Cinnamon-scroll bakery · South Melbourne · $$ · Newcomer · could-visit · verified

Dance Bakes

The team started putting milk in the dough recently, which is what makes the crumb pillowy, and the head baker says the hard part is getting every scroll the same every day.

Why go

Jiah and Jamie Min opened Heart Bakes in Port Melbourne in late 2019, months before the pandemic, and built a following on cookies, madeleines and lamingtons. In 2023 the cinnamon scrolls took off on social media and the team made them the specialty (Broadsheet). A second bakery was not the plan, but after a year hunting a site and six months of renovation, Dance Bakes opened on Union Street in July 2026. Head baker Gigi Chaiyarat starts mixing, rolling and proofing at five in the morning and the first scrolls leave the oven at eight. There are four of them at the moment. The owners want the room to become something wider than a scroll shop: Jiah Min says they want "to bring more Korean culture into the bakery", with sandwiches, sogeum-ppang and a Korean-style cream coffee once the council approvals land.

Order this / avoid

Order: the plain cinnamon one first, to judge the crumb. Then the Mont Blanc, which has Dukes espresso worked through the dough under a cinnamon, nutmeg and orange icing. If you want savoury, the three-cheese and Vegemite scroll topped with gruyere.
Avoid: the afternoon. On the first Sunday they were sold out before 1pm, and the doors shut at 3pm regardless.

What locals & experts say

Gigi Chaiyarat, head baker, to Broadsheet, on what the job actually is: "The hardest part is making sure every scroll is consistent every day." ref
Broadsheet, on the demand: "During its first weekend, Dance Bakes made and sold more than 800 scrolls each day and sold out before 1pm on Sunday." ref
Nobody else has written about it. One publication has covered this bakery, and that piece is opening coverage rather than a verdict. No Melbourne chef names it, or its Port Melbourne sibling, across 74 picks by 44 working chefs and writers. It is three weeks old, and the entry is sized to that. ref

Good to know

Where: 11 Union Street, South Melbourne, a short walk from South Melbourne Market.
Timing: daily 8am to 3pm, and the queue front-loads the morning.
Booking: walk-in.
Still to come: the bakery is in a soft opening pending further council approvals. Sandwiches, Korean salt bread and a house cream coffee are planned.
Sibling: Heart Bakes, Port Melbourne, same owners, across the river.
Diet: no allergen or dietary statement is published, so nothing is flagged.
Hygiene: Victoria runs no venue rating scheme like the UK's FSA. What it does publish is Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions under s.53D of the Food Act 1984, where a conviction sits for twelve months. The register as at its 21 July 2026 update carries fifteen entries and this venue is not one of them. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Nothing here is Jeff's. Melbourne carries no raw saved-places export in this repo, so there is no Note column behind a jeff_note and the field stays empty rather than composed.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Jiah and Jamie Min opened Heart Bakes in Port Melbourne in late 2019, watched its cinnamon scrolls take off on social media in 2023, and doubled down until scrolls were the whole business. Dance Bakes is the second room, opened in July 2026 after a year looking for a site and six months of building. Head baker Gigi Chaiyarat starts mixing at five and the first scrolls come out at eight, and the team recently began adding milk to the dough to get a softer crumb. Chaiyarat's own account of the job is the line worth keeping: 'The hardest part is making sure every scroll is consistent every day.' Four scrolls at present, including a Mont Blanc with Dukes espresso worked into the dough and a savoury three-cheese and Vegemite one under gruyere. They sold more than eight hundred a day on the opening weekend and ran out before one on the Sunday. It sits at could-visit because it is three weeks old, one publication has written about it, and the Korean side of the menu the owners actually want to be known for has not launched yet.