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Greatly Terrific Food Outing, Korea, Korea Food Guide, Travel

Korean Themed Restaurants and Cafe’s – Part Two

November 23, 2012 Talyssa Leave a comment

Korean Cafes

Here is part 2 of our Themed Cafes and Restaurants Post. For the restaurants please read Part One here.

Now onto the cafes! Korea is filled with cafes and all of them are so lovely!

I have never really been a cafe type person one, because I don’t really like coffee and two, the idea just never really appealed to me. That is, until I went to Korea. In Korea, it seems as if every cafe as its own little vibe going on which is so welcoming, so calming, so cozy and so comfy. I love the atmosphere that each cafe seems to be able to create. Cafes in Korea are the best places to chillax with friends and the best part of all – you only ever have to order one drink and you can stay there as long as you like – seriously – people do work on their laptops for hours! You never get that “can you leave now?” vibe from the waiters!

Unfortunately, I’m yet to find a cafe in Sydney that has quite the charm of a Korean cafe! But I intend to keep searching~

One of the first cafes we went to in Korea really captures this charm and vibe that all Korean cafes seem to have in common.

See this is what I mean, what would you call this vibe?? I just love it so much!! It’s so homely!

Message walls/trees seem to also be a common feature of the Korean cafe culture. They are basically a collection of photos, drawings and hand written messages that people stick up on a wall or hang up on a tree in the cafe.

You might be thinking…why is this photo here?? Well, another common trait in Korean cafes is the presence of notebooks whereby people use to draw, leave messages or play games with friends. Most amazingly, you wont see one penis, curse word or sexual image in these books!! Can you just imagine what kind of things would be in these books if a cafe were to include them in Australia…? Yeah…let’s not even go there..

One of the many cafes Siree and I stumbled across was actually a couple cafe! We walked in not realising, and it was filled with couples! None the less it was a really amazing cafe. I loved it and it’s vibe! It totally lived out those Christmas scenes in Hollywood movies where its snowing and cold outside but the stars of the movie are cuddled up inside their immaculately Christmas decorated homes, by the fireplace…*sigh*…so lovely.

Some delicious food and drinks commonly sold in Korean cafes, which are not sold or easily found in Australia include:

Pumpkin Lattes – seriously delish!
Chestnut Lattes
Green tea lattes
A variety of teas – floral, fruity, herbal, traditional – sometimes there are mixes of all of these.
Waffles, sweet breads, parfaits

Tips:

If your looking for cool cafes, majority of them are located up in the second level of buildings, so when searching don’t just look for places on ground level, look up!

Hardcore Themed Cafes!

Unlike the general Korean cafe vibe, there are numerous cafes in Korea that go ALL out!! Here are some of our experiences:

Hello Kitty Cafe

Wow. Always in my life I have wanted to visit one of the notably famous Hello Kitty cafes. I have always been jealous of seeing my friends photos and finally, I was able to experience it myself.

If there was one word to describe the Hello Kitty Cafe it would definitely be PINK OVERLOAD. Okay two words! So much so that it kinda makes things hard to see, the lighting on your face is terribly unflattering (would not recommend for first dates! haha) and the photos didn’t turn out so nicely because of the light! But it does keep with the vibe so all’s good!

We ~~forced~~ brought along two of our male Korean friends to this restaurant and upon entry, they instantly commented on their masculinity decreasing …! However, being the good hosts they were, they swallowed their pride and joined in as enthusiastically as they possibly could haha. We appreciated the effort..

Wow, it looks so majestic! Haha any man would be scared of this building

Interior decor! Pretty cool right. I mean they have Hello Kitty shaped chairs!!!

If I’m to be really honest, the food here is only mediocre, but then again you don’t really visit the Hello Kitty cafe to eat spectacularly good food. You visit for the vibe and novelty, and judging by that aspect, visiting The Hello Kitty Cafe is worth it.

Directions:

Follow the pink line on the map

MAPfin — Original map from Visit Korea website.

From exit 9 out of Hongik Station, walk straight along yanghwa – ro and turn left into Hongik – ro. Turn right into the third street on your right. The Hello Kitty cafe is hidden up a little alley street, so keep an eye out on your left. The cafe is clearly visible when looking up into the alley.

Cats Living – Cat Cafe

Right next to the Hello Kitty Cafe, is Cats Living – a fully fledged cat cafe with real cats running around!! I’d only ever seen cat cafes whilst watching my favourite KPOP stars visiting them in Korean Variety shows, so naturally I always wanted to visit one myself – after all I love animals!!

But I have to admit, it was not exactly what I was expecting…I guess TV really does put a glossy shiny bubble of shazaam over everything, making it look extra spiffy that you tend to forget about the possible negatives of such a cafe. I mean the cafe looked nice and some of the cats were kinda cute too (SOME WERE SERIOUSLY EVIL)…but the smell was terrible!! I was honestly not expecting that at all! I don’t know what part of my brain put together the fact that a place with 12+ cats all in one room would not smell, but I was so shocked that I actually remember saying to Siree “I don’t want to do this anymore..” I don’t know I guess the thought of eating and drinking in a place with such a smell was kinda off putting…

Nevertheless, it was a very unique experience and I’m glad I did go even though I felt highly uncomfortable…

And I guess after a while you do get over the smell…

Cute signage! I love this aspect of Korean cafes and their use of signs and drawings. Also I may be mistaken here…but I think they spelt “open” wrong haha. Konglish! Love it!

