Well, hello.
I haven’t ventured into Sinsa-dong cafés much; the Garosugil area is a little too upscale to have made me want to go there often. Just sometimes, or rarely, or between sometimes and rarely. Especially early on, when I barely had any money in my Korean bank account, spending around ₩7,000 (about $6.25 in 2010) for a cup of coffee seemed outrageous. They could charge that much just because “it’s Sinsa-dong”, I thought.
Actually, the first time I went to Sinsa-dong, it was for a date a month after I started living in Korea. It was a second date with a girl my 형 had set me up with, and I suggested Sinsa-dong as an older guy teacher at my school had recommended it to me as a trendy and cool area. She seemed to like the idea. We had a fun time, but as I wrote in my journal, “First stop was a coffee and dessert shop. A mocha was extremely expensive, because that neighborhood is fashionable.” I usually don’t think about money that much, or even remember prices in general, but whichever café we went to, the high price certainly stuck out! But the name of that café and the amount I paid are lost to time, as I wouldn’t receive my bank card for another few days, so I paid cash. Also, we didn’t take a picture there. Though we did later on beside the Han River…
As it so happens, my 형 lived in Sinsa-dong once upon a time, decades ago, when he was very young, and when it was just a regular neighborhood. It was nice to hear firsthand from him about how it once was. One general detail that stood out, without going into specific places, was that when he and his younger brother first saw their apartment there, they were shocked that it had a toilet inside the living space. How disgusting! Why would you want poo in the place where you live?! They had come from a poorer and much older development outside Seoul, where restroom functions were done in the rough, outside, in a shack style place that modern societies would not consider sanitary, though of course millions of people around the world still unfortunately live in similar unsanitary conditions. If you, dear reader, are one of those people, I sincerely hope you get better sanitation soon. Anyway, my 형 and his brother certainly got used to toilets and modern life, and they’ve certainly climbed the economic ladder along with Korea over the past few decades.
But this post isn’t about Sinsa-dong, though the background of the neighborhood is certainly helpful. No, this post is about coffeesmith, a small chain whose Sinsa-dong branch I visited most often.
In mid-September, 2011, I had seen coffeesmith on Garosugil full of people as I passed by it, and with open walls to enjoy the lovely weather, and I decided to visit it soon.
Soon became the last week of summer, and while the days were still hot, the evenings were starting to get chilly. After school on Wednesday, I took the bus from Jukjeon to Sinsa-dong, and it was quick until the Gangnam station area, and then slow the rest of the way. At least I got to take a nice picture of the sunset colors in the clouds.
I arrived around 7pm and got a seat at the inner balcony. It was a big and popular place, and the seating and the ambience were very cool. I people-watched and read magazines with a nice hot mocha. Many groups of people as well as couples were there chatting and having a good time, while a few other individuals worked on their laptops alone. I spent about an hour there before I left to find some dinner, pausing across the street to take a picture of coffeesmith framed by Garosugil’s famous gingko trees.
I went to a place nearby called apartamento. I’d seen it a few months earlier and promised to go there someday. It was good Italian food.
Then I went back to coffeesmith for a few more hours. It was too soon to have coffee again, so I had a southern mint tea. I spent a few more hours there. Then I walked around the neighborhood, enjoying all the energy, before going home.
I stopped by again for a quick visit at the end of the year, on a day that I got off early from school, and it was absolutely packed just before sunset. I found a table after about five minutes and worked for about two hours. But the only picture I took this time was of the large Christmas tree.
My next visit was a month after Christmas, and it was just a few days after that one time. It was a cold day and I went to Sinsa-dong to find an interesting café that I had read about in the paper just a few days earlier, Coffee LEC (“Limited Edition Coffee”), but I didn’t go in, as I wanted to wait to go with my형 or my girlfriend at the time. I kept walking around and exploring the Garosugil area. The side streets were interesting, as they were not so polished and had a noticeable amount of small blue-collared places and workers. With, of course, lots of cafés and stuff mixed in. Eventually, after looking at an old 1960s Volkswagen bus, seeing a couple filming each other across the street, and noticing a lot of Japanese girl tourists, I made it to coffeesmith. For some reason, I had an iced latte in the middle of winter! It must have been an overheated jjimjilcafé, like I complained about when I wrote about browny 70. I sat down by the stairs and read a magazine with an article about Seoul in the 1980s, people-watched again, and worked on my laptop before going home.
In March 2012, I finally visited Coffee LEC (review scheduled to come about 25 posts later, but we’ll see…). It was good! But I had to get some work done on a lesson, so I went to coffeesmith to work with a blueberry tart. Lots of people there, which I love, and which helps me get work done, as opposed to an empty, quiet place.
