West End newcomer Cafe Disco is serving Bangladeshi-inspired eats, skinsy wines and specialty coffee
A few weeks back, a cosy former cafe space on Hardgrave Road was reborn as Cafe Disco. The brainchild of a well-travelled style-savvy operator, Cafe Disco is serving a creative menu of eats inspired by family recipes, skin-contact vino from killer Australian winemakers, ice-cold martinis and specialty coffee from one of Brisbane’s best roasters. It’s in the running for the most creative opening of the year. Read on to find out why …
Welcoming, approachable and always a little bit surprising. That’s how Tasfeen Hassan describes Cafe Disco, his new 40-seat eatery and bar, which quietly opened in West End earlier this month.
The Hardgrave Road haunt, which sits snugly in the space previously home to Yoke Kitchen and Luigi’s Italian, sees Tasfeen – former co-owner of pioneering fashion boutique Contra and its coffee-slinging offshoot, Cafe Contra – immersing himself completely in the realm of hospitality. Tasfeen is channelling his affinity for cooking and entertaining into a concept informed by his own tastes, dining experiences and extensive travels, resulting in a venue boasting an understated, but distinct, sense of style.
Ask Tasfeen and he’ll tell you that hospitality, by its very nature, is supposed to cater to the needs of many. With that in mind, the operator is looking to service West End diners with everything from coffee and chow in the morning, to fun and funky wines and small plates in the evening – all delivered with thought and care.
“The term cafe usually means limited offering but I understood that to be a neighbourhood stalwart, you have to be there for people when they’re available,” explains Tasfeen. “Not everyone might be able to access it during daytime, so we’re there for them at night. I really thought about who [Cafe Disco] was for and I really want it to be for the people that live nearby. It’s as simple as that.”
Tasfeen has worked with Sam Stewart and Dugald Moncrieff from public art and fabrication crew Parts Department to give Cafe Disco’s interiors a sense of cosiness and familiarity – like a living room, but with more room for mates. Furthermore, Tasfeen is also drawing inspiration from other sources – including the effects of the Iranian diaspora on Southeast Asian cafe and bar culture.
“The reference point of [the design] was this bygone era of Iranian cafes,” explains Tasfeen. “Iran used to be a hub of style – it was on par with Morocco with the influence of disco, rock ’n’ roll and all of that. When Iranian immigrants moved from Iran after the exodus of the Shah in the 70s, that style spread throughout the greater Southeast Asia, so there were these cafes that had somewhat of a similar aesthetic.
“We took aspects of that – like the tonality and colour choices and the patterns you can see in our houndstooth booth seats. The split colour on the wall is a reference to the checkerboard patterning that was very ubiquitous at that time, and our glassware is a little bit deco, but not super deco. It was just about finding that balance with the aesthetic, bringing it forward and bringing our interpretation of it.”
Guests that step beyond Cafe Disco’s bright-yellow facade are greeted by a sleek bar backed by mirrored glass and shelves housing an assortment of glassware, vintage cookbooks and disco records by artists from Pakistan, Indonesia, India and Malaysia. While natural light streams through the windows during the day, at night Cafe Disco’s interior is moodily illuminated by retro light fixtures on the walls, table lamps and strip lighting on the back bar.
Cafe Disco’s menu has been shaped by a few significant influences. First is Tasfeen’s own Bangladeshi background, with family recipes – passed down from Tasfeen’s mother and grandmother – forming a foundation that Tasfeen then builds upon with his experiences eating around the world. The resulting menu is a mix of traditional and reverse-engineered specialties, a purposeful clash of ideas delivered in fun and creative ways.
“Food culture in my country changed with the arrival of cable TV in the 90s,” explains Tasfeen. “The first channels all had cooking shows on it because they were mostly cheap to make. We would see these things being made, but we necessarily didn’t have the ingredients, so we always had our own interpretation of whatever we were watching. This is the same idea.”
“What also happens is you go on holidays and after you try to recreate these dishes from your own memory. This is my kind of interpretation of that – of travels through Malaysia, my upbringing in Bangladesh, and me travelling through Australia and Europe.”
Cafe Disco’s seasonally evolving offering will be concise, but made with intent. Tasfeen is making as much of the fare in house as possible, with a focus on fresh breads (a homemade pita, cooked in a flame oven, is a specialty), pickles, preserves and jams.
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Cafe Disco’s daytime menu features the likes of said pita (stuffed with your choice of lamb kofta, chicken tikka or roasted eggplant) with herb salad, masala potatoes, tomato and pickled vegetables, spiced and slow-cooked tomato and pepper shakshuka with either baked egg or roasted eggplant, a big salad of in-season greens doused in creamy zhoug dressing, and a rotating plate of the day.
This is all available alongside brewed chai, coconut matcha floats, teas, juices and coffee. The caffeine is supplied by Northgate-based Passport Specialty Coffee, with a seasonal blend available alongside a program of black and pour-over coffee, and cold-brew sips.
The venue’s nighttime menu caters to the peckish and the famished alike, with snacks like Mick’s Nuts coated in a spicy numbing seasoning and corn bread with smoked salt and chive butter leading into small plates of melon and cucumber rojak, ghee roast-potato chaat, and fish rillette with pickled fennel, shallots and chives served with crisps.
The offering finishes with larger plates of lamb koftas, fire-roasted eggplant, peppers and tomato, and braised asparagus and carrots with cashew cream. The menu will remain small, but expect Tasfeen to change things up regularly – as long as everything matches well with the wine.
“If I’m drinking serious wine, I’m drinking the wine by itself, but if I want wine to enjoy with food, it’s a very different criteria for me,” says Tasfeen. “The wine itself has to have salinity, it has to have acidity, it has to have sweetness.
“A lot of our list is skin-contact wines, because that is a style of wine that usually has that complexity and that dynamic strength to hold up with bold flavours. Skin-contact wines that are produced in Australia are so, so exciting, and there’s so much to choose from. If you see our wine list, it’s quite condensed, but it works with every single food item on our menu.”
The wine list is packed with a selection of killer drops from the likes of Defialy, Fringe Société, Parley and Lark Hill. A trio of Range Brewing beers are available, too, as is a vodka martini (served ice-cold with olives) and the Jaal Jeera – a cocktail inspired by the Indian beverage jal-jeera, which at Cafe Disco boasts cumin, lemon, mint and anejo tequila. Tasfeen is eager to experiment further with batched concoctions, drawing influence from the Asian subcontinent and employing fermentation techniques to create thirst-quenching fruit-laden drinks that will combat the summer heat.
Though Tasfeen’s background and culture filters through Cafe Disco’s entire concept, he is quick to say that it isn’t a straight-up Bangladeshi venue – it’s his venue, shaped by more than just the culinary culture of his birthplace.
“My identity isn’t defined because I was born in Bangladesh – I’ve lived in Australia for 24 years of my life, which is more than I lived in Bangladesh,” says Tasfeen. “I would say that [Cafe Disco] is a representation of me, but it’s a combination of 38 years of existence. It’s not just about where I’m from, it’s where I’ve been and where I am.”
Cafe Disco is now open to the public – you can find more important information in The Directory.