Some of the cute cats! I like the ears on the one of the left haha

The cat on the left was so cutely tragic. Poor thing was so old and I felt sorry for its eyes!!

The decor was also very fitting. I though this idea was really cute.

More of the interior. I really liked that cage chair!

Nawww. Siree and I couldn’t tell how many cats were bundled in here – I’d say 3? Maybe just two lol!

Directions

Follow the pink line on the map

From exit 9 out of Hongik Station, walk straight along yanghwa – ro and turn left into Hongik – ro. Turn right into the third street on your right. Cats Living is located right next to the Hello Kitty Cafe so keep an eye out for that in an alley on your left ( Cats Living is not visible when you look into the alley way only the Hello Kitty Cafe is). As you walk towards the Hello Kitty cafe you will see Cats Living.

Price

The entry fee to the cafe is 8,000 won which includes a drink. The drinks provided here are the standard drinks you might find at Starbucks, so they aren’t that great but its better than nothing. Again though, you visit for the cats not for the food/drinks.

Tips

When you enter Cats Living there is a protocol foreigners may not be aware of.

Upon entry, you are required to take off your shoes. Your shoes can be locked away in a locker and you will be provided with slippers.
Sanitize your hands at the door.

Charlie Brown Cafe

I think out of all the themed cafes, Charlie Brown was my favourite. Maybe because I really love Charlie Brown – I think the drawing style of the characters is super cute! Also I remember watching the cartoon series when I was younger – it was so cute and hilarious!

The front of the cafe! It looks so cute! Charlie is soooo cute!!

One thing I really liked about the Charlie Brown Cafe was that they actually served your drinks in actual Charlie Brown mugs, whereas the Hello Kitty Cafe and Cats Living served their drinks in paper/plastic cups.

More of our drinks! Snoopy and Charlie Brown dusted chocolate.

I liked all the figurines that decorated the cafe! Especially seeing the way Snoopy’s character has changed through the decades.

Directions

Follow the green line on the map

From Hongik station, exit via exit 9 and continue walking straight along Yanghwa -ro. Turn left into Hongik – ro and walk straight until you reach Honik University’s front gates. Facing the gates, turn right down Wausan -ro and turn into the second street on your right (it should be after a small park). Continue walking straight down that street, down the length of the small park.

Korea, Travel

Hongdae – Because Korean Hipsters are WAY cooler than Hipsters in Newtown

October 26, 2012 Talyssa 2 Comments

Talyssa checking in – beware people, this post is gonna be a long one!!

Becauuuuuuuuuuuuuuse it’s about Hongdae!! I. absolutely. love. Hongdae. It’s so refreshing to be in a Hipster-esque place style wise, fashion wise and people wise, minus the arrogant, overly pretentious, clique-ish, self-entitled hipster attitude that unfortunately accompanies much of the hipster crowd in Sydney. Seriously. Sooo nice and refreshing.

I really wish Sydney had a similar place to Hongdae so I could at least describe to some extent how awesome Hongdae is…I guess Newtown might be the closest, but seriously, it doesn’t even compare. Actually scrap that. Newtown is nothing like Hongdae. Period.

We set out on our first venture to Hongdae to visit the Trick Eye Museum. Online there was absolutely no information on the Trick Eye Museum – nothing about how to get there or where it was located…so basically we took a giant stab.

Our giant stab lead us instead to a tourist information center (pink dotted path on map below). I really recommend coming here if you don’t know where to go or what to do. The customer service is amazing – they are extremely helpful and super friendly.

Not knowing where the Trick Eye Museum was, the staff provided us with maps and hand drew directions on them for us. On top of this, they gave us info on specials and Grand Korea sale cards so we could get as many discounts as possible during our trip!! How nice right!?!

Even with our amazing directions, the Trick Eye Museum wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to find…I’ll let you guess why:

It’s like completely hidden right?!?!!?!?!!? I was expecting like some separate building which was quite large with considerable signage since it is a tourist spot!!! We walked passed it once or twice – it was hard to see!!!

You do need to set aside a fair bit of time for the Trick Eye Museum – the museum itself is broken up into sections (we almost missed one section). On top of this, there are three galleries and a cat museum. We just did the museum and it took us approx 3-4hours?

You definitely want to come here at a time where people are usually at school or work…seriously…otherwise there are huge lines and a stack of couples left, right and center. If you don’t know it now, you will definitely find out when you go to Korea that Korean couple culture is INTENSE. There has never been a time in my life where I wanted to be more in love. I was like damn…I want a Korean man right now, they appear to treat their girlfriends so well!! *Filled with envy*

— End of sidetracked tangent —

So what exactly is the Trick Eye Museum? Basically it is an interactive museum revolving around a new concept that stimulates your creativity and imagination through the Trompe-l’oeil (eye tricking) technique through vision. To achieve this, the museum features a mixture of artworks and 3D installations you can interact with and take photos of, so you end up looking like a part of the picture.

