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...
Pardon the mess
So, my blogs got infected by some exploit that’s currently ravaging WordPress based blogs. I had to do a lot of maintenance to get things back to normal and decided to try a new theme in the process. One big change – I’m increasing the photo size throughout the site, so for a while all...
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...
Summer Update
Just got back to Seoul from a 5 day trip to Tokyo, and now I have two days to pack up and move to Sweden for graduate school. I’ll be doing the Masters in Applied Cultural Analysis at Lund University and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. I’m looking forward to meeting new people and...
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...
Sama Tea Pot
When I got that big box of Intelligentsia coffee, I also got several ounces of tea to try out. I didn’t have a tea pot, so I started looking for something nice. I like the Bee House ceramic tea pots a lot, but I wanted a clear design that lets you see the color of...
Dallmayr Kaffee
Dallmayr is a German coffee company that has several cafes in Seoul. I tried visiting their Gangnam location, but it’s either out of business or being renovated. Their Nambu Terminal location is open, however, and it’s unique and quirky, even by Korean standards. With its operatic sound track, dark interior and antique accoutrements, it’s not...
Cafe Soho
UPDATE: According to a commenter, Cafe SOHO has been replaced by a different cafe — and judging by the commenter’s chosen name (“Disappointed”), I’m assuming it’s not worth visiting; take note! The first thing you get at Cafe Soho, an hour outside of Seoul in Suwon, is a menu and a piece of paper to...
Coffee Factory
Coffee Factory is one of my favorite cafes in Korea. It’s in the popular Samcheongdong neighborhood around Gyeongbokgung palace, the Presidential Blue House, and a number of foreign consulates. It’s an upscale but unpretentious area that blends traditional and modern Korean culture with its various art galleries, old and new architecture, tea houses and coffee...
