Brunswick has more good cafes per square kilometre than almost anywhere in Melbourne, which sounds like a good problem until you are standing on Sydney Road at 9am trying to decide.
The lists you find online will not help much. They tell you a place has great coffee and a nice fit-out, which is true of nearly every cafe in the postcode. What they will not tell you is which one roasts on site, which one has a dog menu, which one will let you sit for three hours with a laptop without anyone hovering, and which one has the matcha worth crossing Brunswick for.
So this is the version we would give a neighbour. Ten of the best cafes in Brunswick and Brunswick East, in no particular order, with what they are actually good at. Two of them are our neighbours at East Brunswick Village, and we have said so.
Bellboy: the most dog friendly cafe in Brunswick East
Location: 131 Nicholson St, Brunswick East
Bellboy is owned by Emilio Rogliano, and the coffee is roasted on site by former Golden Bean winner Mark Leo, so it earns its place on coffee alone. But the reason people keep coming back is the terrace.
There is a dedicated dog check-in zone and a dog menu, which is not a gimmick when you have around 50 outdoor seats and half of Brunswick East owns a kelpie. There is also free onsite parking, a kids menu, and the whole place is pram and wheelchair accessible.
Order the Bellboy Benedict, which comes with wood smoked pastrami, potato hash, Russian hollandaise and everything bagel seasoning. The pastrami bagel, the prawn and crab brioche roll and the scrambled eggs cacio e pepe are all worth your time. Interiors are by ODO.
Bellboy sits on the Nicholson Street edge of East Brunswick Village, so it is the closest thing the village has to a local for a long weekend breakfast.
ONA Coffee: arguably the best coffee in Brunswick
Location: 22 Ovens St, Brunswick
If you want to settle the best coffee in Brunswick argument on paper rather than taste, ONA is the shortest route. It is owned by Saša Šestić, who won the World Barista Championship in 2015, and you can order the blend he won it with. Raspberry Candy is on the menu every day.
The freezer menu is the thing that makes ONA different from every other cafe on this list. Rare and award winning beans, vacuum packed and held at minus 19 degrees, with upwards of 20 coffees available at any time. Cups run from $5 to $25.50, so you can have a normal morning coffee or you can have an experience, and nobody will make you feel odd about either.
The food holds up too. Turkish eggs with smoked chilli butter, green chilli scramble, okonomiyaki waffle, pistachio hotcake, and a pistachio cream iced latte for the warmer months. The fit-out is by Breathe Architecture and the alfresco area is leafy and dog friendly. Ovens Street Bakery is directly across the road if you want to make a morning of it.
To Be Frank Bakery: the pastry case at East Brunswick Village
Location: 3 Village Ave, Brunswick East
Franco Villalva and Lauren Parsons founded To Be Frank in 2019, and it has become the reason a lot of people first walk into East Brunswick Village.
Go for the Chocolatine, a double chocolate croissant made with Cuvée’s Amphora 65 per cent, or the Coconut and Dulce de Leche Bomb, which is a nod to Franco’s Argentinian roots. The sausage croissant is made with Hagen’s Organics from next door, which is about as short a supply chain as you will find in Melbourne. If you are feeding a house, the 2kg wholemeal sourdough miche is the one.
The pastry kitchen is open, designed by Corso Interior Architecture, so you can stand there and watch the croissants being rolled while you wait. Bread is baked at the Collingwood site and every pastry is made here. Coffee is by Symmetry.
Lux Foundry: the old power station on Hope Street
Location: 21 Hope Street, Brunswick
Lux Foundry is in a heritage listed building that started life as a power station in the late 1800s. Lux is a measure of luminance, which explains the name. The site later produced Lux brand stoves until the 1950s, and some of the original stoves are still on display alongside salvaged boxes from the owner’s grandparents’ foundry.
Daniel Amato and Emilio Rogliano took over the lease in 2010. The menu is proper cafe food done well, eggs benny, pulled pork, chilli scrambled eggs, and a cheeseburger and fries if it is that sort of day. Coffee is by Proud Mary.
The courtyard is the real drawcard, big and sun drenched, and it is dog friendly. There is free wifi, vegan, gluten free and halal friendly options, and the space is available for functions, seating up to 50 or 110 standing.
Lunar by Hikari: for matcha in Brunswick and Japanese pour-over
Location: 458 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
Lunar is the Brunswick project from Damien Xiao, Steven Yan and Derek Yang, the team behind the CBD cafe Hikari. Hikari means light, and Lunar is meant to represent serenity, which tells you most of what you need to know about the room.
If you are looking for matcha in Brunswick, this is where we would start. The matcha affogato is the order, and the sesame latte is worth a detour on its own. The pour-overs are sourced from ten Japanese roasters including Kyoto’s Weekenders and Coyote, with espresso running on Path or Code Black beans. There is also a yuzu coffee spritz, which sounds like a lot and is not.
Eat the mentaiko onigiri, the egg sando, the prawn steak sando, and the yuzu cheesecake made with yuzu juice from Kochi. The shopfront is unassuming and opens into a much bigger room with a courtyard out the back, seating 40 to 50.
