Gwangju drive café for basil pizza bread and a ₩6,500 Americano: Sum

I'm from Seongnam, and last weekend my boyfriend and I were figuring out what to do on a Saturday afternoon — and ended up driving up to Namhansanseong again, haha. If you're already up at Namhansanseong, you've got to pick a café, right? This café, Sum, is actually my second visit here!

I'd been here once before with my boyfriend, paying out of my own pocket, and I remembered it for how pretty and grand the building was. It didn't have that generic mass-produced large bakery café vibe, which I loved — so I was happy to have a good reason to come back, haha.

Bottom line up front: the Namhansanseong drive was a success. The café was a success too.

Getting to Sum near Namhansanseong: hard without a car, great as a drive

Sum is a large bakery café on Ojeon-gil in Namhansanseong-myeon, Gwangju, Gyeonggi. You need to drive a bit further even after reaching Namhansanseong, so it's essentially impossible to visit without a car. On the plus side, the drive up itself is a scenic course, which made it perfect for getting some fresh air with my boyfriend.

It's huge, first of all. Parking was easy too — no circling around looking for a spot, since you can park right in front of the café.

Main building, annex, music room and rooftop: a tour of Sum

The exterior alone is genuinely massive.

It's not just a main building — there's also an annex, plus a music room and a rooftop, so you can just come for a coffee and end up exploring all over the place, haha.

How much bakery does Sum actually have?

Sum's bakery selection is quite extensive too. Just from what I saw — scones, cakes, mont blanc, red bean mammoth bread, salt bread, mocha buns, black sesame bread, and on and on... it felt like there were more than 40 items. With that many kinds of bread, I spent ages deciding what to get, haha.

Mountain-view window seats on the second floor of Sum's main building

Sum's main building has high ceilings, a duplex layout, and full floor-to-ceiling windows across the front, so you get the natural scenery in one sweeping view. The second floor was my favorite spot here.

Because... the view is seriously incredible. You can see the mountain spread out right in front of you — perfect for zoning out with a coffee. The immediate foreground is more of a rice-paddy view.

I especially loved the second floor of the main building. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the mountain unfolds so refreshingly, and the atmosphere ended up being better than I expected. There were plenty of people since it was a weekend afternoon, but the space is so spacious that it never felt crowded, and the tables were roomy enough to sit comfortably for a long time.

Something unexpectedly great: no echoing noise. At a lot of large cafés, the more crowded it gets, the more everything hums and buzzes — but here it was easy to have a conversation. I really hate it when café tables are packed too close together, haha, so this mattered a lot to me, and I was happy with it.

Sum's annex: music room downstairs, birch-wood interior upstairs

Sum's annex even has a music listening room. After touring the main building, I checked out the annex too. On the first floor of the annex there's a music room with a huge screen — it felt a bit like a movie theater. Having a space like this inside a café definitely makes it feel different from a typical bakery café. Coffee in the main building, then music in the annex — there's plenty to enjoy.

The second floor of the annex has a birch-wood-style interior, so the mood is a little different from the main building, which made exploring the space kind of fun.

If the weather's nice, you can head up to the rooftop too — getting to enjoy multiple spaces in one café seems like Sum's real strength.

How much is an Americano at Sum? ₩6,500

Sum's Americano is ₩6,500, which isn't too painful considering it's a large café. A lot of big cafés charge over ₩8,000 for an Americano, right? Here it's just ₩6,500.

Basil pizza bread at Sum, shared between two

For dessert we picked the basil pizza bread(?), and it was genuinely huge. We'd just casually picked one pizza bread, but it turned out way bigger than expected, so we felt like we'd made a great choice, haha.

When we cut into it, basil and pizza filling were tucked inside, and everything came spilling out the moment we sliced it. The taste was solid too, and it went well with coffee. It was big enough that the two of us shared it comfortably.

Is Sum worth the drive? A verdict after two visits

With these large bakery cafés, the bread is often just pretty to look at but nothing special taste-wise — but at Sum, the bread was actually good too. It's a great stop to make while driving around Namhansanseong, so seriously, everyone should go at least once. I mean, I came back for a second visit, so that says something!

Even on my first visit, the building's beauty and grandeur stuck with me. There are so many large bakery cafés these days, but Sum isn't just spacious — the building itself is worth seeing, and I loved that about it.

The road up to Namhansanseong is fairly long, so you really do need a car — but that actually made it perfect for a drive with my boyfriend. Eating bread and coffee, resting while looking at the mountain, then heading back down — it's a solid weekend afternoon plan, haha. I didn't get to try the rooftop on my first visit, so I'm planning to check that out next time.