cafe seoul forest

Croffles first, then a Korean kitchen

The croffle is where cafe seoul forest began and where the counter still starts: croissant dough pressed in a waffle iron, crisp at the edges, sold beside proper waffles. The shop traded as I love croffle before it took the current name, working out of a smaller balcony space, and that history still shapes the sweet half of the menu.

What has changed is everything behind it. The kitchen now cooks a Korean menu of kimchi jjigae, sundubu, tteokbokki and jimdak, made by one of the owners and served with rice. This is not a bread bakery in the flour-and-ferment sense. It is a café that started with one pressed pastry and grew a stove.

The upstairs floor changes the rhythm

The old balcony café has become a dine-in place with two tempos. Downstairs the order stays light: coffee, a croffle, a waffle, something quick after a walk through the Seoul Forest café streets.

Upstairs the kitchen slows things down. Jimdak, braised chicken in a claypot, takes time because it is cooked to order rather than passed across a counter, and that wait is part of the format, especially at lunch when the table wants rice and stew before anything sweet. The atmosphere is relaxed and handmade rather than polished, and the room is at its best when a group uses both halves of it.

Order the croffle, then decide how hungry you are

Start with a croffle on a first visit. It is the item that explains the place, kept central even after the menu grew around it, and it is still the reason most people climb the stairs in the first place.

If lunch is the point of the walk, order kimchi jjigae or sundubu with rice. Both suit the house better than treating the savoury menu as background noise to a coffee. Tteokbokki is the one to add when texture matters, firm and chewy rather than soft and sweet. Jimdak is the slower order, a claypot braise for a table that is staying a while. Coffee belongs beside the croffle rather than as a tasting exercise, since the house is not built around named origins or brew methods. Come hungry enough to let the old croffle identity and the newer kitchen meet on the same table.