Introspection: filter coffee and barista training near Jewell Station
Location: 6-8 Wilson Ave, Brunswick, directly across from Jewell Station
Introspection is part brew bar, part coffee training school and part daily coffee stop, and it takes the first part seriously.
Filter and pour-over are the point here. The filter list runs to rare and unusual beans, and they pour ONA’s Raspberry Candy blend on milk coffee, so you can taste a world championship blend without going to Ovens Street. If you have ever wanted to understand what you are drinking rather than just enjoy it, barista training sessions run on site.
It is directly across from Jewell Station, which makes it the easiest coffee in Brunswick to build into a commute.
O3 Brunswick: the cafe that is actually a workspace
Location: 268 Barkly St, Brunswick
From the street O3 looks like a normal cafe. Then you walk through a train display into an enormous library-style workspace with bean bags and charging ports everywhere.
Founder Luca Yang started the concept in Newmarket, Auckland and brought it to Melbourne with sites in Southbank and Brunswick. It was built as a third place, the one between home and work, and it is the answer if you are freelancing, studying, or just cannot face another day at the kitchen table.
You need the O3space app to get into the study zone, which unlocks three free hours a week. It is open 10am to 9pm daily, which is later than almost anywhere else on this list. Get the matcha or the mango coconut smoothie.
Joan: the neighbourhood one, across from Fleming Park
Location: Unit 8/50 Albert St, Brunswick East
Joan is run by Guy Willoughby and Eve Bryant, and it is the sort of cafe you end up going to every Saturday without ever deciding to.
The chilli scramble is the order, helped along by the house made chilli jam. The avocado toast and the vanilla milkshake are both better than they need to be. They use Schulz organic dairy and Callebaut chocolate, and every meal comes with heart shaped butter, which is a small thing that people remember.
It is dog friendly and directly across from Fleming Park, so you can walk the dog, eat, and let the kids run without moving the car.
The Nicholson Coffee & Eatery: gözleme, pide and a big menu
Location: Unit 1/34 Union St, Brunswick
The Nicholson is in the former Union Street Brewers site, and the menu is the broadest on this list by a distance.
The hand-pressed gözleme and pide are what to get first. After that, the Big Nicholson, the shawarma rolls with harissa, the Nicholson Benedict with pulled lamb, or the tom yum
scrambled eggs. On the drinks side there is a matcha latte and an iced Vietnamese salted crème coffee.
It is halal, with strong vegan and gluten free options, and it is walking distance from Jewell Station.
Project 281 Coffee Roasters: a roastery and a herb garden on Albert Street
Location: 279/281 Albert St, Brunswick
Project 281 is owned by Connell McGrath and Sargon Michael, and it roasts in house under Founder Coffee Co, run by Anne Cooper of Proud Mary and Axil, sourcing beans from a women run farm in South America.
The fit-out is by Splinter Society and it is one of the more ambitious rooms in Brunswick, 97 seats across a ground floor and mezzanine, with a wall of one tonne concrete drainage pits filled with greenery. There is a 50 square metre herb garden on the mezzanine that feeds the kitchen.
The food is not playing it safe either. Okonomiyaki, the octopus dish, chicken and waffles, a bulgogi burger, and an Iced Coffee Sphere. Dog friendly, with full table service.
How to choose between the best Brunswick cafes
The honest answer is that most of these places will make you a very good coffee, so pick on what else you need that morning.
If you want to taste something you cannot get elsewhere, go to ONA or Lunar. If you want to sit and work, O3 or Introspection. If you have the dog with you, Bellboy, Lux Foundry, Joan or Project 281. If you have the kids and a pram, Bellboy. If it is pastry you are after and not much else, To Be Frank. If you want a big menu that will suit a table where everyone wants something different, The Nicholson.
And if you are trying to work out where to take a visitor to explain what Brunswick is like, Lux Foundry is hard to beat, because the building tells them half the story before the coffee arrives.
Living within walking distance of the best cafes in Brunswick East
The reason we know these places is that they are our neighbours. East Brunswick Village was built on the idea that the things you use every week should sit within a short walk of your front door, which sounds obvious until you have lived somewhere it is not true.
To Be Frank and Bellboy are both in the village, at opposite ends of it. Hagen’s Organics is next door to To Be Frank. Joan is a short walk away in Brunswick East, and Sydney Road is close enough that Lunar is a reasonable Saturday morning. The village has an 83 walk score, which is the technical way of saying you will use your car less than you think.
East Brunswick Village (EBV) is one of the inner north’s largest urban renewal projects, located just 6 kilometres from Melbourne CBD with everything you need a short walk away.
Elm Grove is the latest chapter at EBV, and it is now complete with apartments ready to move into. Register your interest to learn more about life at Elm Grove.
Brunswick is one of Melbourne’s most vibrant inner-city suburbs, brimming with history and rich in culture. Brunswick is home to a diverse community where arts, music and food all have an important role to play.
New developments in Brunswick and apartment living have made it more easily affordable for first home buyers and young families to live in this vibrant inner-city suburb. If the Brunswick community (and good coffee) is something you would like a part of, then register your interest with East Brunswick Village and get a feel for what could soon be your neck of the woods.
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