Night has fallen and you’re looking for a nice dessert spot to hang out and relax. You see the welcoming bright lights of a laneway café and enter. But, to your horror, the café that you’re in has been overrun by adorable monsters of every shape and size! Welcome to Nox Melbourne. By day, it’s a cosy brunch spot, serving up toasties, burgers, coffee and plenty of delicious drinks. But at night, Nox is all about monster-shaped bingsu, monster croffles and boozy bubble tea. Decked out in plushies and filled with plenty of comfy seating, you won’t want to leave.
Monster bingsu at Nox Melbourne
Set inside an industrial space on Little La Trobe Street, not too far from Melbourne Central, Nox was originally designed to be a bar. But with the pandemic, getting a liquor license took a while, so they started out as a brunch spot instead. Now that they have their license, they’ve extended their trading hours, and are serving out theatrical cocktails and adorably shaped bingsu, a shaved ice dessert from Korea.
There’s plenty of delicious flavours to choose from, and all of the bingsu monsters have a name. Will you try MungMung the Mango Monster, Hoji the Hojicha Monster or Brittany the Strawberry Monster? Other flavours include taro, chocolate, sesame, matcha, coconut, biscoff and lychee. Your bingsu will emerge from the kitchen in a theatrical haze, accompanied by condensed milk, fairy floss and a random topping, like popping pearls or crushed oreos.
If you don’t feel like an icy dessert, there are croffle monsters too! They come in taro, matcha, hoji or cocao flavours, along with a massive chocolate eye.
As for drinks, there’s heaps of cocktails to choose from, but if you want to keep up with the monster theme, opt for their monster boba drinks. There’s four to try, and they all come in different monster shapes and sizes. Three of them are alcoholic, and the fourth, The Eyes of Sauron, is non-alcoholic.
There’s plenty of plushies of all shapes and sizes to keep you company, from a little Elmo to an oversized teddy bear, as well as heaps of monster figures too.
Nox Melbourne brings out the monsters after 6pm on Tuesdays to Thursdays. The monster bingsu is also available from 3-10pm on Fridays to Sundays. Keep an eye on their social media for updates, or visit during the day for a delicious brunch instead.