Fresh Ground is a blog for global nomads and kindred cosmopolitans. Plan your own trip, or follow along with my guides to cafes and reviews of the world's best coffee in Asia, Europe, North America, and beyond.

Posts tagged "Korea"
Espressamente Illy - Seoul, Korea

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...
Belief Coffee in Seoul, Korea

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 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 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

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 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

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 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

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...

An Jae-Hyeuk World Barista Championship Video

Watch live streaming video from worldbaristachampionship2010 at livestream.com Video of Korea’s 2010 Barista Champion competing in the 2010 World Barista Championship’s first round. (His presentation was around 8:45AM, which is why there’s not much of a crowd).

Cafe Soho

The first thing you get at Cafe Soho, an hour outside of Seoul in Suwon, is a menu and a piece of paper to write your order on. They have some fruit drinks (Koreans call it “ade” whenever they mix fruit juice flavor and Sprite) that aren’t bad, but I’d stick to the pour-over coffees....

Republic of Coffee – Kenya & Costa Rica

I received these two coffees from Lee Jong Hoon (Korean Barista Champion ’09) and his girlfriend and partner Seol Mi Gyeong, who run Republic of Coffee together. Two great people and very dedicated coffee professionals that I feel privileged to have met! The Kenya AA Top Mchana is complex and fruity. Dry red wine is...