I a Seoul Man

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I a Seoul Man

Postby Bombus » Sun Sep 05, 2010 11:27 am

Although I have an insatiable hunger for devouring pretty much all the postings on this wonderful site I am very poor at contributing myself, but after returning from South Korea I had to share what was a fantastic experience. My girlfriend humoured me in allowing me to indulge in my passion for coffee as we took in some of Korea's finest caffeine dosing establishments.

South Korea is my girlfriend's home country so we were principally back visiting her family but I part hijacked the trip with various coffee shop visits and there are an awful lot to choose from. As with all countries there is a healthy number ca$hbucks as well their Korean chain equivalents which dominate the scene. These enjoy mass appeal as social hangouts, which my girlfriend believes was in part due to a TV drama revolving around the romance of a barista a few years back (the cultural phenomenon of Korean dramas is not to be underestimated). Of the local chains that we experienced they all offered at least 1 or 2 single origins of drip which were always pleasant and produced by some pretty dedicated staff.

But scratch beyond this chain/clone surface and there's a coffee bean gold mine of incredible shops many of which are also micro roasters producing their own beautiful blends and gorgeous single origins. After a bit of searching I found an English language blog called frshgrnd, which highlighted some of the finer establishments.

http://frshgrnd.com/

This lead me both to some great cafés and also to some wonderful, highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic coffee folk. Most places roast pretty dark but I hit two places which roasted their own beans and did a very fine job of it.

Caffe Themselves (http://frshgrnd.com/2010/04/caffethemselves/) is most definitely a third wave establishment but with a healthy respect for the Italian traditions of old, where all the staff are dressed up sharp. Here we met Yoo Jung Hyun, Korea's 2008 barista champ and an absolute diamond! He was so keen to talk coffee and we only stopped after 20 mins after my girlfriend gave me a neat dig in the ribs and indicated that we do more drinking and less chatting, but he told us of his experiences at the world champs and how he loved the approach that the famous restaurant “el bulli” took to food and he tried, in his own way, to emulate that same tack when working with coffee, especially when it comes to his signature drink. The espresso there was lively, fruit-tastic and deliciously sweet, but the winner of our drinks was probably the iced yirgacheffe.

On the morning of our penultimate day in Seoul a new blog post appeared on frshgrnd regarding a little place out of the way, though which had a “Slayer” espresso machine. Now I had read a bit about this and new it was pretty special and it got my juices flowing, so we decided to search it out. The place is called La Caffé and it owner is Brandon Jung Ho Bang and it was coffee geek heaven!

http://frshgrnd.com/2010/08/la-caffe/

In café they were pulling shots off a Faema Legend, which were sumptuous but it was upstairs where the action really happened. This was his coffee lab and I was like the proverbial kid in the sweet shop. He had all bases covered, Brandon is a barista, shop owner, roaster, espresso machine engineer, you name it he does it! There was a variety of machines being refurbed by Brandon including a load of La Marzoccos, a Faema E61 from 1962 plus a massively tricked out Vibeimme. Then there was “The Slayer”, which I preceded to drool over like espresso dripping from its naked portafilter. Both he and I pulled a few shots, which was a great experience for a home barista like me and he demonstrated the huge spectrum of tastes and flavours that the machine was able create from a given set of beans.

Brandon described the Korean scene as being a combination of coffee culture from both Japan and America stating the heavy presence of non-espresso coffee, where there are an ever increasing number of cafés supplying syphon coffee. He strongly recommend that we visit one other place before we departed, which was Chan's Espresso Bar.

http://frshgrnd.com/2010/03/chans-espresso-bar/

Here we met yet more enormously enthusiastic coffee people, in the trendy area of town, where outside there was a fashion shoot going on. Here they were keen to offer something quite unique to the people of the city and imported coffee from Intelligentsia and Tim Wendelboe and as well as producing espresso on two wonderful machines they also had a Clover, which offered another first for me, though sadly by this point I was reaching caffeine overload and was unable to fully appreciate all the beautiful coffee. After drinking and chatting with the people of Chan's for half an hour, Brandon appeared unexpectedly with a very shy friend who turned out to be Korea's current cupping champion, who I remember David Walsh writing so glowingly about from the WBCs.

I could write a load more, but I think if any have got this point, you'll be glad of the rest. But I must say it was a fantastic experience for a novice coffee geek like me and although it is not generally on people's flight path from this part of the world but if you do find yourself out that way there are places that won't disappoint!
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RE: I a Seoul Man

Postby Sunnyfield » Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:10 am

Hi Bombus

I enjoyed your travel story very much! When will the book be published? ;-) Just kidding, but I really liked the post. I live in Hong Kong and we are currently going through the second wave of the coffee renaissance (assuming Starbucks and the local Starbucks-equivalent, Pacific Coffee, were the first wave). Unfortunately it is still hardship for the café owners. I think (hope?) critical mass may be two years away. Korea and Taiwan, under the influence of Japanese culture based on historic ties, are lightyears ahead of Hong Kong and China. I have been to Seoul and Korea on very short trips only. You could find tiny coffeeshops on every street corner, and often the coffee beans were fresh, and the brew miles better than the big chains. If I ever have the chance to go again I will definitely check out some of the places you mentioned.

Cheers
Eward

[EDIT: corrected some typos]
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RE: I a Seoul Man

Postby CakeBoy » Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:44 pm

Interesting read Bombus, thanks for sharing - sounds like a great and very interesting trip :)
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Postby Bombus » Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:59 pm

Hehe :D Thanks Eward, glad you liked it! I think the length was due in part to being such a poor contributor to tmc but mainly my surprise and previous ignorance of such a wonderful and rich coffee culture. Most the stuff I had previously read and experienced was based around the European, US and Antipodean café scene and it was such a delight to see another healthy and developing scene. The only downside, which will be difficult to improve, was the quality of the dairy produce. The meat is fantastic out there but the milk isn’t so great.

I couldn’t agree more in terms of hardship for the owners, as it is very difficult in persuading the masses that there is something SIGNIFICANTLY better out there than Starbucks, which to most people is viewed as a gourmet product. My girlfriend was also attending a conference and was acting, in part, as a tour guide for some of her colleagues, one of who wasn’t happy until she could find a “skinny latte” at her regular Starbucks and then referred to her bucket of boiling, no-fat milk as great coffee. I know this comes across snobbish, but it was a shame that she turned her nose up at some fantastic coffee, produced by excellent baristas, which costs the same.
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