Seongsu café-bar with peanut butter soft serve at night: Mellows

Hi, this is Mudeung 😊 I was around Seongsu and thought of Mellows, a place I'd visited before, so I dropped by again after a while haha. My first visit left a strong impression with the soft serve, and this time I went a bit later in the evening, so I got to feel a completely different atmosphere.

During the day it feels like a comfortable café for a casual coffee, but at night the lighting changes the whole vibe — it almost felt like stepping into a small bar lol.

Mellows

Where is Mellows in Seongsu?

Mellows sits on Wangsimni-ro 10-gil, tucked inside a Seongsu back alley in Seongdong-gu, Seoul. The alley leads from Ttukseom Station, so the neighborhood is packed with cafés and restaurants.

Even with so many cafés and restaurants nearby, the red-brick exterior with the big "Mellowz" lettering catches your eye right away as you approach haha. There are also small tables and chairs set up outside, so on a nice day it'd be great to enjoy coffee or ice cream outdoors.

This time I visited at night, and with the soft lighting turned on out front, it definitely felt different from daytime lol. Seongsu's old-building charm paired surprisingly well with Mellows' warm lighting.

Inside Mellows after dark: dim lights, bar mood

Stepping inside Mellows, the first thing you notice is the wood-tone and OSB plywood interior. The walls and furniture have an overall warm color palette, and each table has its own small light, making the space feel quite cozy haha.

On one side, liquor bottles are displayed alongside the coffee machine, and there's a Marshall speaker and a projector, giving it a looser vibe than a typical café. In the evening especially, a video plays on the screen and the lights dim, making it feel like a great spot to sit and talk for a while lol.

It's not a huge café, but the compact size actually makes Mellows' own atmosphere stand out even more.

Mellows menu and prices: café by day, cocktails by night

Looking at the Mellows menu, besides coffee and soft serve, you can also order cocktails and highballs in the evening.

Americano ₩2,500, café latte ₩3,200, vanilla latte ₩3,500 — the coffee prices were quite reasonable for a Seongsu café haha. The soft serve comes in milk as the base flavor, plus you can choose affogato, matcha, chocolate, peanut butter, and more.

There were also various fruit soft serve options like mango, strawberry, and peach lol. The evening menu had quite a lineup too, from espresso martini to Negroni, whiskey sour, highball, and mojito.

One of the fun things about Mellows is how the available menu changes depending on whether you come during the day or at night haha.

What does the peanut butter soft serve taste like?

On this visit to Mellows, I ordered soft serve again, as always. I chose the peanut butter soft serve, which had savory peanut butter and crushed nuts on top of milk soft serve, plus a long stick cookie — it looked pretty cute from the start haha.

The ice cream itself is smooth with a rich milk flavor, and the peanut butter really brings out a savory, nutty note. The nuts you bite into here and there also kept the texture from being one-note lol. It's not just a sweet dessert — the nutty flavor comes through too, so it paired well with coffee for me personally. Back when I first visited Mellows, the ice cream was also the most memorable part, and it was just as satisfying this time haha.

Peanut butter soft serve with an iced latte: the best pairing

I ordered my drink iced too, to have alongside the soft serve. The smooth latte-style coffee and the nutty peanut butter ice cream went together better than I expected haha.

Take a bite of ice cream, then a sip of cold coffee, and your mouth feels refreshed — so you end up alternating between the two lol. On top of that, coffee priced in the ₩2,000–3,000 range in Seongsu felt pretty appealing. These days, walking into a Seongsu café often means a pricey drink, but Mellows was relatively easy on the wallet.

Is Mellows worth a second visit at night?

Since this was a repeat visit, I got to look around the space a bit more leisurely than the first time, and I liked Mellows at night quite a lot too. Sitting under the warm lighting with coffee and ice cream gave off a different vibe from the bustling main streets of Seongsu haha.

You could come for just a light coffee, or for the sweet soft serve, and later in the evening it's also a fine spot for a cocktail or highball. If you're looking for a Seongsu café, a Ttukseom café, or a Seongsu dessert spot and you happen to love soft serve too, this place is worth a visit lol.

If I come back again, I'd like to try one of the other soft serve flavors I haven't had yet, or maybe one of the evening cocktails. The day and night atmospheres are different enough that it's fun to revisit Mellows at a different time of day 😊