A bonus – according to the brochure:

“…The trickeye artwork helps you learn aesthetic senses of form and also stimulates your creativity, which leads to the activation of your brain. Your logic and thinking abilities will enhance!”

LOL! Woahh okay I’m sure these paintings aren’t that miraculous! None the less, they are still awesome. Now onto the photos!

One of the different kinds of optical illusions at the museum. These were paintings on the floor which when looked at from a certain angle, looked 3D

Nothing better than a warm drink on a frosty Korean winter day..

This illusion was awesome!! Jokes, Siree is just a midget and I’m a giant.

Love struck. My expression is good no? That’s what I call dedication.

It’s not everyday you get to be up close and personal with a Rhino

She was like this the whole trip. What a junkie!

Siree’s tactic for stealing the Museum’s food.

Being posers in typical Korean style LOL

Siree’s typical ‘pretending to be on the phone but really I’m just a poser’s’ pose

These are only some of the AMAZING interactive artworks – there are many many more cool ones as well. All in all, The Trick Eye Museum is a great experience, a lot of fun, good laughs and results in some pretty awesome photos that friends and family were highly amused by.

For more info on the Trick Eye Museum such as transportation and pricing, check out the bottom section of this post.

The rest of Hongdae is pretty amazing. It’s just a really nice place to go to just chillax with friends. There are super cute and relatively cheap fashion boutiques (the pinkage wig store is also here, but we were slightly disappointed with it!!), really cute cafes, awesome street food, epic clubs for amazingly great clubbing adventures, and just an overall really nice youth atmosphere – really safe, REALLY nice people, and no drunkard idiots – you can actually make real friendships.

The Hongdae Charm

Hongdae by day. I don’t know why, but I really like the look of streets like this…maybe because it looks quite foreign from what we’d find in Sydney.

This is along one of the back streets of Hongdae where most of the clubs are. This street also connects to Hongik Uni. The shopfront you see in the picture named “Mama” is actually a club. This is what most of the clubs in Hongdae look like – they usually have a small black-painted entrance with the club’s name on it in large white text. Inside you usually go down a set of stairs to the clubbing area.

Very naice. LOL. Opposite Condomania is NB1, where we had our awesome clubbing experience!!

This believe it or not is a restaurant. How nice is it?!!? This is what I mean about Hongdae, its style is sooooo nice!!

Pizza restaurant up close…completely diggin’ this style

I don’t know why, but Korea tends to have a thing for owning a shop pet (usually dogs). Cafe’s have them as well, we found it was fairly common. This one belonged to a cute accessory store in Hongdae.

HOW NICE ARE THE CAFES!?!?! Seriously Sydney!! Get your act together!!

Yup! Love Korean couple culture. So freaking cute.

Hongdae at night. Look at these cute shops!! I wish we had something like this in Sydney. I love Korea’s concept of using really visual store fonts/windows, and the clothes are just too cute!

Hongdae at night. I really love Hongdae at night – it comes alive!

Hahahaha this photo says it all!! “Why am I here?!” “I hate my job”

Food

Look at that preparation. Look at that skill. As soon as we saw it, we had to try it.

That block right there is butter. Yup. Buttery Goodness.

Although I’m not a huge fan of sweets, this was delicious – buttery, sweet and savoury all at once. YUMMMM

Our dinner. This was delish!! Spicy seafood hot pot. We also ordered a kimchi pancake…but unfortunately that was not so good…

FREE ICECREAM AT KARAOKE!! Seriously Korea’s service is AMAZING!!!! You never get that kind of treatment in Sydney. It is seriously all these small things that make Korea really stand out and your holiday much more enjoyable!

I LOVE HONGDAE!!!!!!!!! Soooo good!!

Map

Transportation:

For the general area: Take subway Line #2 to Hongik University Station, exit #5.

For Tourist Centre: Take Exit #5 out of Hongik University Station and follow the pink dotted line on the map.

Trick Eye Museum: Take exit #9 out of Hongik University Station and follow the blue dotted line on the map.
Address: B2 Seogyo Plaza, Seogyodong 357-1, Mapogu, Seoul.
Pricing: 13,000won Adults, 11,000won Students.
Opening Hours: 10:00AM – 9:00PM
Website: www.trickeye.com

How long should I spend there?

There are sooooo many things to do in Hongdae that Siree and I came here on many different occassions. You definitely need a day to look around, but you will find you need to come back here to dedicate time for shopping, checking out some of the awesome places to eat and to visit places such as the Cat Cafe and Trick Eye Museum. This is also a great place to hang out with friends, so if you have Korean friends, you will find yourself hanging out here with them often, as Siree and I did.

When to come to Hongdae:

You should experience Hongdae both at day and at night. There is always something going on in Hongdae, expecially at night, so it is definitely worth checking out. For example one night we went to Hongdae, there was a HUGE outdoor silent disco going on. FREAKING. AMAZING.

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