When I came to Korea in 2007 for a summer at Yonsei University, I was excited to see that Seoul is jammed full of cafes – in fact, I don’t think there’s any place in this city where you’re more than a five minute walk from a cup of coffee (if you know of a place, maybe you should open a cafe there…). I had been learning more about specialty coffee and espresso around that time, trying all the best cafes in Los Angeles, and I was determined to find great coffee in Korea as well.
That search was initially difficult given that instant coffee mix is so popular here, and that even the nicest looking cafes with Probat roasters, expensive espresso machines prominently displayed, and enticing menus full of single origin coffees, usually serve terrible, acrid, bland, or diluted coffee.
I think many foreigners in Korea give up and assume Koreans just don’t know anything about coffee. Luckily, that summer, a friend of mine introduced me to Caffe Themselves and my hope was rekindled when I had my first good espresso shot in Seoul.
Last week I went back to Caffe Themselves (don’t question the awkward name… it’s Korea, anything goes…) for the first time in quite a while. In the three years following my first visit I’ve been to quite a few awesome specialty cafes in Korea and I wondered how Themselves would hold up.
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