Korean soul food meets Melbourne-style cafe at the better-than-great Ondo

You can tell a lot about a kitchen by tasting a broth that’s made in it. The first dish I try at Korean cafe Ondo is chicken soup, served alongside my bibimbap rice bowl. It’s a small pool of blessed clarity, shimmering in peace and purity like a pond at a temple. It signals care, intention, discipline and a trust in simplicity, qualities expressed throughout my Ondo encounters.

Chef Levi Eun and co-owners Ryan Kim and Crush Yang have been here since November 2022, crafting an experience that melds Korean soul food with Melbourne-style cafe. It’s better than great.

Ondo progresses ideas about Australian brunching and diaspora Korean cuisine in one petite package. The split-level room is calm, with the prime seats on cushioned banquettes on the mezzanine.

You can come for oat latte or batch brew, but why not lean into specialty Korean drinks?

The black sesame latte is rich and warm but topped with a layer of cold cream: it’s surprising and beguiling.

Sujenggwa is a sweet cinnamon drink with digestive properties; butternut sikhye is chef Levi’s spin on Korean rice punch.

At breakfast and lunch, the concise menu offers dishes either as a meal or a set, which means you’ll get banchan (side dishes), too. Do it! You don’t want to miss the array of ferments, maybe watermelon radish kimchi or a radical raw squid-and-radish crunchy-chewy flavour party.

Dinner is based around soup and rice, plus special dishes like sausage made with pork blood and sweet potato noodles. It’s pert, bright and tangy, served with a pungent dipping sauce.

Also excellent are the tteok galbi, a simple but sublime pork patty showered with finely grated macadamia, and gogiguksu, a famous soup noodle dish from Korea’s Jeju island.

Levi was a chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant in South Korea but when he came to Melbourne in 2015, he spoke no English and started as a dishwasher before progressing as a cook in restaurants including Bar Lourinha and Sydney’s upscale Quay.

The food here is steeped in an understanding of the broader dining landscape, but it springs joyously from Levi’s heritage and his desire to show that Korean food means so much more than fried chicken and barbecued beef.

The menu is generous in its outreach. For example, bibimbap is generally plated with an understanding that eaters will tumble the ingredients together before eating. Non- Koreans don’t always know that, so Ondo’s wonderful yukhoe (beef tartare) bibimbap is designed so that each ingredient – gochujang-seasoned meat, extraordinary garlic rice, crunchy vegetables – can be eaten separately and the meal still works.

It’s indicative of a joy in sharing culture that’s threaded through the entire Ondo offering.