Bola Bake — Restaurant in Melbourne

Has potential but there's plenty of room for improvement... Firstly, menu doesn't really cater to various dietary requirements. There are a couple of vegetarian options but otherwise menu states "no alternations" which I get to a point but if you can't have things like dairy, pork, or gluten then you're pretty limited. Standard coffee menu is basic - white coffee (flat white?), and mocha and more calorie rich speciality options like tiramisu coffee. No cappuccino, long black, latte etc. Menu is suited to ppl with no dietries at all and prefer calorie rich options. Food quality is otherwise ok. No bookings allowed which is fine. To counter this i thought to arrived a little early thinking I'd just get in the queue. However there was no queue and there were a lot of tables free. However despite this I was told I couldn't be seated until the rest of my part of 3 arrived. I was made to sit outside instead of being seated and allowed to order a coffee whilst I waited. Didn't like this at all especially considering there was plenty of free space. Chairs at the high tables are way too high - I'm 170cm and struggled to get up. Considering you have to get down to order at the counter this became annoying really quickly. Table adjacent is also super close. Was hit in the back a couple of times. Place is better suited for tables of 2 which are seated at low tables with breathing space between. Soap in the bathroom is cheap and nasty. Dried my friends hands out in an instant. Considering the prices I think this could do with an upgrade. Service is otherwise good. Friendly staff. Think it's a family run place. Prices are definitely on the higher side probably as there's less competition around the area - it's a shed in an industrial area, but I pay a similar price in and around the CBD where there's more competition. I am also pretty sure theres a cc surcharge as what I paid per my cc statement is not the price that was noted on the menu. I don't recall this being written on the card reader or anywhere at the counter. That, on top of the 5% surcharge for weekends and 10% for public holidays which is written on the menu is a bit crazy. The prices are already high without all the extras on top. Won't be back again unfortunately. Being made to sit outside like a naughty kid left a bad first impression - terrible customer service. The limited coffee and dietary options is not worth the high prices and added surcharges. If however your focus is only on taking a picture of colourful food and coffee for your insta then this place is...

2019 review: A warehouse cafe hidden in the industrial suburbs that offers everything a foodie loves - delicious freshly made toasties, spicy fried chicken and bulgogi fusion sandwiches and rolls, gourmet breakfast sangas, heavenly and crispy croissants with an Asian twist, aromatic coffee from Symmetry Coffee Roasters and fun tasty lattes and drinks. Best of all, they taste as good as it looks!

Hot pastrami (3.75/5): overall enjoyable classic. Well balanced toastie where the kimchi and sauerkraut work together but don’t overpower the pastrami and housemade Bola mayo. Love how they toast their Rye sourdough, it’s just to die for! Pastrami meat isn’t the melt in the mouth type nor is it smokey kind unlike other Reubens, but very generous with their portions. Think it needed more deeper flavours to hold the sour elements down as the cheese didn’t mellow the flavours. A way to get Asian parents to enjoy something unfamiliar because of the kimchi - Dad liked it!

Garlic cream cheese croissant (5/5): must get! Wasn’t expecting much with the quality of the croissant but I was wrong. It was so crispy and flakey whilst the inside was fluffy. Every bite was nothing short of aroma, with that generous sweet yet umami garlic butter spread on the top. The cream cheese was so fatty and creamy with a perfect balance of sugar and salt which just elevated the entire flavours of the croissant. This buttery goodness is a winner for sure!

Definitely returning to try out their other amazing Korean flavoured sandwiches as well as their sweet options such as the Banoffee toast, Raspberry jam croissant and yuzu croissant.

Food: 4.5/5 Value: 4.5/5 Ambience: 4.5/5 Service: 4.5/5

2025 review: after many years, still just as good! Their quality of food is restaurant quality and their creativity makes sense and tastes irresistible. Crowd favourite was definitely the squid ink and carbonara . Now when I think of umami, I think of this. Favourite this time though was definitely the Japanese beef curry shepherds pie. Like a volcano ready to explode w flavour. It was just picture perfect and tastes exactly like how it should. With tender beef and fluffy potato cloud on top.

Even the drinks were just as good, or even better than the dishes. Get adventurous and order their specialty drinks bc you’ll be shocked how good their peanut butter or ube latte is. They’re not afraid to show Melbourne how Asian flavours like ube can taste so divine. Hard to pick a...

Terrible experience here and one of the worst experiences in a cafe this year. We were told the wait time for a table would be 25 minutes, it ended up being 45 minutes. There seemed to be a high level of chaos and disorder in the way things were run right from the beginning.

Once seated, it took 40 minutes for my friends meals to come out and 1 hour for my meal to arrive because they had forgotten my meal. They only remembered when we had to go to the counter and remind them.

At no point did staff check in with us to see if everything was ok, in fact, they were spending time taking photos of food for their Instagram page.

I had to ask for compensation, it was not volunteered by the cafe. As compensation, rather than actually asking me what they can do for an apology for them forgetting my meal, they brought out a cake that i didn't want, along with my meal....i'm not going to eat a cake while eating my big breakfast so this meant nothing to me, and it wasn't a thoughtful compensation. I attempted to tell them that i didn't want this as compensation however it was near impossible to get the staffs attention and after nearly 2 hours of waiting for my food, i just wanted to eat my average food and get out of there.

In total, from the time we arrived at the cafe it took nearly 2 hours for me to finally be eating.

Overall, the cafe seemed understaffed and mismanaged. The food itself was below average and VERY expensive for the small portion sizes. Also, the coffee was burnt.

Additionally, and perhaps the most telling aspect, the owner seems to struggle with taking some negative reviews from his customers. This is evident by his responses to Google reviews where the manager calls people idiots, liars, illiterate, malicious, and comes up with any number of defensive excuses and seems to have no hesitation in blaming his own customers for their bad experience.

I understand the stress of running a business in hospitality and i acknowledge that the owner has responded to some of the negative reviews in a constructive and apologetic manner, however, the aggressive responses to customers is unprofessional and only reflects poorly on the management of the cafe. I'd like to see this cafe succeed and improve than develop a negative reputation due to heated responses to...