Kids' brunch and cookie decorating at a Gwangju large café: La Cuesta

Going to a café with kids on the weekend comes with a surprising number of conditions. You want good coffee, a menu the kids can actually eat, and above all, a place where they won't whine "mom, I'm bored~" haha. This time we visited La Cuesta, a large café in Gonjiam, Gwangju, Gyeonggi.

It's a bakery café near Gonjiam that's good to stop by before or after a trip to Hwadam Botanic Garden. It sits right at the foot of a mountain, so everything around it is green, and the café itself is pretty large too.

Honestly, big cafés are often pretty but the food can be a letdown, so I don't usually expect much. But here, the brunch was actually good, and there was plenty for the kids to do, so we ended up staying longer than expected :)

Lots of bread, but the brunch was the real winner

Once you walk in, the sheer variety of baked goods is impressive.

From salt bread, croissants, mont blanc, and custard cream buns to all kinds of cookies, the variety was huge — but this time we decided to skip the bread and go all in on brunch haha.

What we ordered was

• Shrimp guacamole open sandwich
• Mushroom cream pasta
• Pomodoro pasta

Those three! The adults enjoyed the shrimp guacamole open sandwich. Shrimp and guacamole together made for a light, easy brunch.

The kids, of course, went for pasta haha. Both the mushroom cream pasta and the pomodoro pasta went down really well with them.

Sometimes when we go to brunch cafés with kids, there's nothing on the menu that really works for them, but here there were plenty of options they could actually eat, so it worked well as a proper family meal.

The La Cuesta latte is sweet

And surprisingly memorable was the La Cuesta latte! My husband is the type who always orders an iced vanilla latte at any café haha, but even though this wasn't a vanilla latte, he said it was sweet and delicious and drank it right up. If you like sweet coffee, it's worth trying.

No time for the kids to get bored

The biggest reason I felt La Cuesta was great to visit with kids! You can decorate cookies right inside the café. The kids drew and decorated their own cookies and stayed focused on it for quite a while.

There's also a separate space where kids can draw while looking out at nature. They even had a drawing contest! From a parent's point of view, just having the kids focused on something while we sipped our coffee in peace was already a win haha.

There's also a four-cut photo booth inside, which was nice for grabbing a picture with the kids. Personally I wished it were free haha, but still, being able to make a family memory while hanging out at the café was a nice touch.

You can run around outside too, but watch out for bugs haha

True to a large Gonjiam café in Gwangju, Gyeonggi, the outdoor space is pretty spacious too, not just the indoors. There are outdoor tables, room for kids to run around, and you can even rent a picnic set, so on a nice day it looked like a great place to spend time outside.

But being right at the foot of a mountain is both a blessing and a curse — there are a lot of bugs haha. Kids who hate bugs might be horrified, while kids who love insects could lose track of time playing. This one really depends on your kid's personality haha.

The new-menu tasting corner was fun too

One thing that stuck with me personally was the new-menu tasting corner. They let customers try candidates for upcoming new menu items and leave feedback. It's not just a tasting — it made me curious whether the item I picked would actually become a real menu item later, and it felt like customers get to have a small say in shaping the café's menu. That was oddly fun haha. I want to come back next time and check, 'did the one I picked make it?'

Worth another visit if you're heading to Gonjiam with kids :)

La Cuesta wasn't just a café for a quick cup of coffee — it was a place to have brunch with the kids and spend a relaxed stretch of time. Brunch, then cookie decorating, then drawing, then four-cut photos, then running around outside if the weather's nice!

If you've ever taken your kids to a café and heard "mom, let's go" before you even finished a few sips of coffee, you know how big a deal this is haha. The food was better than expected and there was plenty for the kids to do, so our family left satisfied. If you're planning a trip to Hwadam Botanic Garden or looking for a large café to take kids to in Gonjiam, Gwangju, it's worth a stop.

If there's just one thing to remember, La Cuesta was a large Gonjiam café where parents got their brunch and kids got plenty to do too :)