Handmade pastries, specialty coffee and Japanese-inspired flavours – meet Burleigh’s new milk bar

Behind Kostel Milk Bar are husband-and-wife duo Pixie and Jimmy Parker. After more than a decade spent in senior kitchen roles, chef Jimmy found himself increasingly removed from the part of hospitality he loved most – actually cooking. So, together with Pixie, he decided to strip things back and create a space where he can do just that.

A chef by trade, Jimmy moved to Melbourne at 19 and worked his way through the restaurant scene, including time at two-hatted Spanish restaurant MoVida, eventually becoming head chef at one of its offshoots. Travel and work took him through Asia and Canada before he spent more than three years at Potato Head in Bali, followed by roles in Byron Bay and here on the Gold Coast.

As his career progressed, the actual cooking became a smaller part of his job. The past decade or so had been spent at executive level, where time in the kitchen was increasingly replaced by meetings, budgets and spreadsheets. Turning 40 prompted a rethink.

“I wanted to bring it back to just cooking,” Jimmy says. “It’s where I am the happiest. I enjoy the kitchen.”

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This was the catalyst for Kostel Milk Bar. The pair spent around 18 months searching for the perfect spot. The brief was fairly particular – a small space they could operate largely themselves, in a neighbourhood rather than smack bang in one of the major hospitality hubs. They eventually found it in the space formerly occupied by The Little Plate on Deodar Drive.

Kostel is very much a collaboration between the pair. Pixie has a background in creative design and previously worked for a publishing company in Asia before moving into freelance work. She and Jimmy met while living in Bali and travel to Japan each year, with their shared appreciation for its food and tea culture finding its way into both the menu and the finer details of the venue. Even the name has a story – Kostel is the pair’s Japanese-inspired take on ‘coastal’, while the handwritten lettering you’ll see across the shop and its cups is Pixie’s own.

The Japanese influence is there, but Kostel isn’t trying to replicate a cafe you might stumble across in Tokyo. Instead, Jimmy is playing with Japanese ingredients and flavours within things he already loves to cook, and the pastry cabinet is where that gets particularly interesting.

Everything is made in house by Jimmy using quality butter, organic flour and premium ingredients. The opening selection includes a selection of white-chocolate, matcha and strawberry laminated pastries, sesame cinnamon srolls and caneles flavoured with hojicha and sake in place of the traditional vanilla and rum. Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) finds its way into a sweet doughnut, while on the savoury side there’s a pork-mince-and-wakame sausage roll. The pastries will remain a fixture, but the flavours will change over time.

Jimmy also plans to stagger the baking throughout the morning rather than filling the cabinet at 6:00 am with pastries destined to sit there all day. Fresh batches of doughnuts, tarts and other treats will emerge periodically, meaning later risers still have a fighting chance. Once the day’s pastries are gone, though, they’re gone.

In the cup, matcha is sourced directly from Japan, while Coffee Supreme is supplying the beans for coffee lovers. A selection of specialty drinks rounds out the morning offering.

Kostel is starting small, but Pixie and Jimmy have plans to let the offering evolve. Japanese-inspired sandwiches are expected to arrive after the first month or two, taking cues from the classic sando while giving Jimmy room to do his own thing. A buttermilk fried-chicken version is already on the cards.

Further down the track, there’s even talk of transitioning into a sake bar of an evening, but for now, the focus is on the thing that started it all – creating a neighbourhood spot where Jimmy can cook, Pixie can bring her creative eye and locals can drop in for something made with care.

Kostel Milk Bar is opening on Wednesday July 29. Head to The Directory for opening times.