Ugly Coffee brings a taste of Seoul to Graceville
You’ve heard of K-pop and K-drama, but what about K-breakfast? Ugly Coffee is the latest sign that Brisbane’s obsession with Korean culture extends well beyond playlists and streaming queues. Since opening in June, the Graceville cafe has become a local sensation thanks to its bulgogi-filled baguettes, garlic bread pull-aparts and colourful cold foams that are anything but ugly.
Naming your cafe Ugly Coffee might seem like a counterintuitive business manoeuvre to some, especially in an age where aesthetics play an important role in garnering appeal. But when Heeji Noh was coming up with names for her new Graceville cafe, she decided that choosing something that stuck out was the best course of action.
“It is a bit weird,” Heeji admits with a laugh. “Ugly can be a negative word, but then I feel like it’s memorable as well.”
Heeji opened Ugly Coffee alongside her mother, Sooyeon Jung, back in June, establishing a welcoming haunt that taps into Australia’s growing fascination with South Korean culture and cuisine. In fact, one of Heeji’s chief inspirations is a Korea-based enterprise that wields the ‘ugly’ label with the same sense of tongue-in-cheek pride.
“There’s a cafe in Korea called Ugly Bakery that I’ve always wanted to go to,” Heeji tells us. While Ugly Coffee isn’t targeting the same level of viral success as its Seoul-based inspiration, Heeji and Sooyeon are looking to add something new to Brisbane’s brunch scene with their Honour Avenue hot spot.
“We wanted to do something different to other cafes in Brisbane – add a Korean aspect to it, but make it easier to adapt.”
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The corner cafe has been buzzing since opening, with foodies flocking from far-flung corners of Brisbane for a taste of Ugly Coffee’s drinks and eats – all of which are eye-catching and the furthest thing from ugly.
Ugly Coffee’s food offering takes familiar Korean dishes and reworks them into a concise yet diverse menu featuring yoghurt bowls topped with the likes of raw honeycomb and premium granola, alongside more experimental fare.
Highlights include the mayak corn egg drop (a thick-cut slab of Miettes Bakery bread filled with scrambled egg and topped with creamy sweet corn mayo), a baguette filled with fire-grilled bulgogi beef, sweet and savoury sauce, and melted cheese, and the yukjjok garlic bread (a six-sided pull-apart roll filled with sweet cream cheese and coated in garlic butter).
A selection of cakes and baked goods are also available, including yagkwa croissants and injeolmi and Oreo-flavoured Korean-style pound cakes.
While these food items have filled up social media feeds, it’s Ugly Coffee’s beverage range that has most tongues wagging.
The cafe is serving caffeine from celebrated Canberra-based roaster Ona Coffee alongside a broad range of specialty drinks. Here, creativity is expressed through cold foam – think seasonally rotating flavours including ube, cacao, cinnamon and coffee-infused varieties. There’s also a menu of dalgona-topped matcha lattes, affogatos and yujacha tea.
Internally, Ugly Coffee accents the raw aspects of its new-build surroundings with timber furniture and rustic decor, creating a vibe that is approachable and warm.
For Heeji, the biggest reward of bringing Ugly Coffee to life hasn’t been creating the cafe’s viral-worthy dishes or distinctive drinks, but seeing locals wholeheartedly embrace the concept, even just a few short weeks after opening.
“I’m just really happy,” says Heeji. “It’s weird to see how everyone comes in and pronounces all the Korean words. It’s also funny how, if we don’t have a certain product, people come and ask for it – they genuinely want it.”
Ugly Coffee is now open to the public – head to The Directory for operating hours and contact details.
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