Gwangalli brunch café’s hearty new plate: Rollmi

Rollmi’s new menu in Gwangalli, revisited after a while

Rather than being somewhere I had just discovered while looking for a good Gwangalli brunch spot, Rollmi is a café I had visited from time to time before. I had not been in a while, but it came to mind again and I stopped by; when I looked at the menu, I saw that a House Breakfast Plate had been added. I usually choose my usual order when I come somewhere familiar, but the words “new menu” immediately changed my plans that day.

What are the exterior and parking like?

From outside, the beige brick exterior, black door, and sign make the name Rollmi stand out even as you walk past. There is a small table and chairs by the entrance, along with potted plants, so you can feel this place’s particular mood before you even step inside. Rather than a large, flashy space, it leaves the impression of a neighborhood café that has held its place for a long time.

When I drove, I used the paid parking lot in the building right next door. Parking was ₩4,000 for one hour. It is not somewhere with free parking, so if you are driving over for Gwangalli brunch, it would feel easier to factor parking into your meal budget too. Still, it was convenient that the lot was in the building right beside the café, so there was no long walk after parking.

Window seats and a vintage interior mood

Once inside, the Rollmi atmosphere I remembered from my earlier visits was still there. The space has white walls and wood flooring, with black-and-white framed pictures in various sizes on the walls. They did not feel too precisely arranged, but more like they had been naturally collected over time. There was an NYC sign on one side and little decorative objects too, giving the whole place a lightly vintage feel.

The windows are fairly large, so you can see outside well. Along the windows are long wooden seats and small round tables. Further inside are regular tables and wooden chairs, and there are seats in front of the counter too, so although the space is not especially large, it is not made up of just one kind of seating. In small cafés like this, I tend to sit by the window and look outside now and then, and that area naturally caught my eye first that day too.

A menu spanning brunch through dessert

Looking through the menu, it felt like more than a café just for coffee, with quite a few choices from meal dishes to desserts. There were signature items such as Ocean Aglio Pasta, Brooklyn Shrimp Bun, and the House Breakfast Plate, alongside sandwiches and brunch, plus desserts such as tiramisu and Basque cheesecake. Drinks were also divided into coffee, filter coffee, lattes, ade, tea, and matcha, so it looked like a good fit for a day when you want to take care of both Gwangalli brunch and coffee in one place.

I chose the newly introduced House Breakfast Plate. It was ₩16,000 on the menu, and because I wanted soup too, I added mushroom soup as a side for ₩8,000. At first I was only going to have the plate, but the more I looked at the menu, the more the soup kept catching my eye, so I ended up ordering both. On days like this, I do not think staring at the menu for a long time ever ends according to plan.

House Breakfast Plate and mushroom soup

The café itself is so pretty that even just setting everything out at this Gwangalli brunch café looked so, so lovely. The plate already looked quite abundant on its own, but adding the soup beside it quickly made the table feel like it held a full meal. So it felt a little different from a day when I had imagined brunch as simply a light piece of bread and coffee. If you like a combination of salad, eggs, roasted vegetables, bread, and something warm, the House Breakfast Plate would be one of the first things to catch your eye.

What I personally liked about Rollmi’s brunch was that it had little meat? Rather than being heavy on sausage or bacon, it had so much more of the delicious things, like arugula and mushrooms. It really is great for brunch in the morning!

The mushroom soup arrived generously filled in a wide bowl. A few pieces of roasted mushroom sat on top, with a little pepper and oil visible, and finely blended mushrooms could be seen in the soup itself. When I scooped it up, it was not completely thin; it still had some texture.

The House Breakfast Plate held so many things that the dish looked full when it was set on the table. A fried egg sat in the center, with roasted mushrooms and vegetables, salad greens, cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, and red vegetables alongside it. On one side were what looked like long-roasted sweet potatoes and nicely browned toast, so the colors and ingredients were quite varied even within one plate.

Trying a new menu at familiar Rollmi

The bread in particular was toasted to a deep brown on the outside, and when I picked it up, it was not too thin. This was not the kind of brunch with one lonely slice of bread on the plate; it was divided among the other ingredients, making it easy to alternate bites. The egg also had an intact, visible yolk, so it made a definite statement right in the center of the plate.

The salad side had a fairly large proportion of green leaves, mixed with cherry tomatoes and finely chopped ingredients. On the other side, the roasted mushrooms and vegetables were gathered together, so I found myself turning the plate and picking at them one by one. When it first arrived, I thought I would finish one plate quickly, but there were so many different things that my hands stayed busier than expected as I ate.

I had been to Rollmi several times before, so this visit was less about the fun of looking around a completely new space and more about trying a newly added menu in a familiar atmosphere. It was nice to see the black-and-white framed pictures and window seats I remembered, and the dishes the food came on had green patterns that seemed to suit the café’s mood well.

Among Gwangalli brunch spots, Rollmi felt like somewhere better for combining brunch, sandwiches, soup, and dessert according to how much you feel like eating that day, rather than arriving with just one set item in mind. This time I chose the House Breakfast Plate because I was curious about the new menu, and with the soup added, it became a more filling meal than I expected. I stopped by a café I used to visit often after a long time, and one new menu changed the shape of my meal; I think Rollmi will naturally come to mind again next time I think of Gwangalli brunch.