Best Cafes in Seoul, Korea: 2012 Updates
I moved from Korea to Sweden back in the summer of 2010, and that unfortunately marked the end of my coverage of Korea’s best cafes & roasters (and a few of its quirkiest). However, I get a lot of people asking for recommendations about where to visit in Korea. A number of interesting new cafes...
ChansBros Coffee – Seoul, Korea
This is my girlfriend Claire’s debut post here – she’s also quite a coffee geek and still working in Korea for the next couple months. Look forward to a few more of her posts from Korea in the months ahead! Several months ago, I moved in with some friends in Itaewon, a diverse neighborhood in...
Espressamente Illy – Seoul, Korea
A lot of coffee drinkers stumble upon Illy in their initial quests for better coffee. It’s hard to miss their shiny silver and red packaging in the supermarket or at the cafes serving their coffee. Established in the 1930s, Illy is family owned and known for pursuing scientific coffee research, and creating standards for brewing...
Three rules of thumb for avoiding bad coffee in Seoul, Korea
In Korea I tried a lot of cafes, and drank a lot of bad coffee on the way to finding the great cafes that I’ve written about here. Coffee is expensive (I’ve paid as much as $15 for a bad cup of coffee in Seoul), so after a while I started avoiding places with signs...
Belief Coffee in Seoul, Korea
Belief is a relatively new cafe that I first visited many months ago in the Hongdae neighborhood of Seoul, Korea. When I stopped in the first time they were just setting things up, didn’t have an espresso machine installed, and were still apparently adjusting their roast profiles. I stopped in again a couple months ago...
La Caffe in Seoul, Korea
La Caffe is a restaurant and cafe hidden away in the neighborhood near Wangsimni station. I heard that they had a Slayer espresso machine and made a point of visiting to see what all the fuss was about. You see, the Slayer is a rather rare espresso machine hand built in Seattle, noted in particular...
MK2 Cafe
MK2 is a cool looking spot in the neighborhood to the west of Gyeongbokgung palace. The decor is made up of mostly mid-century modern furniture, and they have a Faema E61 espresso machine on which they churn out a pretty decent espresso. It seems like a really chilled out place to relax and study, do...
KT Olleh Square Cafe
Korea Telecom has built quite a nice little cafe in their first floor show room, amid all the office buildings and historical attractions at Gwanghwamun station near Gyeongbokgung palace. One would expect that a cafe in an electronics showroom would be little more than a gimmick to draw in more potential customers, but I was...
Dalmont Cafe
Dalmont is a nice looking cafe and restaurant next to Hakdong station. I’ve lived right around the corner from it for the past year and popped in many times for one of their tasty shrimp or salami sandwiches. Their coffee has been hit or miss for me in the past with an amazing double ristretto...
Madagascar
My friend Sammie showed me the way to this cafe out near Sookmyung Women’s University. It’s a nice looking cafe, with a spacious and eclectic interior full of National Geographic style photography (the theme is Madagascar after all), photo gear, photo books, and random curios. I guess the owner is a photographer who visited Madagascar...
Lugo Coffee
Lugo is a well appointed cafe in the huge Garden 5 shopping mall, complete with their own roaster in shop, La Cimbali and Ditting espresso set up, as well as kit for hand drip. Combining the two main Korean cafe trends, they offer all their coffees (around ~10 single origins) as either espresso shots or...
Choi Ga
I’ve been keeping an eye out for good coffee on the northeast side of Seoul, but so far I’d only been able to find Star City’s Star Kitchen and Lotte Mall’s Cantata kiosk, which are above average, but nothing to go out of your way for. Then I came across a post at Jihye Chang’s...
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