Sinsa café: choco butter sand and iced americano, Butter & Shelter

Lately I've been having way too much fun hunting down good-value Dubai chewy cookies haha. My love for these things is nowhere near over — Dubai chewy cookies have basically become a fixture in everyone's life at this point (agree with me here).

My actual goal that day was the Dubai sandwich at Butter & Shelter, but they were out of it, so I grabbed a Dubai chewy cookie instead. Even the iced americano turned out way better than expected, so honestly the coffee ended up just as memorable — here's my review of Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa.

Where is Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa, and where do you park?

Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa is at 26 Gangnam-daero 158-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 1st floor Unit 102, South Korea — a 4-minute walk from Sinsa Station Exit 8. It's open daily from 10 AM to 10 PM, and only valet parking is available in front of the café, so if you're driving, good to know ahead of time.

Butter & Shelter is a chain, and it's genuinely in all the hottest, best locations. This Sinsa Station branch is one of the well-loved cafés in the area!

Kiosk ordering and the drink menu at Butter & Shelter

Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa is a Sinsa Station café that orders through a kiosk. They accept Zero Pay and Seoul Pay, so don't miss out on that~

The drink menu isn't huge, but there's regular espresso plus a crème brûlée espresso, and you can also order ades and teas.

The handwritten Japanese menu board

The most surprising thing at Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa was this Japanese menu board! I guess this butter sand and Dubai chewy cookie café is really popular with Japanese visitors haha. It doesn't look printed — it looks handwritten? If so, that's a lot of effort put into a menu board.

I heard they get a lot of bulk gift orders too, like corporate gifts or wedding favors — makes sense, since the butter sand storage and cold-pack instructions are written out separately in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. The boxes are so clean and pretty! You'd definitely smile if someone gave you one as a gift.

Dessert lineup: butter sands, Dubai chewy cookies and cakes

The dessert lineup at Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa was pretty varied — butter sands, butter bars, cakes, and cookies, more options than I expected, so it was fun picking. But the clear star is the butter sand!

There are three types of cake too: Victoria cake, Basque cheesecake, and tiramisu cake.

This Sinsa dessert café also has 6-7 different cookie flavors, so yeah — it's definitely a Sinsa dessert spot. What really surprised me was that almost every table had a butter sand on it. It totally felt like the signature item, and I got swept up in that vibe and ended up ordering an extra choco butter sand too haha.

Fellow Dubai chewy cookie lovers know it's not easy to find a good one for ₩2,900 these days — even convenience stores can't hit that price anymore. But Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa's version is small in size but doesn't skimp on the filling, all for ₩2,900! If you love dessert, this is a Garosu-gil café worth stopping by :)

Inside Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa: seating and atmosphere

Walking into this Sinsa Station café, it was bigger than I expected. The overall clean vibe makes it look great for catching up with a friend over chat, like in the photos, or for a coffee date.

There were people solo with laptops working, and further inside there's group seating too, so it seemed like a great fit for group meetings or study groups.

Gray, wood, and beige — such a calming interior color palette. And the dark green that's Butter & Shelter's signature color shows up here and there as an accent without overdoing it, keeping the brand identity intact haha.

There's a cute photo zone with a mirror right next to the desserts — it seemed to make you look a bit taller/longer in photos, so I snapped one right away!

Everything, including the self-service water and napkin station, was tidy and organized, which I liked — and even the staff at Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa were all really nice-looking and kind.

When I visited, there was a foreign staff member too — honestly, model-level gorgeous haha. Somehow the look just matched Butter & Shelter's whole vibe. I found myself glancing twice without meaning to. Clean café plus kind staff — bonus points +++!!

How to store butter sands and how takeout is packed

The butter sand at Butter & Shelter Gangnam-Sinsa is said to keep for up to a year frozen. Their packaging is pretty and clearly marketed for taking desserts to go, so there were quite a few takeout customers when I ordered — but even so, they got my order ready faster than I expected. My iced americano and Dubai chewy cookie (plus butter sand).

Made with chewy caramel and French Isigny gourmet butter — how could it not be good! And frozen, it keeps for a year, apparently!

How the iced americano, Dubai chewy cookie and choco butter sand taste

A choco butter sand showing up in Dubai-chewy-cookie-town haha. Along with the desserts, I took home an iced americano too! When I'm eating dessert at a café, I mostly just need the coffee to not be too bitter haha — but this americano was genuinely delicious. A rich, nutty base flavor, and one sip in I let out an actual gasp.

The Dubai chewy cookie I took home was ₩2,900 each, and not huge in size — though not tiny either? But size wasn't the point — the flavor was. One bite in and my first thought was, wait, there's this much rich pistachio for this price?

• ✔️ Strong pistachio flavor
• ✔️ Chewy chocolate coating texture
• ✔️ Generous amount of kadaif

I was so won over by the Dubai chewy cookie that I also picked up the best-selling butter sand, choosing the choco flavor to match my taste. I tried the choco butter sand too — best eaten before the filling melts, and the outer cookie/butter biscuit part was softer than I expected. Kind of melts away in your mouth.

Definitely a Sinsa Station café worth recommending. 100% would come back!