Then I ended my contract with my first school and returned to Seattle. But as you can probably tell by now, I liked the vibe in coffeesmith, and so the night that I returned for a visit in November, coffeesmith was my first stop to spend some time with my 형’s younger brother and my girlfriend at the time. It was a good place to catch up and reacquaint ourselves after a few months apart. No pictures of the coffee or the scenery this time, only of my little group, so I won’t share those here. But it’s telling that coffeesmith would be my first café of choice to return to after seven months, to get the feeling of Korea again rather than just drink good coffee, which of course I’d been doing in Seattle in the interim.
I returned to Korea again with a new contract with a new school in 2013, as I’ve previously noted. About 10 days into my stay, I met up with my 형’s brother and the brother’s wife and baby daughter in the Seohyeon neighborhood of Bundang. We saw a coffeesmith and I probably recommended it to them. This was my first time in another branch, and perhaps it was their second branch overall, and while I again didn’t record what I drank, we took pictures of ourselves, and we all seemed pretty happy. Especially the baby. Babies are often happy. 😀 Unfortunately, this branch seems to have closed down sometime between 2016 and 2018 according to Naver Maps street view. It’s now a branch of A Twosome Place.
And then my visits to coffeesmith faded away. I went one more time in the middle of summer, and finally, I took a picture of what I drank. I had a refreshing iced vanilla latte. This was another new branch, one just outside Gangnam station exit 10 that had formerly been a De Chocolate. But this branch lasted only about a year before becoming another café. This building and the one next to it have since been demolished, and two new narrow skyscrapers stand in their place.
And after that, I’m not sure what happened. I guess I just decided to go to other cafés. Or maybe coffeesmith branches weren’t in the neighborhoods I was going to. The original one in Sinsa-dong’s Garosugil doesn’t exist anymore either. If you look at Naver Maps street view, it seems that by 2016 they were desperate for money, as they started accepting huge advertising banners on the side of their building. This continued through spring 2021. But by October, coffeesmith was cordoned off. Perhaps it was a pandemic casualty. By mid-2022, the building was being repurposed for something else, and it is now something called THE-RAPUEZ.
But! You might be thinking by now that coffeesmith has faded away into obsolescence. Far from it. They seem to have many branches all over Seoul! I couldn’t believe it when I checked their website; they have well over 100 branches, with three more coming soon this year.
I mean, I have seen them around during my visits to Seoul, but whenever I saw one, I thought, “oh, coffeesmith is still around”. It’s similar to Pascucci; there’s a lot of them, but they never seem to be in the areas I go to. It just shows you how big and dense Seoul is, and how there is seemingly a never-ending myriad of amazing cafés. A coffee capital, Seoul has become.
In the end, this meandering review has focused more on the vibe at the Sinsa-dong coffeesmith than the actual coffee. Now, way back in 2013, in an “Article” post in this blog, I linked to a review from the website seoulfood. But it has gone defunct. So may I direct your attention to the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive, so you can check out this post. This reviewer also focused on the vibe, but for him it was more negative, with too many “skeletons” hanging out in a show of vanity. I see where he comes from, but I think his take is a little extreme, as I probably would have skipped going there myself if the majority of the clientele was so extreme. Still, it’s a valid and interesting take on a snapshot of a time and place. Whatever I or he think, coffeesmith seems to have done something right, as they continue to prosper over a decade later. Perhaps the coffee actually is good, or perhaps the trendy vibe is enough to keep it going. There is room in this world for all sorts of places after all. There is even room in Seoul!
Here’s a link to a Google Map to find the former location of coffeesmith, Sinsa-dong branch.
And here’s a link to a Naver Map of the former location of coffeesmith, Sinsa-dong branch.
Address: 서울특별시 강남구 가로수길 13
Korean name: 커피스미스
Website: http://coffeesmith.co.kr
Final verdict: ***
written in Seattle and Olympia at the following cafés, where the listed drinks assisted in the composition:
Seattle – Herkimer (Phinney Ridge branch) – 8oz oat mocha – $4.31 mocha + .82 for oat milk + tax = $5.63
Olympia – Dancing Goat Coffee (downtown branch) – 8oz oat mocha – $3.50 mocha + 1.15 for oat milk + tax = $5.10
Olympia – Olympic Coffee Roasting – oat cortado – $4.60 cortado + .85 for oat milk + tax = $5.98
Seattle – University Zoka – iced coconut mocha = $6.61
(I also left a $1 tip at each location)
Normally I don’t break down prices like this, but since I talked about it at the beginning, I thought I might do it once. Spend your money wisely!
note that “drip coffee” is not the same as “hand-drip coffee” in Korea… this is usually called “pour-over” in Seattle, and it’s not very common
cafeseaseo 
2 thoughts on “coffeesmith (chain; Sinsa-dong branch)”