The Coffee

Brazilian coffee, Japanese restraint

A shop of three square metres in Curitiba is where this began, in 2018, and the compression still shows in the format: a short menu, a small room, and nothing cluttering the coffee. The Porta Venezia branch is one node in what became an international network, and the beans behind the counter are roasted by the company itself in Brazil.

The stated influence is Japanese, and the brand describes what it wants as high quality, simplicity and perfection applied to Brazilian coffee. A master roaster set the roast profile after testing, aiming to bring the coffee's own character forward rather than to build a house style over the top of it.

The pairing the brand describes is Brazilian coffee with Japanese purity, and it is an accurate description of the shop rather than a slogan. The beans are South American and the presentation is stripped back to almost nothing.

A small counter, run through an app

This is a compact, fast café rather than a place to hold a table for an afternoon. Ordering can be done through the brand's app, which is a deliberate part of the model and keeps the counter moving.

The room follows the same logic: modest, clean and understated, closer to a Tokyo standing bar than to a Milanese pasticceria. The brand is more social than a purely transactional format suggests, having run morning coffee events including a 5K run and a DJ set, so it treats the shop as a neighbourhood fixture as well as a service point.

Order simply, and take beans

Order an espresso or a milk drink and expect the Brazilian roast to be sweet and rounded rather than sharp, since the house profile is built to flatter the origin rather than to challenge it.

Because the roasting is centralised in Curitiba, what is in the cup here is the same programme served across the network, which makes this branch a reliable read on the brand rather than a local variation. If the coffee lands, take beans, since the roastery is the actual business and the café is its shop window. Among Milan's coffee stops, the point of difference is a Brazilian roasting house working in Japanese-influenced plainness.

The network also means the same cup is waiting in another city, which is either the appeal or the objection depending on what you want a café to be.