As per my last post, I’ve been on the road for business again, and this time I was returning to Seoul for a week. This was my second trip to Seoul, with the last one being around the same time last year. on that trip I had a fairly fruitless exploration of the bar scene.
Downtown Seoul is pretty much the domain of the hof and the bikini bar. The basic premise being that you sit down at a table and either pay $200ish dollars for a $30 bottle of johnie walker red and you then get a girl who pours you a drink and then herself one and helps you drink your over priced bottle of scotch. Alternatively you can buy a bucket of beers for $100 and then your helpful korean girl will crack the top of your beer and then help herself to one of your $18 bud lights.
So what about the bikini bars? Well they are basically a hof where the girls are wearing bikinis or lingerie, and your drinks cost more.
The alternate then is to jump on the subway and head into the suburbs and then it gets a little more entertaining. Itaewon is where things get decidedly more western as apparently there is a US military base near by, so western style bars abound, and of course their is a red light district to keep the boys entertained. As far as the crowds go, you get a mix of koreans & non koreans, be they members of the military, tourists or english language teachers, and they all happily down there beers, each nachos or drink breezers.
On that particular sojorn we also took a further subway trip to the university district where the crowd was almost exclusively young 20 something koreans out enmasse. The drinks continue with beer & breezers, but then also expanded to include Soju which is the domestic distilled rice wine. Distilled rice wine … isn’t that Sake? Nope, if it comes from Japan it is Sake, if its from Korea it is Soju. The advantage of soju is that compared to other spirits it is cheap. A small bottle is going to set you back $10 or so, you then pour said bottle into small ceramic cups for your drinking companions, who then pour yours (one does not pour their own drink) and you then toast and neck the shot in one go. This process is then repeated until such time as you can no longer pour the soju into the little cups, at which point you pour yourself into a taxi and call it an evening, blissfully unaware of the worst hangover of your life that will awake you the next afternoon when you arise.
So that was pretty much the experience of my first trip, and as such the expectations for my second trip were not high. Not to be discouraged though, a little searching of the interwebs revealed mention of a cocktail bar of repute named Coffee Bar K, a little further searching showed that it was but a short cab ride away, so off I went.
Coffee Bar K
From the street, it is easy to wander past and not even spot this gem of a bar. To the right there is a small sign that gets lost amongst the other 5 restaurants, bars & businesses in the building, and the to the left there is a black sign with white writing that again dissolves into its surroundings.
Reading through the reviews, I had been warned of this so the direction of looking for the big wooden door was one of those golden nuggets that greatly helped in finding the entry and venturing towards the bar. As you enter you are greeted by a collection of leather chairs and sofas as well as some tables with chairs. For me as always, my goal was a seat at the bar, and this is one of those bars where that does not disappoint. What is a stand out for Coffee Bar K is that the chairs at the bar are similar to the leather chairs through out the bar, so they are much lower than your traditional bar. To offset this, the bar itself is sunked with the bar top being at typical desk height and the bar tenders then standing on a floor that is a level below the main floor. The bar top deserves mention as well. Similar to the bar at the W hotel in Montreal, the stone top (marble?) is lit from below and adds to the ambience. 
The music, well its more on the Norah Jones side of things and is played at a volume that means you are not shouting to be heard over it.
You have a very comfortable chair to recline in, you get a great view of the staff at work and you can admire the truly impressive array of liquors on offer. The picture to the right show’s three & a half of the 5 shelves that line the back of the bar. The 5 barrels you can see all contain single malt scotches while the shelves to their right are contain a variety of Scottish, Irish, American and Japenese whiskies. The shelves to the right of the barrels contain the varietal liquors from around the world.
Which leads nicely onto the menu. The first impression is that it is your pretty standard menu. Leather bound with the name of the bar in gold writing. The presentation then drops off though as you are presented with close to 10 pages of varying fonts & sizes that list the over 200 varieties of whiskies and then over 100 spirits & liquors before you reach the cocktail list. Each page is contained in a light plastic sleeve that also takes away from the experience. At this point I will imagine that this is probably overlooked by most patrons as par for the course, but given the finish of the rest of the bar, the quality of the furnishings and the obvious thought and effort that has gone into the rest of the execution, it just feels a little jarring. As far as the cocktail list goes, it is almost encyclopaedic. It feels like someone has trawled the wikipedia drinks list and done a copy & past. The drinks are listed by base ingredient and then a symbol is used to denote its character. Sweet, dry, long, soda & its strength. This again makes for an interesting touch, unfortunately though the ingredients are not listed, so you are left to base your decisions on the base ingredient and a basic 
flavour profile. I would much a listing of the ingredients and to then make a decision from there.
In their defence though, the bar staff were very helpful when I asked as to the ingredients of any particular drink, and were more than happy to let me look at a couple of bourbons that took my fancy.
