Ttukseom café on a gacha run: peach soft serve & decaf, Mellows

Mellows: a Ttukseom Station dessert café for a quick sugar boost

Mellows is a café in an alley near Ttukseom Station that serves soft serve ice cream and coffee. The goal of this Seoul trip was to pull a ton of gacha (capsule toy machines), but hunting for the ones I wanted left me tired and out of sugar. So before heading to my next stop, Seongsu, I looked for a dessert place near Ttukseom Station. I didn't want anything too heavy, just enough to get my sugar back up, and I heard about a café near Ttukseom Station that sells ice cream, so I went. It's called Mellows.

Mellows location and opening hours

Mellows is at 1F, 7 Wangsimni-ro 10-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea. It is open 07:00-20:00 (Saturday 11:00-20:00) and closed every Sunday.

The red-fronted place in the alley was Mellows. It's just a little way into the alley, so it wasn't hard to find.

Is Mellows cramped inside?

The inside of Mellows isn't big, but thanks to the large windows it didn't feel cramped. There are bar seats as well as regular tables.

The moment I walked in, I liked the cute, cozy space. It looked like a nice place to rest while having a simple dessert. I liked that it has bar seats and regular tables, and with the big windows it never felt tight.

Mellows menu: does it serve decaf coffee?

Mellows isn't just an ice cream shop. It sells coffee too, and there's decaf. For such a small café to have decaf is great for people like me who can't have caffeine in the afternoon, which makes it a lovely café near Ttukseom Station. There were also several kinds of ice cream, so it's good for trying a variety.

I ordered these four items.

• Chocolate soft serve
• Peach soft serve
• Decaf iced americano
• Iced café latte

Mellows has an open layout where you can watch the coffee being made and the ice cream being swirled. I liked seeing the owner carefully make the coffee and serve the ice cream with such care. On top of that, the fridge was packed with Sangha Farm organic milk cartons and fresh raw milk, with no gaps. Just seeing them use such good ingredients, I thought it couldn't possibly taste bad.

Before the drinks and desserts came out, I took photos of my gacha capsules. A Seoul trip whose purpose is gacha! It was quite fun and I was happy, and that's all that matters.

How do Mellows' Sangha Farm peach and chocolate soft serves taste?

Mellows' soft serve comes with the topping you ordered on top of ice cream made with Sangha Farm milk.

After a short wait, the desserts and drinks came out like this. Each ice cream had the topping I ordered on top, and doesn't the ice cream look so pretty?

Peach soft serve at Mellows

The peach soft serve at Mellows had a lot of fruit pulp. It wasn't only on top, there was plenty underneath too. The clean, nutty flavor of Sangha Farm ice cream plus sweet peach pieces was so good. It felt like my missing sugar was refilled all at once.

Chocolate soft serve at Mellows

The chocolate soft serve at Mellows was exactly right for an afternoon when your sugar has crashed. The chocolate syrup didn't taste cheap, and it wasn't too sweet, just enough to lift your sugar. You could tell at a glance that they hadn't skimped on ingredients and had filled the cup right up. If you dig all the way down, you hit crunchy cereal flakes that go really well with the ice cream, a great dessert near Ttukseom Station.

Mellows decaf americano and latte: how good is the coffee?

Even though Mellows is an ice cream café, the coffee was good too. The decaf iced americano wasn't watery and had lively acidity, and the iced café latte had a rich milk flavor.

Cafés that focus on ice cream often have weak or mediocre coffee, but here the coffee is great too! The decaf iced americano I ordered in particular didn't have that thin, bland taste decaf usually has. A refined acidity lingered in my mouth! The latte also had a rich milk flavor and tasted really good, probably because they use that fridge full of raw milk so generously. It was the perfect place to refill sugar and caffeine before heading to Seongsu.

Is Mellows near Ttukseom Station worth a return visit?

I stopped by when I was struggling with a sugar crash, and it was a really satisfying dessert café near Ttukseom Station. The ice cream feels high-quality and the coffee is good too, so my mood lifted a lot at a café I'd dropped into casually. The prices aren't high either, so it seems fine for takeout. If you're looking for a café near Seongsu or Ttukseom Station, I'd visit Mellows again.