Cafe Goong: Modern Food in a Traditional Space
Written and photographed by Sarah Pittman
This month’s featured restaurant is based on another reader recommendation. Cafe Goong is a modern cafe styled after the iconic Korean architecture, the hanok. The Korean hanok is an environmentally friendly design, built to maximize the air and the sun for their heating and cooling needs. With the summer heat and humidity nearly upon us, a cafe designed to keep itself cool makes a lot of sense!
Cafe Goong is easily accessible by bus or taxi, and it is a short ten-minute walk from the subway station. Outside of the cafe, there are some cute little tables and chairs with umbrellas for those that want to catch some rays and enjoy the breeze while they eat. After stepping through the sliding glass doors, you are greeted with cool air and plants of all shapes and sizes. If I had not know that it was a cafe, I would have thought that I had just stepped into a garden store. The inside of the building is that classically warm, yellow wood that is quite common around Korea. It lends light and a warm feeling to what could be a very dark space, and a high ceiling helps the cafe feel airy and spacious. The cafe has some different options for seating along the outside edges with private rooms for people who prefer the Korean traditional floor seats and tables. The cafe has a lot to see and offer as well. In the back of the building, there is an art gallery, a reading nook, and a bakery stand. In between each row of tables in the center of the cafe are trees in large ceramic pots. Each table has a tree potted next to it, which at first I thought was very strange, but they serve a great purpose. They help the space feel natural, dampen the sounds of the cafe somewhat, and allow each table to be more like a private oasis sheltered from the rest of the room.
When I went to Cafe Goong, I was quite hungry, so I ordered the seasonal special strawberry latte, a ginormous chocolate macaron, and one of their brunch plates called “Hwallyeok Mannam Brunch.” The brunch plate included a large sausage covered in honey mustard and ketchup, a hard-boiled egg, four shrimp with the tail on, a croissant-shaped loaf of bread, and a salad made of radish greens and lettuce. The sausage was really delicious, plated with a lot of honey mustard and ketchup. Though I’m a fan of extra condiments, I felt the sausage hit the spot. As a person who has never enjoyed hard-boiled eggs, I did not expect to appreciate that addition to the brunch plate, but I found it to be decently enjoyable. The salad had a sweet and tangy vinaigrette that I quite enjoyed and that, honestly, was probably my favorite part of the whole meal. The bread was a little peculiar though. Even though it appeared to be a croissant, the crumb structure was that of heavy bread. It was close and dense, with no flaky layers inside it and without the butteriness that gives a croissant its trademark flavor and texture. They also elected to serve this “croissant” sliced into small squares, another sign that it was not really a croissant at all.
The seasonal special strawberry latte was also surprising! I was expecting there to be coffee and milk, since it is marketed as a latte, but it looked like milk with strawberries added. This, too, proved to be an overestimation, as the taste was of jam, not fresh strawberry, so it was not nearly as fresh as I was hoping. It was very obvious on first sip that it had been made with preserves and syrups. The chocolate macaron, however, really stole the show. At first glance, it looked a tad bit unrefined, with lumps and bumps where it should have been smooth, but the flavor was perfectly rich and decadent. The filling was a chocolate buttercream with little chunks of chocolate hidden throughout it. The texture of the cookie was perfect – dry and crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, just how a macaron should be. A normal-sized macaron for me is a one or sometimes two-bite affair. This giant macaron took me six bites to get through, being the size of a tennis ball or bigger, and was the part of the meal that I remember the best. If you are in the area and looking for a good brunch or a killer macaron that you could split with a friend, I would definitely recommend Cafe Goong.
Cafe Goong 카페 궁
Operating Hours: Daily, 9:00–23:00
Address: 22 Songdo-ro 85-beon-gil, Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju 광주 광산구 송도로85번길 22
Price Range: Brunch starts from 9,000 won, coffee starts from 3,500 won
Telephone: 062-944-1980
The Author
Sarah Pittman is an English teacher with a degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton. She discovered her love for photography while working at Disneyland and has been honing her craft with practice and YouTube videos every since.