Ivy-covered Yeonnam-dong café with Matilda cake: Butter & Shelter

Yeonnam-dong has so many good-looking cafés that walking alley to alley you end up agonizing over where to go in!! This time, while walking from Hongik University Station toward Yeonnam-dong, I got pulled in by a pretty facade covered in green ivy. That's Butter & Shelter Yeonnam.

The café vibe is pretty, but they also sell all kinds of desserts — butter sands, cookies, cakes — so it seemed good for a Yeonnam-dong date course or for finding a gift dessert. They had so many kinds of butter sands that I ended up picking a few to try ♡

The ivy facade and outdoor seats at Butter & Shelter Yeonnam

Butter & Shelter Yeonnam is a café where the green-ivy-covered exterior catches your eye first, in a Yeonnam-dong alley. The outdoor seating is a space where pets are allowed.

Walking through the Yeonnam-dong alleys, the green ivy-covered facade caught my eye and I naturally stopped in my tracks.

With brick-textured walls covered in green ivy, it felt less like a café and more like a small dessert shop in a European alley! There was outdoor seating too, and apparently pets are allowed there 🦮 On a nice day, it'd be great to enjoy a coffee outside.

Visiting on a nice day, the green looked even prettier, so it was great for photos too. The front of the café especially had a vibe that made me want to snap a picture while passing by . . ♡

Inside Butter & Shelter Yeonnam: mood and window seats

Inside Butter & Shelter Yeonnam, the space is split into right and left sides, and with wood-tone interiors plus warm lighting it felt cozy. From the window seats, the ivy view looks like a framed picture.

What I liked most was the window seat — the ivy scenery outside the window looked just like a framed picture, and the mood was great!! It had that Yeonnam-dong-café-specific sentimental feel without being overly styled, so it was comfortable to sit and chat. I saw a lot of couples too — it felt like a good spot for a relaxed date with dessert and conversation 𖤐

Butter & Shelter Yeonnam menu: drinks and desserts

Butter & Shelter has all kinds of drinks ready — coffee, lattes, ades, and teas. As for desserts, on top of butter sands there was a wide variety of cookies and cakes too.

• COFFEE — Butter Einspänner, Shelter Einspänner, Espresso, Crème Brûlée Espresso, Americano, Café Latte, Vanilla Latte, Cappuccino
• LATTE — Choco / Matcha / Royal Milk Tea / Strawberry
• ADE — Lemon / Grapefruit / Green Grape
• TEA — Honey Lemon Matcha / Rooibos Vanilla / Peach Oolong Tea / Royal Chamomile / Fruit Dream / Brown Rice Green Tea

There were quite a lot of dessert options too! The butter sands ranged from plain to choco, crème brûlée, glacé, raspberry cream cheese, and more,

There was basque cheesecake, plain butter bar, thick chewy cookies, levain cookies, red velvet cream cheese cookies, choco s'more cookies, hwang cheese cream cookies, earl grey, Matilda cake, and Victoria cake — truly a wide variety.

All the desserts on display looked so pretty that it took quite a while to pick a menu.

I ordered an iced americano, Matilda cake, crème brûlée butter sand, and raspberry cream cheese sand ◡̈

Matilda cake at Butter & Shelter Yeonnam

I tried the Matilda cake first. It had that rich, sweet chocolate cake flavor that goes well with coffee!

If you like dense, fudgy chocolate, you'll definitely love this! With so many cake varieties in addition to the butter sands, if you visit with others it seems great to pick a few different desserts and share according to taste.

Crème brûlée butter sand

And the butter sand I was most looking forward to! Butter & Shelter has so many kinds of butter sands that I agonized for a while over which to pick,,

Crispy on the outside, soft inside, with the nutty butter cream and sweetness pairing well together. The crème brûlée added its signature sweet aroma, making it feel a bit more dessert-like than a plain butter sand! Eating it with coffee balanced out the sweetness nicely ◡̈

Raspberry cream cheese sand

Personally, the one I liked even more was the raspberry cream cheese sand! When you think of a butter sand, the rich, nutty taste of butter usually comes to mind first, but adding raspberry's tartness made it feel fresher ♡

The soft, nutty cream cheese combined with raspberry's sweet-tart flavor, so it seemed like a good option even for people who like sweet desserts but don't want anything too heavy!! With so many butter sand types, comparing a few side by side seems like it'd be fun too.

Can you get the desserts boxed as a gift?

Butter & Shelter Yeonnam seemed good not just for eating in-store but also for packing desserts to take home. The butter sands are neatly packaged by type, with pretty packaging that would work well for anyone looking for a simple gift dessert!! 💝 It also seemed like a nice spot to pack up a dessert at the end of a date with friends or a partner in Yeonnam-dong.

Still deciding which Yeonnam-dong café to visit?

Yeonnam-dong has so many cafés that even after finding a pretty spot, it's often hard to decide where to go. Butter & Shelter Yeonnam stuck in my memory for its overall atmosphere — from the pretty ivy-covered facade to the warm wood-tone interior to the variety of desserts!!

What I especially liked was being able to pick and taste several kinds of butter sands, and the clean gift packaging makes it a good recommendation for anyone looking for a gift dessert too 💝 If you're planning a Yeonnam-dong date or looking for a good-atmosphere café near Hongik University Station where you can also enjoy dessert, I recommend Butter & Shelter Yeonnam - ! Next time I visit, I want to try the other butter sands I didn't get to this time :)