Park Hyatt, Seoul

It’s surprising how few fine dining establishments bother to compliment their meticulously prepared food with quality coffee. A while ago I found out that LAMILL has a roastery in Korea that supplies coffee to a few restaurants and hotels, including the Hyatt, so I was looking forward to trying it out at some point.

For Valentines day we tried the Sunday brunch buffet at the Park Hyatt hotel’s Cornerstone restaurant after reading a few good reviews online. The food was great overall, especially the main courses (I thought the lamb was pretty amazing), though their tasting dishes inspired by Korean cuisine were not as interesting or refined as those at W Hotel’s ‘Kitchen’ restaurant.

I asked for a coffee and out came a ~6 oz. Americano with light crema on the surface. It tasted pretty good once it cooled a bit, with decent body and a nice semi-sweet, roasty flavor showing through the water. Nice!

Before we left I asked for an espresso to finish off the meal, hoping for something decent but expecting the usual (worst). Surprisingly, they pull a decent shot that shows a lot of the characteristic caramel and dark chocolate of LAMILL’s espresso blend.

After that we went up to the 24th floor lounge, creatively named ‘The Lounge,’ to do a little reading (yeah, we’re nerds). The experience here wasn’t as pleasant. They advertise LAMILL coffee on their menu and charge an astronomical 12,000KRW (~$12) for any espresso based drinks. Total waste of money; and on top of that it was undrinkably bitter and over extracted. And wifi costs $12 an hour too. The atmosphere is alright but nothing to excuse that kind of price gouging and mediocrity. If you do visit, avoid coffee. Get a smoothie or something.

Park Hyatt is located right outside exit 1 at Samsung (COEX) station.