So what about the drinks then? Well Coffee Bar K definitely delivers on this front. After trawling through the dazzling array on offer, I decided to start with the basics, so ordered an Old Fashioned.
From a technical perspective, the execution of the old fashioned was lacking. The sugar cube was not muddled/disolved while a splash of water was thrown in to dilute the whole mixture as opposed to the slower construction involving lots of stirring and a little time as the ice melts. What did make it interesting though was the presentation. Like their Japanese brethren, the Koreans are big on their ice. So for their rocks drinks you get chunks of ice that are hand chipped from big blocks that delivered daily.
The other interesting ice component are the hand cut ice spheres that are used as an alternate to the chunks in rocks drinks. The logic behind the ice balls is that the reduced surface area results . The ice spheres are roughly the size of a tennis ball and are hand shaped. (Ice molds are also available that simplify the process … must add that to the shopping list, personally I have a couple of silicon ice cube trays that make 1 inch cubes that take an age to melt so keep drinks nice and cold, but don’t dilute them in a hurry). But I digress, the more elaborate drinks 
are where they really seem to excel. The shot to the right shows one of their apple drinks & an espresso martini. The Apple drink from memory started with muddle fresh apple slices and some Apple Calvados while the espresso martini started with a tea spoon full of coffee beans that are crushed dry before the drink the rest of the ingredients were added while I have no idea as to the drinks below suffice to say that the writing on the top of the drink in the background was a berry paste that was squeezed out of an icing bag. The glass in the foreground was frosted and had a blue sugar mix applied in preparation for its contents.
After watching so many of these creations being lovingly crafted I decided to settle on the “Walking in space” as my second drink. The drink in question was created by one of the former bartenders and was used in the Diageo world class cocktail competition in Seoul in 2009 and is listed as containing Johnie Walker Green, brown Cacao, apricot brandy, fresh orange, pineapple 
& lime juice with lemon grass. For my one, the JW green was replaced by a JW black and started with fresh lemon grass being muddled then the rest of the ingredients being added and the whole lot being vigorously shaken with copious amounts of ice. The drink is then strained into a cocktail glass while the garnish is made with a skewered piece of the Lemon grass that is caramelised with a blow torch. The drink itself is obviously fruitly, but then not sickly sweet. On your first sip you pick up the lemon grass from the garnish and then the dominant flavour is the apricot brandy, but that is a line ball call. The mouth feel is almost velvety and while it is not something I would normally order, it was definitely a nicely rounded drink that I would happily order again.
All up then, Coffee Bar K was a great find. Great service, great decor, great drinks, now if only they could do something about that menu…
Cafe 74
With the impending week being a full one, I departed 
Coffee Bar K, and on advice dropped in to Cafe 74 which is located less that a minute from Coffee Bar K but thanks to the large neon sign and the imposing facade, its hard to miss. The cafe consists of both a cafe and a club / bar. The cafe is located at the front of the building and was doing a solid trade, late on a Saturday night. The lure of assorted cakes & tarts with fresh espresso was strong, but I resisted and headed out the back to the bar and was presented with a fantastic contrast to Coffee Bar K. The first thing that strikes you as you step into the bar is the music. Serious house tunes abound while the large projection screen behind the bar was playing the fashion channel which happened to have the Victorias Secret fashion show playing. So not such a bad thing really. As for the decor, to one side you had booths shrouded in beaded curtains and courtyard with more tables & chairs. The bar itself was a simple black stone affair with your more traditional high bar stools.
It is obvious that Cafe 74 is chasing the fashion crowd, 
and in keeping with that aim, the menu could easily be mistaken for a Moet, Channel or Louis Vuitton catalogue or premier fashion magazine. Heavy stock with full colour printing and custom photos abound. The drinks list was fairly typical with a good coverage of the classics as well as the usual array of fruit flavoured “tinis” and a small array of single malts and assorted spirits on offer. What was also good was the inclusion of the ingredients in the drinks (though I’m not sure about the olive “brain” in the dirty martini) and in an interesting addition, the alcohol content was also listed. I 
did notice this at some other bars so am not sure if it is merely a standard practice or is something that is government mandated?
For this round I decided to revisit a drink that I did not have fond memories of based on an early experience of one a few years back. The drink in question? The Godfather, a fairly simple drink consisting of scotch and amaretto served in a rocks glass. Once again hand cut ice was used while this time the presentation was minimalist, but classy, a small slice of lemon peel and a strip of cinnamon bark as a stirrer. The verdict? A well made God Father is one of those simpler drinks that will definitely be placed back on the regulars list.
That then is enough for this post. The rest of the bar exploits for the week were not really noteworthy. Average drinks in hotel lobby bars that did not inspire. The next post that is planned is a report on my visit to Singapore’s The Tippling club, so till then, cheers!
Godfather?.. oh the memories, or more particularly – the glimpses and flashes of something that resembles a memory of some sort.