Pasticceria Sissi

Brioche filled at the counter

The brioche is filled in front of you rather than before you arrive, which is the single detail that explains this counter. Pasticceria Sissi has worked the same way for more than twenty-five years in Milan, with a laboratory connected to the shop and pastries carried the short distance to the case, then filled to order so nothing sits and goes soft. The cream-filled brioche is the order people come back for. Around it is a full sweet and savory production, dolce e salato in the Italian sense, made on the premises rather than bought in.

A pink room and the back courtyard

The room is small, pink-toned and old-school, with wooden tables and a bohemian streak rather than a contemporary café look. Out the back there is a flower-studded courtyard under a pergola, which is where most of the seating is: roughly ten tables outside and fewer inside, close enough together that the room stays loud in the morning. Service moves between counter, table and takeaway depending on the hour. It reads as a neighborhood breakfast stop rather than a work café, with regulars, locals and visitors sharing the same small space.

What to order

Start with a cream-filled brioche, which is where the reputation concentrates, or a plain one if you would rather taste the pastry itself. Caffè Senegalese is the drink to ask for, a house preparation that nods to the family's Senegalese side and the reason the coffee list here is not the usual Milanese one. The black-and-white biscottino is the small sweet to add if a brioche is not enough, and the savory half of the case is worth a look later in the day. For a table of two: one cream brioche, one savory pastry, a biscottino to share, and coffee.