If you’ve been planning a trip to South Korea, you likely already know about their booming café culture. Before my arrival, I prepared a multipage document of cafés to visit. Despite knowing there were many cafés outside my list, I was surprised by the surplus of cafés. Every city street has a mix of chain companies and individually owned cafes, and they’re almost never empty. In my original planning, I hadn’t realized café culture encompassed more than the flourishing themed café business. Couples have dates, friends catch up, business meetings commence, and individuals utilize these spaces for work. I frequented local cafés almost every day to do work and café culture is one of the parts of Korea I miss the most. My favorite café near Hanyang University, which is just down the hill from the dorms, is Cafe Sageun. They serve delicious croffles (get the brown cheese one) and their coffee lattes are so tasty.
A fun way to visit new cafés is by choosing a new one each day as a work space. Almost all cafés have good free WIFI so you can whip out your computer and get down to business. Be careful not to choose a popular themed café if you’re planning to do work. Some café are only for a social setting.
Helpful Tips for Café-Hopping
Now if you’re like me, and just about every person visiting South Korea, then you’ll want to go café hopping. Given it’s popularity on social media, most of my friends in TEAN came prepared with a café bucket list. I’ll give you some helpful tips about successful café hopping as well as a breakdown of what it’s really like.
First of all, you’ll need to be selective and plan your route before heading out. Since all my friends had their own café lists, we chose one we all wanted to go to and mapped to a couple more in walking distance. Some of the most popular spots for themed cafes are Mapo-gu, Jongno-gu, and Seongdong-gu. Just a note that not all cafés, or restaurants, can be found on maps because of the vertical layout. You might want to leave room in your schedule for stumbling into cute cafés during your walk. If you’re indecisive like us, I suggest planning which cafés to visit rather than waiting to see what’s appealing. One day, we tried to café hop by choosing as we went and it became too difficult to decide together, especially when they all looked so cute.
I also strongly suggest going with a small group. Three people worked for us but I think groups between 2-4 work well. Café hopping typically means visiting popular cafés in one of the three busy areas I listed above. Mapo-gu has some of the most famous themed cafés and they get really busy inside. These popular cafés require you to claim a seat first, so you’ll be thankful to have a small group. If you come in a larger group, the small table sizes will inevitably split you up. A smaller group also means much easier decision making for which cafes to visit.
How many cafés should you visit in a day? It depends on how long you want to spend out, what type of café’s you go to, and your sweet tooth level. We found that we were too full to go directly from one café to another and we needed a walk or shopping time in between. So, try no to choose café’s directly next to each other, or plan to stop in shops along your route. Also, most cafés specialize in coffee and dessert. Even if they do have savory pastries, they are likely sweet because Koreans add sugar to everything. After two cafés, we weren’t sure how much more sweetness we could take. Three cafés was a good amount but we might have fit in more if we found a savory menu.
What really hindered us from visiting more cafés is the rule that most busy café’s employ. When we were in Mapo-gu, every café required that we purchase one drink per person. Even if we all shared one dessert, the drinks were filling and sweet enough to keep us full. Plus, there’s only so much coffee we can drink in a day. Our preconceived notion was that we could share a couple menu items then move to the next café. This ordering rule surprised us and I wanted to share with anyone who thought they might be able to split a few desserts with friends. We quickly became full since the three of us had to order three or more menu items. For further clarification, some cafés required one order per person, food or drink. Others required one drink order per person in addition to any food purchased.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
The order requirements threw a bit of a wrench in our café hopping day but it was still super fun and I recommend it to everyone visiting. With the right planning, you can get in a few cafés, shop a bit, and have a great time. I recommend Teddy’s Oven in Seongdong for the best vanilla latte and bear-themed desserts, and Cafe Layered for a beautiful slice of cake. There’s lots of lists online of the best cafés to visit and it’s helpful to choose from these when planning.
I know when I go back to Korea one day, I’ll be tackling my new list of cafés to visit.
Breegan O’Hearn, William & Mary, is studying abroad in South Korea with TEAN.
