Large Sinnonhyeon café: pistachio matcha latte, Upper and Under

What is Upper and Under, the big café in Sinnonhyeon?

Upper and Under (어퍼앤언더) is a good Sinnonhyeon Station café to visit when you want a big café near Gangnam Station. The space is large and it sells a wide range of drinks and desserts, so it draws plenty of people.

Getting to Upper and Under: the CGV alley between Gangnam and Sinnonhyeon Stations

You can reach Upper and Under by walking about 5 minutes along the Gangnam CGV alley between Gangnam Station and Sinnonhyeon Station.

Upper and Under uses the whole building, so you can tell the café is pretty big.

On the red brick path up to the 2nd floor there are lots of green trees, which feels wonderfully fresh.

Floor layout and where the counter is

The 1st floor has seating only, the 2nd floor has the counter and seating, and the café runs up to the 3rd floor as well.

There's a poster saying that if you sign up for the Shinhan SOL Bank app (they seem to have a partnership) and register a recommending staff member, you get a free financier and ₩10,000 in Naver Pay. The signature cream latte is also on a photo poster. There are four cream latte options, so if you like soft, sweet coffee, they look worth trying.

Upper and Under cake types and prices

Upper and Under's five cakes (lemon, raspberry, fig, tiramisu and Earl Grey grapefruit) are all ₩8,500. As a dessert café in Sinnonhyeon, it has a nice variety of cakes on display.

The lemon cake, the raspberry cake and the fig cake, which came out for autumn, are all the same price: ₩8,500.

The tiramisu and Earl Grey grapefruit cakes are also ₩8,500, and I liked that all five cakes are displayed in neat, square shapes.

The cake I picked: yellow cheese Basque cheesecake

There's also a vanilla Basque cheesecake (₩9,000) and a yellow cheese (hwangchijeu, a sweet-savory cheese powder flavor) Basque cheesecake (₩9,500), and the orange yellow cheese one looked so good that it became my cake of the day! hahaha Oh, and now that I look, the cheesecakes are displayed in triangle shapes?! hahaha

Upper and Under pie, canelé, financier and madeleine prices

Besides cake, Upper and Under sells pies, crème brûlée, canelés (small caramelized French pastries), financiers and madeleines, priced from ₩3,800 to ₩8,300. The fig pie (₩8,300), choco banana pie (₩8,000) and crème brûlée (₩6,900) look great, and the yellow cheese financier (₩4,500) looked delicious too, but I'd already chosen the yellow cheese Basque cheesecake, so I skipped it. Between the double vanilla canelé (₩4,500) and the matcha canelé (₩4,500), the green color of the matcha one looked so tasty that I grabbed it like I was in a trance!!

Between the plain financier (₩3,800) and the pistachio financier (₩4,700), I was tempted by the pistachio one too... The lemon madeleine (₩4,300) and Earl Grey fig madeleine (₩4,500) look good as well!!! And the salted choco financier (₩4,100) is oddly long and thin like a Pepero stick, haha

Drink menu in Korean and English

The drink menu is by the 2nd-floor counter, and there are both Korean and English versions, probably because there are a lot of foreign tourists. In hot summer weather I'm sure the mango bar sherbet latte would have been really tempting, haha

How do the pistachio matcha latte and matcha canelé taste?

Here's everything I ordered at Upper and Under: a café latte, a pistachio matcha latte, a matcha canelé and a yellow cheese Basque cheesecake! Looking at it now, the plate is way too big for the size of the canelé, haha

The café latte, topped with pretty latte art, comes in a mug with the Upper and Under name on it.

The pistachio matcha latte, with nutty pistachio cream over a bittersweet matcha latte base, is so good!!

The matcha canelé, with its exotic bright green look, was super good too, haha. The sad part is that I was so busy eating the yellow cheese Basque cheesecake that I forgot to take a photo of it...!! I had a great time at Upper and Under, a Sinnonhyeon Station café with a big space and tasty desserts and coffee drinks.

Upper and Under basic info

• Address: 28 Gangnam-daero 102-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• Hours: daily 11:00-22:00