Mokja, a new Korean cafe and market from chef Debbie Lee and Frank and Michelle La of Be Bright Coffee, is headed to the space adjacent to Lee’s Highland Park modern pocha Yi Cha. Opening Friday, August 7, Mokja will offer a build-your-own instant ramen
bar, sandwiches, grab-and-go banchan, and cafe drinks from 2024 U.S. Barista Champion Frank La. After its opening in Highland Park, Mokja will open an outpost at Orange County development OC Vibe, which plans to house restaurants from chef Roy Choi and other exciting names, sometime in 2027.
Lee and the Las got to know each other while both operating stalls at Smorgasburg. “Frank and Michelle walked over, gave me a misugaru latte, and welcomed me to Smorgasburg,” Lee says. “And that was the start of an amazing friendship between all of us.” Once plans solidified to take over the back area and open Mokja, Lee invited Michelle and Frank to look at the space and, soon, the group hatched a plan to open something together. “Frank kind of looked around, checked out the bones, and said, ‘When are we opening?’” Lee says.
Mokja focuses on quick-serve plates that it calls “Seoulful snackies” and grab-and-go options; a handful of tables are available on-site, as well as additional space at a standing bar. A build-your-own ramen bar offers toppings like cheese and a jammy egg, while musubi from chef Debbie Min gets stacked with a choice of Spam or tofu and swiped with a sweet soy glaze. Large dishes span a mayak egg salad sandwich served on Out of Thin Air milk bread; the PBL & T with pork belly, tomato muchim, lettuce, and kimchi mayonnaise; and tartines topped with stone fruit and whipped tofu or kimchi tuna salad and cheese. A Cobb salad gets topped with shredded gochujang chicken and herby tofu feta, while the Mountain Grain Bowl mixes purple rice with sesame-sauteed vegetables and a sweet-spicy chojang dressing.
Pastries and sweets from chef Dara Yu include black sesame chocolate pie crowned with homemade marshmallow, a salty kimchi cheese biscuit, a citrusy yuja cha ice box pie topped with whipped cream, and an almond cookie. In the fridge, Lee will stock kimchi, banchan, Korean barbecue ssam sets, and cold noodles, plus ice cream from Servet and 626 Hospitality. Retail shelves, curated by Michelle La, will spotlight products from AAPI-owned businesses such as Seoul Sausage, Rooted Fare, Woon Kitchen, and Valerie Confections, alongside coffee from Be Bright and classic Korean snacks like Turtle Chips. “It’s about the representation of the AAPI diaspora and having the young up-and-coming makers really be part of this experience,” Lee says.
For Frank, Mokja offers an opportunity to further express his Korean heritage through coffee drinks. With Be Bright, he often touched on those flavors, especially on the yearly AAPI month menu, which has included drinks like a mango sticky rice milk punch and pandan ube latte, but didn’t want the cafe to feel overtly Korean. “With Mokja, the thing that’s been kind of refreshing in a lot of ways for me is the fact that I get to lean into it unabashedly,” Frank says. “It’s been a lot of fun coming up with some drinks where I get to express and share flavors that maybe aren’t quite popular even in the mainstream yet.”
Frank points to the omija sparkler as a drink that embodies his vision for the menu at Mokja. The sparkler gets made with omija berries, which are also called the five-flavor fruit for their unique notes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, spicy, and pungent. Frank imports the dried berries from South Korea, before cooking them down with sugar to make syrup and adding it to sparkling water. Other specialty drinks on the opening menu include a sweet corn latte with corn puree and espresso, a misugaru latte topped with misugaru cold foam, yuja cha lemonade cold brew, and a banana matcha latte made with housemade banana oleo sacchurum and Korean matcha from Hadong. The specialty drinks menu will rotate: Frank has already begun working on a new addition to the menu inspired by yakgwa, a Korean honey cookie.
In contrast to Be Bright, which remains more focused on pour overs and single-origin coffee, Mokja’s drinks will be more playful with coffee as an ingredient but not always the main character. “It’s been kind of fun to be able to express the fun side of coffee,” Frank says. “It doesn’t have to be serious all the time. And that’s coming from the U.S. Barista Champion. We could put our pinkies down for a second.” Alongside the specialty drinks, Mokja will also serve classic espresso drinks like an Americano, cappuccino, cortado, and mocha, alongside roasted barley tea, roasted corn tea, drip coffee, and cold brew. The coffee drinks made at Mokja will use a proprietary bean blend from Be Bright made specifically for the cafe.
Lee feels excited to bring Mokja to Highland Park, a neighborhood that she says has welcomed Yi Cha with open arms and a full dining room. “Koreans are all about community, too,” she says. “And I think there’s this parallel that we share with the community of Highland Park, because it’s all about sharing, enjoying each other’s company, eating, drinking.” Lee is the first to say her cooking is a modern interpretation of Korean dishes; she does not try to replicate the classics that are found across Koreatown. Still, she hopes that her dishes can be a gateway for people to dive deeper into Korean cuisine and culture. “It makes their palate and their mind open and curious,” Lee says. “Some people would come in and say, ‘So if I wanted to get O.G. pork belly bosom, where would I go in K-Town? Or if I wanted to go get Korean food or if I wanted to go get soondubu or noodles.’ And what I think is so beautiful about being in this community is it’s opening eyes, ears, mouth, you name it, for people.”
Once established, Mokja will also function as a community space to host pop-ups and workshops like cookbook events, Korean beauty courses, or dumpling classes. “It’s about us bringing people together,” Lee says. “That’s really what I wanted for this space.”
Disclosure: The owners of Be Bright Coffee are related to Eater Los Angeles editor Matthew Kang, who has no business connection to the company and was not involved in the compilation, editing, or publication of this story.
