Front Seoul, Sinsa: a three-floor cafe bar behind Garosu-gil
When people finish dinner in Sinsa and want a coffee, many of them head over to Seongsu or Hannam. Lately I stay put. If there is a place five to ten minutes’ walk from the restaurant where the photos come out well and two hours of conversation is easy, there is no reason to make the evening longer than it needs to be.
I have written before that I like the big cafes in Seoul’s busiest districts. There is a kind of flex in a large, well-finished room on expensive land that the enormous suburban cafes on Instagram never quite deliver in person. Front Seoul is the one I keep going back to in Sinsa. I assumed it would disappear within a year. It has been busy at every hour for years now, with plenty of foreign guests, and it is one of the places I actively hope survives.
It is a three-floor cafe bar in the alley behind Garosu-gil. I have been a regular for a while and never written it up, so here it is.
Before you go
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Ordering | Order at the counter on the ground floor, take a pager, sit anywhere on any floor. The top floor also serves highballs in the evening |
| Where to sit | Evening tea: the middle-floor window table over the alley. Comfort: the leather sofas on the top floor. Photos: inside the ground-floor arches, shooting out |
| Getting there | Sinsa station exit 8, about seven minutes on foot into the alleys behind Garosu-gil. No parking; paid lots at Singu Elementary (underground) or the Garosu-gil public lot |
| Korean name | 프론트서울 |
A facade from somewhere else
One block off the main Garosu-gil street, toward Serosu-gil, the tone changes. People say Garosu-gil has died, but a street in from the main drag it was full of Koreans and foreign visitors sitting over coffee on a weekday evening. It is not a neighborhood to judge from the main road.
I first found the place because the building stopped me. A white stucco facade with dense mouldings, four big arched windows on the ground floor that double as doors, and another row of round-topped arches above. I thought it was a museum. There is a bench built into the window outside, and there are almost always foreigners on it with a coffee. In the evening the light inside comes on and the alley itself changes.
The cafe is run by the company of Park Tae-jun, the webtoon artist behind Lookism, which is probably why it has lasted. It is his office as much as a cafe. Either way, I am glad someone is paying for it.
Ground floor: check in
Inside the door is a wooden desk with a round sign that reads CHECK IN, a hotel front desk with a few red books on an arched wooden top. The name of the cafe is a hint, and the desk is the answer. On its own it could be a boutique hotel lobby in Europe.
The ground floor is tall. The hall is wide, the ceiling is high, and even when it is busy you are not aware of the next table. The floor is brick laid in fan-shaped half circles, which is oddly pleasant to walk on. Rattan-seated French chairs, brick walls with evenly spaced white wall lamps that go warm after dark, and the low sound of a big espresso machine behind the counter.
We had come from dinner, so it was two iced americanos and a latte for my friend. The signature Front cream latte will have to wait for a daytime visit. The menu is on a vertical screen above a wood-and-concrete counter; the dessert case holds the banana pudding cake, a Basque cheesecake, croffles and, in summer, a fresh mango shaved ice. I looked and did not order. Staff wear black T-shirts with their own style on top and keep their manner restrained, neither performing friendliness nor ignoring you. It matches the room.
Upstairs: the reason I come
The real weapon is above. Go up to the second floor and then up again and there is a small bar with a round table and a window that frames the Sinsa alley. This corner does not show up in other reviews, and it is my favourite spot in the building. The evening light from the street comes in through the glass, a big potted plant leans against the wall, and for a moment it feels like a small cafe in a Daikanyama back street.
The middle floor has the four big arched windows seen from outside. Caramel leather armchairs and round side tables sit in front of them, with large banana-leaf plants beside. People take quiet phone calls here, or just sit with a coffee and look out. The height of the ceiling and the size of the windows work together and time stretches.
The facade says anywhere but Korea, and then the noise and light of a Sinsa alley come straight through the window and it becomes Seoul again. That switch is the thing I like most about the building.
The top floor has a long leather sofa along the wall with Barcelona chairs in front of it and wall lamps that turn warm white after dark. This is where coffee becomes highballs. On one side is a high counter with round stools and porthole windows behind it, closer to a cocktail bar than a cafe. Older Sinsa cafes were either daytime coffee places or night bars, so you moved. Here the day, evening and night happen in one building.
What interests me most is that all of this has been maintained. I first came years ago and the wall tones, the lighting and the seating are exactly as they were, without looking tired. Kurarie, which I wrote about recently, is another big cafe with taste nearby, but it is built around brand crossovers. Front Seoul is built around the hours of the day moving up the stairs.
We arrived around half past seven. The ground floor had room, the upper floors were nearly full. With this many kinds of seats we had no trouble finding one, and not only the window ones are good.
I’d recommend it to anyone who has just eaten in Sinsa and wants two hours of coffee within walking distance, to first dates and blind dates, where changing floors gives you a change of tone, and to anyone showing a friend from abroad around, because the facade starts the conversation for you. Next time I will come in daylight for the cream latte, the banana pudding cake and the mango shaved ice, then come back another night for a highball at the top-floor counter.
My rating: 5/5. Already on the list of places I return to.