Seoul, South Korea is full of coffee shops. The problem was not finding one but choosing which one to try!
Best Coffee In Seoul, South Korea
On my first full day, I did not go out for coffee because the coffee was so excellent at the Grand Hyatt Seoul. If you stay at this hotel, you can trust the hotel coffee, especially in the Grand Club…
Unfortunately, the coffee was not nearly as good at the Park Hyatt (Nespresso only) so that forced me out to find coffee.
And the choices abounded in the Gangnam District…it was quite difficult to choose.
Finally, I settled on a café called Ikovox inside the Starfield Coex Mall.
Ikovox Coffee
Starfield Coex Mall
513 Yeongdong-daero, Gangnam District, Seoul
+8225515578
10:30 am – 10:00 pm (daily)
I tend to avoid mall coffee, but this place was no Starbucks…the café looked “third wave,” the coffee machines were excellent, and it smelled great.
Like so many places in South Korea, I ordered via a touchscreen…no human interaction.
My flat white was superb…my friend also enjoyed an ice coffee.
Had I been low on coffee at home, I would have purchased a bag to take with me.
The next day, I stopped at a place called Espresso Bar Si.
Espresso Bar Si
149-31 Samseong-dong, Gangnam District, Seoul
+8225555508
8:00 am – 11:00 pm (Monday – Friday)
10:00 am – 7:00 pm (Saturday, Sunday)
This place was hopping and this was a great choice for a coffee connoisseur…you could choose beans from around the world.
My cortado turned out a bit disappointing (no latte art) but it tasted great. Despite ceramic cups on the shelf, it appears that Espresso Bar only serves drinks in disposable cups….still, that would not deter me from returning.
CONCLUSION
Your problem in Seoul is not going to be finding a coffee shop, but choosing one. While I look forward to trying more next time and welcome your recommendations, both Espresso Bar Si and Ikovox are solid choices.
‘Espresso Bar Si’ is more Agreeable than ‘espresso bar No’.
Certainly a lot better than the similar-sounding ‘Espresso bar Xi’!
In my last visit to SEL last year, I visited a couple of superb German influenced cafés, one was part of the coffee/bakery minichain Fritz and the other was a hypermodern place in the ground floor of an office block very near the National Palace Museum that I can’t seem to pin down, I really should start saving favourites on Google maps.
For anyone interested, I am reasonably confident that the second German espresso bar was part of another minichain, Gute Leute, which appears to also have opened a couple of shops in the USA!
Those prices are higher than I would have expected (~$3.30 for espresso, $5 for iced cafe au lait). I remember Korea being pretty cheap. Is that not the case these days?
He’s in a pricey neighborhood going to pricey cafes. While 4~5,000 plus is fairly normal for ‘good’ coffee, there’s still a whole bunch of budget places where you get the quintessential Korean iced-Americano for about 1,500 and milk drinks for just under 3,000 or so.
Would be nice to find those next time.
Get the self serve at GS25! About 75 cents US for (decent enough) iced coffee!