Seongsu café for journaling in a plant-filled basement seat: T Coffee

Seongsu is packed with people wherever you go, so a quiet café is hard to come by.

T Coffee is a quiet café tucked just off Seongsu's busiest strip, and a spot local office workers love. Thanks to that, I got to spend a peaceful stretch of time there reading and journaling.

• Getting there, exterior
• Interior
• Menu
• Special coffee and tea

So here's my review and info on T Coffee, a café loved by Seongsu office workers.

How to find T Coffee from Seongsu Station, and its hours

T Coffee is less than a 10-minute walk from Seongsu Station, just across the street from Seongsu's Yeonmujang-gil. Despite being called a quiet café, it's not out of the way at all.

It's on the basement level, reachable either by stairs or by an elevator on the other side of the building.

Since many nearby office workers visit, it opens early on weekdays, but opens at 11am on weekends — good to keep in mind before you go.

Inside T Coffee: a basement that never feels closed in

T Coffee is on the basement level, but one side is done up like a terrace, so it never felt stuffy. I'd expected a basement to feel closed-in, but that wasn't the case at all.

With this kind of landscaping, it didn't feel like a basement at all. Overall it had a calmer mood than the flashy cafés typical of Seongsu.

T Coffee, a Seongsu café with great atmosphere, has wood-tone interiors and soft music playing — great for spending time calmly.

A friend of mine, Bin, who used to work in coffee, told me that machine was apparently a La Marzocco(?), a luxury name in the coffee world. She said the coffee here was bound to be good!

Water is essential when you're having coffee or tea, and I liked that there was a self-serve station set up on one side.

It's not a café-exclusive restroom, but there are very clean gender-separated restrooms on the basement level.

T Coffee's drink and dessert menu

T Coffee had a wide range on the menu, from hand-drip coffee to tea to sparkling drinks.

Decaf and oat milk substitutions are available too, so the options felt quite broad.

They also had desserts ready like sand cookies, choux, and cheesecake. I'm not sure if they make them in-house, but while I was reading, a sweet dessert smell drifted over.

I've been keeping a diary comic lately, and this was such a great atmosphere for sipping a drink while quietly journaling and reading.

There were actually people working on laptops too. If you're looking for a place to study in a Seongsu café, I'd recommend this.

How the vanilla bean latte and lemon shiso mugwort tea taste

The vanilla bean latte (₩7,000) and lemon shiso mugwort tea (₩6,800) I ordered at T Coffee were brought straight to my table.

It was a genuine vanilla bean latte — not syrup, but actual vanilla bean specks visible throughout.

After stirring it well, it wasn't too sweet and was very smooth, with the coffee blending in beautifully.

This is actually the note I jotted in my diary while drinking the tea. The bright lemon and the heavy mugwort blended well, and at the end the shiso left my mouth feeling clean.

Even as someone who loves tea, this blended tea was completely new to me — a truly special menu item unique to this place.

Sitting with Bin, reading books, drawing, and spending calm time — how does T Coffee sound to you? I recommend it as a quiet Seongsu café!