Seochon hanok café with lemon sorbet espresso: Oldsse Seochon

After lunch in Seochon and a walk around some little shops, I was deciding where to go next when I stopped by Oldsse Seochon. Honestly, I hesitated a bit — I'd already had a coffee with lunch. Normally I would have just walked past, but that day something made me stop. The old hanok (traditional Korean house) atmosphere caught my eye, and even among all the Seochon cafés I'd been checking out, this one felt like it would stay in my memory.

A familiar corner in Seochon that turned out to be an old memory

Oldsse Seochon is a hanok café at 35-3 Pilundae-ro, Jongno-gu, the former Nuha-dong 145. At first I just thought, pretty hanok café, but looking closer, something about it felt familiar.

Especially the way it sat on the corner — I kept thinking, 'wasn't there something here before...' and it didn't take long before Song's Kitchen popped into my head.

When I got home and looked it up, my memory was right. The address now home to Oldsse — 35-3 Pilundae-ro, Jongno-gu, formerly Nuha-dong 145 — used to be Song's Kitchen. There are records introducing Song's Kitchen at this address as far back as 2013, and by 2016 it was described as a space that kept the hanok's original pillars and frame. Maybe that's why, even though it was my first time actually going in, I wanted to look around a little more. I think I had some lingering memory of walking past this place before. That's probably also why I wanted to go into Oldsse that day even though I'd already had coffee.

Inside the old hanok: what Oldsse Seochon feels like

Oldsse keeps quite a lot of the hanok's original structure. The old wooden pillars and rafters are left exposed, and a big window lets the outside scenery pour in.

Rather than feeling elaborately decorated, it feels like a coffee space naturally layered onto the mood of an old building. Small paper lanterns hang from the ceiling, plants and old-looking objects are scattered around, and together they make you want to slowly look around.

The long bench by the window especially caught my eye. Looking closely, it seems to be made from actual old wood with dancheong (traditional painted decoration) still on it, repurposed as a bench.

It felt different from new wood dressed up to look vintage. The color and marks left by actual time were still there, and they suited the space really well. This was a Seochon café where you have fun discovering these little details one by one.

Why I ordered coffee again at Oldsse Seochon

I'd already had a coffee at lunch, but at Oldsse I planned to enjoy coffee more like a dessert. Honestly, there was another reason I walked in too — the corner building looked familiar, and I suddenly remembered Song's Kitchen used to be here. I was curious whether my old memory was right, and how the place had changed since then, so I naturally went inside.

Looking at the menu, I was glad I'd come in. There's hand drip with a choice of beans, espresso, Americano, latte, and signature drinks like Einspänner, Irish coffee, and lemon sorbet. There's also Basque cheesecake, Dutch baby, and non-coffee options, so the choices were pretty wide.

Going through the menu, what I picked was the lemon sorbet. So yes, I ended up having two coffees that day, but the second one meant something different to me. The one at lunch was a light coffee alongside a meal, while at Oldsse it was more like a dessert drink to enjoy while looking around and chatting. The lemon sorbet and espresso combination especially caught my curiosity from the menu, and once I tried it, I understood exactly why I'd picked it.

Bright lemon sorbet meets rich espresso

What I ordered was the lemon sorbet: cold lemon sorbet topped with espresso, finished with dried lemon and rosemary. Just looking at it, it seemed quite different from a regular coffee, which made me curious.

The espresso itself was rich and bitter at its core. What was fun was eating the lemon sorbet together with the coffee. Instead of mixing it all at once, I scooped small spoonfuls of sorbet and let it melt, and each time, the sorbet's bright lemon acidity came through alongside the coffee.

I'm not really a fan of coffee's sharp acidity, but I do like the kind of acidity you get from citrus like lemon or orange, so this combination really worked for me. The rich espresso paired with the cold, bright lemon sorbet started off bitter and finished refreshingly.

So I'd say it wasn't really two coffees in one day — the lunch one wrapped up a meal, and this one was a coffee-based dessert. Having already had coffee and still ordering another made a lot more sense once I tasted it.

Watching the coffee bar at work

Oldsse Seochon has a range of seating, from small tables near the entrance to a long window bench and the coffee bar. The long window bench especially, made from what looks like old dancheong wood, suits the hanok space well.

The coffee bar is equipped with an espresso machine and hand drip gear, and the menu covers plenty of ground, from single-origin hand drip to espresso and signature coffees.

So it's not really a place where you just sit and drink coffee — it's more of a Seochon café where you have fun picking which coffee to try and watching it get made.

It's not a place where you order, sit, and that's it — you end up walking around the interior both before and after ordering. If I were to recommend a Seochon café for people who want to enjoy the space as much as the coffee, this kind of atmosphere would be a good pick.

Vintage objects and small goods around the café

Around the space there's furniture and small objects made from old wood. Painted wooden benches and tables, plants and pottery, and paintings on the walls all look slightly different when you look at them one by one.

On one side, they were also selling goods like tumblers and stickers. If you're a coffee lover, browsing these little items is fun too.

Oldsse Seochon: address, hours and parking

• 📍 35-3 Pilundae-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• ⏰ 10:00 – 20:30 (Last order 20:00)
• 💤 Closed on Mondays
• 🚗 No parking available

Is Oldsse Seochon worth a stop near Gyeongbokgung?

This visit was a bit special. It wasn't a place I'd planned from the start to go have coffee at — I'd already had coffee at lunch, and I could easily have just walked by. But the familiar look of the corner building brought back an old memory, and I wanted to check whether it was real, so I went in once more. And there, I ended up trying a lemon sorbet I hadn't expected.

The old Song's Kitchen and today's Oldsse are completely different spaces, but with traces of the old hanok still remaining, they somehow felt strangely connected to me. Walking around looking for Seochon cafés, I ran into an old memory and ended up adding one more cup of coffee to the day. If I had to pick just one reason I wanted another coffee even after already having one, I think it's that I was curious about the space itself before I was curious about the coffee.