Yeongdeungpo terrace café with strawberry latte: Mela Times Square

It had been a while since I visited Yeongdeungpo Times Square, and with so much to see and do, I shopped around and browsed until I got hungry — then headed to a spot I'd already booked for a nice, tasty brunch.

Mela Times Square: an Italian home-style café on the 1st floor of Yeongdeungpo Times Square

Today I'm introducing Mela, an Italian home-style brunch café on the 1st floor of Times Square in Yeongdeungpo.

Mela — Italian home cooking that fills your everyday with warmth

Mela means "apple" in Italian, and it's a brand that wants to share good ingredients, delicious food, happiness and love — the way you would with family.

It's a space that started with the wish to gift people, amid busy daily life, a moment to sit face to face with someone dear and share warmth and care.

From outside already, a bright, cozy mood greeted me, and the soaring ceilings and warm sunlight pouring through the windows were healing. Just a few steps out and you're back in a bustling mall, but inside it feels like an entirely different world.

Inside Mela: terrace seats, roses and high ceilings

Outside there's a terrace, so enjoying brunch there on a weekend or afternoon would feel like being abroad. From inside, the white-and-green color scheme is clean and the rose decorations are so lavish that it's hard to just walk past.

The interior feels open and never cramped, so even a casual snapshot comes out looking like your best photo ever — a genuinely dreamy mood.

It's the perfect spot for a wedding-invitation gathering, a date, or catching up with friends — cozy yet stylish, ideal for chatting the time away at ease.

What does Mela's minari vongole pasta taste like?

Minari vongole pasta

Loaded with fresh clams and littlenecks, plus sun-dried tomatoes and fragrant minari (water dropwort), it hit just the right savory note — not too spicy, not too bland.

There was none of the heaviness you get with oil pastas, and the fresh, pleasant scent of minari made it impossible to put my fork down.

The savoriness kept bursting out with every bite — I heard it's Mela's best-seller, and now I get why.

Ragu tteokbokki at Mela, and how to switch it to linguine

Ragu tteokbokki

A quirky fusion tteokbokki (stir-fried rice cake) made with a rich ragu sauce simmered in-house for hours, paired with chewy rice cakes — somehow it felt like eating this would make you healthier.

Worlds away from the usual sweet-and-spicy tteokbokki, this felt luxurious, loaded with meat — a premium version of the dish.

You can apparently switch it to linguine noodles, but since I also wanted the minari vongole pasta and wanted to enjoy the chewy rice cake texture as is, I kept it as is — the sauce was so good I scraped the plate clean, saving the dishwasher some effort.

Mela's cappuccino and strawberry latte

Cappuccino & strawberry latte

The cappuccino came topped with soft milk foam, somewhere between wet and dry foam, with a little heart drawn on top — made me want to learn that skill myself. It paired beautifully with the rich espresso, tasty enough to make me want a second cup.

The strawberry latte was packed with sweet strawberry flesh in every sip — a pleasant, happy kind of sweetness.

By the way — following Korean romanization rules for loanwords (where a vowel after a plosive isn't written as a tensed sound), the official spelling of "latte" in Korean is 라테 (ra-te), and that's what this café uses everywhere. But to Korean ears, 라떼 (ra-tte) just rolls off the tongue more naturally, so that's the version people actually use in daily life and in most cafés.

A finish as fresh as the name Mela

By the time we finished eating, it must have been the staff's snack break. Mela means "apple" in Italian, and there they were, biting into a big, glossy, unpeeled red apple — I couldn't help but smile to myself at how perfectly that matched.

True to its name, the space, the food, even the staff somehow brought to mind a fresh, crisp apple — a genuinely feel-good place. If you want to enjoy delicious Italian home cooking with warm sunlight and a relaxed mood in the middle of bustling Times Square, I recommend spending happy time at Mela.