Why you should experience Orsonero Coffee in Milan, Italy.
Orsonero Coffee is a pioneering specialty coffee bar where Porta Venezia's cosmopolitan character, Brent Jopson and Giulia Gasperini's Canadian-Italian partnership, Scandinavian-inflected design and a rigorous commitment to espresso and filter brewing converge inside one of the addresses that changed Milan's modern coffee culture.
Set along Via Giuseppe Broggi near Via Giovanni Battista Morgagni and just steps from Piazzale Lavater, the coffee shop occupies a compact residential corner where Liberty architecture, independent neighborhood businesses and the dense street life behind Corso Buenos Aires give Porta Venezia a distinctly local scale. Pale timber, white walls, broad windows, a central counter and only a handful of seats keep the room visually spare, concentrating attention on baristas working at close range as daylight reaches nearly every part of the interior. Espresso supports the quick standing ritual familiar to Milan, yet pour-over and other slower extraction methods invite a different pace, allowing two coffee cultures to coexist without turning the small room into a conventional all-day café. The result is a Porta Venezia coffee shop where architectural restraint and close contact with the bar place the cup at the center of an experience that helped expand Milan's expectations of what a neighborhood caffetteria could offer.
What you should know about Orsonero Coffee.
Orsonero Coffee is best known for Canadian Brent Jopson and Milanese Giulia Gasperini becoming early protagonists of Milan's specialty-coffee movement after relocating from Vancouver to Milan in 2015. Jopson had grown accustomed to Vancouver's developed specialty scene, and the couple recognized that Milan still offered few dedicated addresses for carefully sourced coffees and alternative extraction methods. They opened Orsonero at the end of November 2016 as an experiment centered almost entirely on coffee, deliberately omitting alcohol from a format entering a city where the traditional bar commonly spans espresso through aperitivo. Jopson and Gasperini retained the Italian ritual of drinking espresso quickly at the counter, then placed it beside filter preparations and lighter-roasted single origins familiar from Canadian and northern European coffee culture. Gardelli Specialty Coffees became an important early collaborator, with Rubens Gardelli's Cignobianco selected for espresso as a bridge between the sweetness and body familiar to Italian drinkers and the brighter acidity associated with contemporary specialty roasting. The shelves subsequently rotated coffees from Italian and international roasters including Peacocks Coffee Roasters, Five Elephant, Nero Scuro and Elysian Coffee Roasters, making guest roasting part of the shop's concept instead of tying the bar to one producer. Jopson became a recurring Barawards finalist as Orsonero's profile grew, and the business reached seventh place in the national Bar Caffetteria dell'Anno ranking in 2020 after placing eighth in 2018. A second Milan location followed in 2021, the same year Orsonero won Bargiornale's Cameo Professional Bar Caffetteria dell'Anno against more established Italian competitors. The award was decided through a professional super-jury and public voting after more than 700 nominations across the wider Barawards program, marking a major institutional recognition for a concept that Jopson and Gasperini had introduced only five years earlier. Gambero Rosso continues to identify Via Broggi as Milan's first specialty coffee shop, with its 2025 guide evaluation carrying the publication's Foglia award.
Extraction gives the Via Broggi bar its clearest internal logic, beginning with espresso before opening the same specialty premise through several longer brewing methods. Cignobianco from Gardelli Specialty Coffees became the reference espresso through a profile built around sweetness, body and controlled acidity, giving Jopson a coffee that remained legible within the Italian bar tradition without reproducing the darker blends that dominated the city when Orsonero opened. A La Marzocco Strada anchors espresso preparation, concentrating pressure-driven extraction into the short format that still drives the fastest visits to the counter. Filter coffee changes the cup through manually brewed preparations, with Kalita and AeroPress among the methods Jopson introduced during Orsonero's first year and V60 later becoming part of the bar's repertoire. Rotating single origins make those slower extractions especially consequential, shifting origin and roast across successive coffees instead of fixing the shop to one flavor profile. The contemporary menu keeps that focus deliberately narrow through double espresso, cortado, cappuccino, flat white, americano, mocha and pour-over, joined by quality tea and organic soft drinks. Pastries remain supporting players, preserving the founders' original decision to make coffee itself the principal reason for entering the room. Orsonero Coffee moves from the concentration of espresso into the cleaner separation of filter brewing, letting equipment, extraction method and rotating coffees reveal how dramatically one small Milanese bar helped widen the city's understanding of the cup.
How to fold Orsonero Coffee into your trip.
Orsonero Coffee works as the coffee anchor for a Porta Venezia itinerary tracing the neighborhood's transformation from horse-drawn transport infrastructure through the decorative ambition of Milanese Liberty and into a second Giovanni Battista Bossi residence where engineering and applied art became inseparable.
Begin at Casa Galimberti, commissioned by brothers Angelo and Emilio Galimberti from Giovanni Battista Bossi and constructed between 1902 and 1905 on territory formerly occupied by the Società Anonima degli Omnibus, whose nearby depot supported Milan's horse-drawn tram network. The Galimbertis participated directly in the subdivision of the new Via Malpighi after electric transport displaced the old depot, and Bossi covered their 68-meter corner building with more than 170 square meters of painted ceramic tiles developed by Pio Pinzauti and Ferdinando Brambilla, joined by floral cement work, wrought iron, central heating and an elevator. Continue along Via Malpighi to Casa Guazzoni, designed by Bossi between 1904 and 1906 for master builder Giacomo Guazzoni, who personally executed the construction on another portion of the former omnibus grounds. Tarcisio Pogliani developed the sculptural facade work, Paolo Sala contributed painting and Alessandro Mazzucotelli's workshop supplied wrought iron, with the exterior giving way to an extraordinary polygonal staircase whose geometry helped Bossi distribute and illuminate apartments across the difficult corner site. Conclude at Albergo Diurno Venezia beneath Piazza Oberdan, where engineers Troiani, Cavacini and Masini formed Società Anonima Imprese Metropolitane after securing a thirty-year municipal concession in 1923 for an underground public-service complex. Construction began in 1924, Piero Portaluppi contributed architecture, decoration and furnishings and the 1,200-square-meter Albergo Diurno Metropolitano opened on January 18, 1926 with baths, barbers and personal services operating beneath the square; its thermal section closed in 1985 and the final barber departed in 2006, leaving an exceptional surviving interior from metropolitan Milan between the wars. The progression moves from the Galimberti brothers and Bossi converting former horse-tram territory into a technologically advanced Liberty residence through Bossi, Guazzoni, Pogliani, Sala and Mazzucotelli's denser synthesis of architecture and applied art, culminating in Portaluppi's subterranean experiment in modern metropolitan service beneath Porta Venezia.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Experience premium editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
