy and supplies businesses, offices, events and catering, so this café works as the shopfront of a larger coffee operation rather than a standalone pastry bar. That shows in the retail wall, which takes up as much attention as the seating, and in how easily the staff talk about what is on the grinder. Coffee here is a product line as much as a drink, and the café is where you meet both ends of it at once.

Order the salted caramel latte, then the pistachio croissant

The salted caramel latte is the signature and the drink most people come in for. For plain milk coffee the flat white is the better read on the roast, and for the roastery side take a pour-over from whichever origin is on, or a cortado with the Brazilian or Ethiopian coffee. Food is pastry-led rather than a kitchen: croissants plain, pistachio and chocolate, plus cheesecake, a cinnamon bun, a coffee brownie, carrot cake, sandwiches and an egg bagel. On a first visit pair the salted caramel latte with the pistachio croissant. If you want the coffee to lead instead, set a flat white against the cinnamon bun or the brownie and let the sweetness sit in the background.