Hands up if you tipped West Melbourne as the city’s newest brunch hotspot. Anyone?

With stones-throw proximity to the city and a booming student population (55 per cent, according to the 2021 census), the area has become a springboard for Asian-Australian business owners shaking up the Melbourne cafe scene with playful takes on their respective cuisines fused with Western breakfast staples.

“You can really feel the uprising of different places coming up in the area,” says David Chen, co-owner of Karé, which specialises in Japanese curry. “And there’s space for so much more.”

Chen and his wife Akiko Asano opened Karé opposite Queen Victoria Market in August. They found an instant audience for dishes Chen hopes will “induce fun”, such as curry-filled doughnuts, katsu chicken croissants and hearty signature rice bowls.

Regular market-goers, Asano and Chen were drawn to the area because of its intriguing food scene, one that could accommodate their speciality comfort food in a modern cafe setting.

Pinpointing a dish, rather than an entire cuisine, and pairing it with artisanal coffee is a formula synonymous with West Melbourne’s renaissance.

Pioneering this trend is 279 in Victoria Street, which Austin Allen and Kantaro Okada opened in 2019 to celebrate their love for coffee and musubi, also known as onigiri.

Okado saw the Japanese rice balls – flavoured with traditional ingredients such as shiso leaf, grilled mackerel or wakame seaweed – as a perfect way to introduce locals to a new specialist experience.

“Cafes on their own are very welcoming,” Okado says, “and because everyone is very familiar with cafes in Melbourne, we thought that by showcasing a specialty product in that format, people would be more inclined to try it.”

Over the past 15 years, Melbourne-style brunch trends have become a global export and remain one of this city’s signature characteristics. Businesses such as 279 and neighbouring Udom House are playing with this archetype to hero new culturally rich possibilities.

Set in a cosy repurposed living room, Udom House merges owner Aum Phithakphon’s barista background and Thai heritage. When writing the menu, Phithakphon noted all the dishes she and her Thai friends missed most from home, linking them to cafe brunch staples.

This approach plays out in dishes such as Thai-Chinese-style scrambled eggs with prawn and rice, a family recipe, and pork floss and chilli paste toast. Alongside the Melbourne-Thai menu mash-ups is a 20-strong list of espresso-based drinks, making Udom House one of the most creative coffee destinations in town.

The movement doesn’t stop at Victoria Street. Near Flagstaff Gardens, Myth Cafe serves up Malaysian hawker-style breakfast dishes such as sardine puffs and khao jam (rice with condiments), and in Stawell Street, close to North Melbourne Station, Moon Mart has gathered a following for dishes such as kimchi jaffles and okonomiyaki-style hash browns, which tap into Japanese and Korean culture.

Each cafe tells a different story through its menu, but the vendors are united by a strong sense of camaraderie. “Everyone is very lovely and wants each other to be successful,” says Philthakphon. “It’s a really cool young professional vibe.”

Five West Melbourne cafes to try

Karé

The new kid on the block, Karé is an all-in ode to Japanese curry paired with Acoffee (a roastery in Collingwood) espresso tonics and sweets such as yuzu caneles. Can’t visit West Melbourne by day? They’ve recently added dinner to their trading hours.

173 Victoria Street, West Melbourne, karecurry.au

279

The rice ball selection spans both traditional, such as grilled mackerel or chilli-cured cod roe, and the inventive (hello, bonito flakes with cheddar cheese). Add a sleek minimalist design and stellar coffee from a rotating selection of local and international roasters, and you have one of Melbourne’s most singular cafe experiences.

279 Victoria Street, West Melbourne, 279victoriast.co

Udom House

Melbourne’s Thai food renaissance isn’t limited to Bourke Street. Udom House owner Aum Philthakphon has transformed the living room of her West Melbourne home into a Thai coffee house with almost 40 espresso and tea-based drinks, and dishes that meld Thai ideas with local brunch staples.

343 Victoria Street, West Melbourne, instagram.com/udom.house

Myth Cafe

An acronym for “my taste of home”, Myth Cafe began as a delivery service during the pandemic before pivoting to cafe form. The menu is built on hard-to-find Malaysian hawker-style breakfast dishes such as khao jam, a rice dish with grated vegetables, salted egg and sambal, and chee cheung fun, a hangover-busting mixture of rice noodle sheets and curry sauce with optional fried toppings. Signature iced barley drinks are the traditional accompaniment.

48 Rosslyn Street, West Melbourne, mythcafe.business.site

Moon Mart

On busy days, long queues form outside tiny Moon Mart and customers sprawl on the nature strip as they wait for takeaways. It’s worth it – owner Eun Hee An, formerly head chef of Sydney’s influential (now-closed) Paper Bird, has a knack for delivering the food people want to eat right now, from perfectly symmetrical katsu sandos and bibimbap rice sets to consistently tempting pastries.

11-13 Stawell Street, West Melbourne, moonmart.com.au