Gangneung hanok café with green tea cake and hand-drip coffee: Cafe

While traveling around Gangneung, I stopped by Cafe Giwa, a 130-year-old hanok café with a really pretty garden. The coffee and cake were great, but the garden atmosphere was the real highlight — let me introduce Cafe Giwa in Chodang-dong, Gangneung.

What is Cafe Giwa, the hanok café in Gangneung?

Cafe Giwa is a Gangneung hanok café built inside an actual 130-year-old traditional Korean house. It keeps the charm of the old hanok while dressing up the garden and antique interior beautifully. Just sitting there having coffee felt like its own little scene from the trip.

Above all, the garden was really, really pretty. The way the hanok and garden come together made every angle feel like a proper Gangneung-trip photo.

Parking and how to find Cafe Giwa

There's a dedicated parking lot right in front of Cafe Giwa, so you can park and walk straight in. It's also only about 5 minutes by car from Gangneung's hotel district, which made it easy to fit into a travel route.

Inside the 130-year-old hanok and its garden

As soon as you arrive at Cafe Giwa, the old hanok building catches your eye. Since it's a space built into a genuinely old 130-year-old hanok, the atmosphere is clearly different from a newer building.

Looking closely at the old roof tiles and the color of the wood, you can really feel the layers of time built up — which somehow makes it feel more refined rather than worn out. Gangneung has a lot of pretty cafés, but if you're after somewhere a little special, this Chodang-dong hanok café is worth a visit for the old hanok alone.

The garden is just as pretty as the hanok. It wraps naturally around the front and back of the building and is styled to capture the feel of the season.

Photos really turn out well here! As you walk slowly through the garden, there are spots where the hanok frames the background and spots where the garden scenery itself is the star, so there's no shortage of places to take pictures.

With the roof tiles, wood, and green garden all in the frame together, every photo had a really nice mood. I came for coffee but ended up taking way more pictures in the garden.

Cafe Giwa menu and cake prices

The menu has its own distinct character too. The signature menu items are the Giwa Black Latte, Mung Bean Flower Latte, and Pink Flower Latte.

The Giwa Black Latte combines grain milk and espresso with black sesame cream, the Mung Bean Flower Latte blends mung bean milk, Dutch coffee, and cream, and the Pink Flower Latte pairs strawberry milk with Dutch coffee. I went with the Giwa Black Latte.

There were quite a few cake options too — every single one looked delicious. All of them are priced the same, at ₩7,500.

We ordered the signature Giwa Black Latte along with a green tea triangle cake and an iced Americano. Having coffee and cake while looking out at the hanok garden felt way more relaxing than a regular coffee break.

House-roasted coffee served as hand drip

Cafe Giwa is pretty serious about its coffee too. You can enjoy house-roasted coffee brewed as hand-drip, and it really did have a great aroma. There's a gentle acidity and fragrance to it, so I'd recommend it to anyone who genuinely loves coffee. The hanok atmosphere was already lovely, and the good coffee just made the visit even more memorable.

If the garden has a traditional hanok mood, stepping inside opens up a completely different atmosphere. It felt like stepping back into the Gyeongseong era.

Antique décor and the mood at Cafe Giwa

While keeping the old wood and hanok structure intact, antique furniture and knick-knacks are placed throughout, and the combination felt really stylish. What I especially liked were the small objects filling the space.

These weren't newly made vintage-style decorations — each piece felt like it had genuinely been used for a long time, carrying real traces of age.

It was fun to slowly look around the inside of the café. With the hanok's wooden structure, antique furniture, and old objects all coming together in one space, it felt completely different from the typical trendy 'aesthetic' cafés you see these days.

Can you visit Cafe Giwa with a baby?

We visited with our baby, and having a baby chair ready made things easy. Since you can also stroll around the garden with a baby, I'd recommend Cafe Giwa as a Gangneung café that works well with a little one.

Parents can have coffee in the hanok atmosphere while also taking the baby around the garden, which made it a nice little rest stop in the middle of the trip.

The signature Giwa Latte, with its nutty black sesame cream, was really delicious and had a deep aroma.

The triangle cake stood out the most. It wasn't too sweet and was soft enough that I finished it happily even though I was already full.

130-year-old roof tiles and a hanok that's held onto its history, a garden made for photos, an antique interior straight out of the Gyeongseong era, and coffee with great aroma — this is a place with so many different moods packed into one space that I wanted to linger a while.

If you love taking photos, the garden alone makes this worth a visit. I'd recommend Cafe Giwa as a quiet, atmospheric hanok café in Gangneung — have a coffee, take some photos in the pretty garden, and you've got yourself a memorable scene from your Gangneung trip.