Sinnonhyeon canelé café: Earl Grey & vanilla at Upper and Under

I stopped by Upper and Under (어퍼앤언더), a well-known bakery café between Sinnonhyeon Station and Gangnam Station. It's a big café, and even on a weekday afternoon it was pretty crowded. With cream lattes and baked treats on the menu, it also works nicely as a bakery café for a Gangnam date.

Where is Upper and Under? Location, parking and hours

Upper and Under sits midway between Sinnonhyeon Station and Gangnam Station. It's about a 5-minute walk from Sinnonhyeon Station Exit 6, and even from Gangnam Station you'll get there in under 10 minutes.

It's open every day from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., with no closing days that I saw. There's no parking of its own, so you'll need a nearby paid lot.

Inside Upper and Under: three floors of seating

The café has three floors in total. The 1st floor is completely separate from the other spaces, so it's a little quieter. When it's busy, though, it gets noisy here too.

The 2nd floor has the counter and seating, and the 3rd floor is seating only. There's also a terrace you can step out onto, but nobody was using it, maybe because it was cold that day. The 2nd and 3rd floors filled up fast and were buzzing. The restrooms are on the 2nd floor, separate for men and women.

Upper and Under menu: cream lattes, canelés and cakes

This Sinnonhyeon café had a wide range of drinks and bakery desserts. Drinks include coffee, non-coffee drinks, ades, tea, cream lattes and seasonal items. The cream latte seems to be the signature at Upper and Under, so I picked from the cream latte list too.

The bakery side is just as varied, with canelé (a small caramelized French custard cake), financiers, cakes and more, so choosing was hard. And the cakes were so pretty, seriously!

We were too full to try a cake, but lots of people around us were eating them. What we ordered: an iced pistachio cream latte, hot hibiscus tea, an Earl Grey canelé, a vanilla canelé and a crème brûlée flan.

How does the pistachio cream latte at Upper and Under taste?

About a third of the iced pistachio cream latte is covered in a thick, chewy pistachio foam. Upper and Under is known for its cream lattes, so I wondered which to get and went with pistachio. You can find a regular latte anywhere, right? The pistachio cream latte felt a bit more unusual. The foam on top was properly dense and chewy, and I loved it.

The nuttiness of the pistachio plus the cream gave it a sweet, rich coffee-latte flavor, and the way the latte and pistachio cream blended felt different from ordinary coffee.

I ordered it because pistachio items are everywhere these days, and if you like pistachio it's definitely worth trying. Under the foam is a smooth latte, so you get the strong coffee flavor too.

Hot hibiscus tea at Upper and Under on a cold day

I got the hibiscus hot because the weather has turned cold. It has no caffeine, so it was a calming kind of tea. I also picked canelé, my favorite dessert.

Earl Grey and vanilla canelés and crème brûlée flan at Upper and Under

Upper and Under has several kinds of canelé, so if you love them, it's a great place to try different flavors.

I tried the Earl Grey canelé and the vanilla canelé. The batter wasn't too gooey and the outside was crisp, so it was the best canelé I've had lately.

The crème brûlée flan was new to me and fun too. I like brûlée, and the top was lightly caramelized on an egg-tart-like pastry, so it felt familiar. The soft inside and sweet top made a slightly different but nice pairing, haha. Still, next time I'd go for the canelé! I'd probably buy several and eat them.

Would I go back to Upper and Under, the Sinnonhyeon canelé café?

Maybe because it's a Sinnonhyeon bakery café, every pastry was delicious. From baked goods to cakes there's a wide variety, and the cream latte was good too, so do try it. Give Upper and Under, the bakery café between Sinnonhyeon Station and Gangnam Station, a visit.