The Cafe Tag - ZOO COFFEE

Hello beautiful people !

If you know me even a little bit, you know I love coffee, cafes and everything related to that. In Korea the cafe culture is so rich and colorful I could spend all my days in cafes sipping pretty drinks, studying and doing some hardcore people watching (wait that's exactly what I do almost every day). However I've noticed how easy it is to just walk into the closest, familiar cafe near my home and sit there for hours.  Seoul is full of small, not well-known cafes with adorable themes or vintage decoration and whatnot. So to inspire myself to explore more and to also find cool places to suggest to you all I have decided to start doing these "The Cafe Tag" - posts. Sound good, yeah?

I'm gonna start with a "ZOO COFFEE" which is a place I've been meaning to visit for a few months already. It's a pretty popular coffee chain and has several destinations around Seoul. It's literally what the name says, a zoo cafe. Everything inside the cafes are designed to fit the whole zoo slash jungle theme. They also have stuffed zoo animal plushies around the cafe that are, at least at some of their cafes, also for sale. I recognized some of the plushies from my childhood, actually. So that was a weird, nice coincidence.

The cafe I've had my eyes on for a quite a while is located in Hongdae. The atmosphere in Hongdae's ZOO COFFEE is definitely something else. The cafe itself is not very spacious and big, so it makes you feel like you enter a whole new world from the busy streets of Hongdae. They also have this adorable outdoor terrace and the view from there is really pretty with like 2 huge trees right next to the cafe so you feel like you're in a jungle, hahah. Really makes you feel like you are in a completely another world just chilling watching the busy people down on the streets. And can we please take a moment to appreciate those trees they have placed inside the cafe ? They really add this relaxing ambiance to the whole space, and the slightly dim lighting just makes it all very calm and nothing like Hongdae usually is. 

On their menu they have coffees, smoothies, tea & other beverages. They also serve amazing looking waffles with whipped cream and berries or syrup, bingsu (Korean ice dessert) and zoo-themed cake slices (like a cake with zebra stripes, how cute is that?), sandwiches, Gelato, honey bread et cetera. Their "I'm Korean" - menu consists of Korean flavors and original drinks made using very Korean ingredients, for example red ginseng and black beans. 

The price range is your usual price range at most Korean cafes. The drink prices hover between 4000 - 6500 won and the foods and desserts can be up to 13 000 won. 

I should definitely bring up my coffee game the next time I visit one of these new cool cafes because ordering an iced americano is everything but original. But at least it's always definitely delicious and I did enjoy the atmosphere nevertheless with my super boring and simple order. We sat outside on the terrace for couple of hours while chatting and enjoying the nice view. 

The only not so positive thing I could mention about this cafe, as a social media addict who is always fiddling with her phone, is that they didn't seem to have any power outlets in their cafe. The reason for that might be that hey don't want people to like spend hours and hours there taking up all their seats because of the lack of the space and the fact that it is a theme cafe after all, but as a person who absolutely fell in love with the calmness of this place and would like to spend some more time there it was a minor disappointment. But in cafes like these you really should spend your time enjoying the experience and your company instead of your phone screen, right? 

HOW TO GET THERE:

The Hongdae ZOO COFFEE is really close to the Hongdae subway station, so the easiest way to get there is to take line 2 to Hongdae university and get out from exit 9 and it's literally right there, a one minute walk away. 

Have you ever been to any of Korea's zoo coffees or are you planning to visit them? Also let me know if you have any great go-to suggestions here around Seoul! 

xx,
Julia