I don’t know if you remember, but earlier this year there was an incident that made a huge fuss on the Korean internet. Last Christmas, at a “Cafe D” in Myeongdong, there was some trouble between a customer and the staff, and when the customer posted about it on the Nate Pann forum, criticism came pouring down on the shop. That Cafe D in Myeongdong is Caffe Themselves. I don’t know how it looked to others, but to me it was an incident that exposed a strange side of Korean society.
Let me say up front that I don’t really know much about cafes and I’m not the type to go hunting for them. I know the names of the famous ones, but I’ve never actively sought them out. Still, whenever I finished a meal around Jongno or Myeongdong and needed a coffee shop that also served dessert, I always went to Themselves. The reason is simple: there’s no real competition in that area. Around Hongdae there are plenty of places with a similar concept, but around Jongno it’s pretty much in a league of its own, so it’s packed no matter what time you go.
Cake at Themselves
The coffee here is good, but the place is even better known for its cakes. And the prices aren’t that steep either. Sure, compared with the top cake specialists the flavor falls a little short, but the cakes look pretty and taste decent enough.
There are cakes like this one too; the selection is wide.
They’re in a different league from the cakes you get at places like Starbucks, let’s say. And it’s not just the quality; the portions aren’t small either.
Coffee and cake
The place draws so many people that you can’t put in your order before grabbing a seat. It’s a bit quieter during the day, but at night every seat is always taken, so even a late visit means a wait of about twenty minutes. Koreans aren’t exactly fond of waiting, and Themselves isn’t the only coffee shop in Jongno, so I figure the reason the line is so long only here is that the atmosphere, prices and flavor are all good. It’s not in the photos, but the vibe on the second and third floors, where you drink your coffee, is really nice. The interior is modern, the lighting is bright, and nobody gives you the side-eye for sitting a long time, so you can relax and have a pleasant time.
The counter on the first floor
Modern design. Some say the service isn’t great, and honestly, they’re not exactly the friendliest.
The cake I ordered on my next visit
It looked so much like a Sadaharu Aoki cake that I had to laugh. The taste, well, isn’t in the same universe, but the design is pretty and it’s perfectly edible. It does look like a copy, but I suppose they put some study and effort into it.
To see how similar they are, check out my earlier post on Sadaharu Aoki’s cakes..
Drinks
I haven’t tried it myself, but I hear the coffee is good too.
This isn’t a place chasing perfection; it’s a genuinely mainstream coffee shop. Two coffees and a cake come to around 15,000 won, and these days you spend about that much on average whether you go to Caffe Bene or Starbucks. Since it’s not a place where you pay a premium for better desserts, better coffee or a nicer atmosphere, it gets more and more popular, more and more people gather, and so, I think, all the more trouble with customers comes up. I see the Christmas incident as an extension of that.
Something I’ve noticed after years of going around good restaurants: once a popular place gets long lines and lots of fans, it usually deals with it in one of the following ways.
1. Raise menu prices, keeping the quality while reducing the number of customers and increasing spend per head.
2. Open branches or expand, taking in every customer even if the quality drops a bit.
3. Go fully reservation-only.
Number 3 depends on the kind of menu, but in Korea, where no-shows are an everyday occurrence, it’s an unthinkable approach. Raising prices or letting the quality slip can be seen as a betrayal of your customers, in a way, but it’s the most common solution. An ordinary popular restaurant picks one of those two, but Themselves, unusually, has chosen a completely different route. (Or rather than “chosen”, I should say it has kept sticking to its original way even after becoming popular.) It sets rules between the shop and its customers and only serves those who follow them. This approach clearly favors regulars and is bound to cause trouble with walk-ins. The fact that so many people say the staff at Themselves are unfriendly is the natural result of all that friction with first-timers. If I had to explain the house rules to new customers all day long, I’d probably turn curt too.
Just because a cafe owner chooses an unusual approach doesn’t make it a big problem. I’m something of a regular here, so it’s in my interest that they keep doing things the way they do. In fact, if people stopped coming because of this whole affair, it’d be easier to get a seat, so, sorry to the shop, but that would actually suit me fine. But after going a few times since the incident blew up, the line hasn’t shrunk one bit. Even past 9 p.m. you still wait twenty minutes. To everyone out there bashing the place: please, just stop coming. The line is still way too long.
Things have quieted down now and it ended up as just one more little episode, but looking back, this incident was really full of problems.
First of all, the cafe that became the target was given no room whatsoever to explain itself. Bullying, a public pillorying. It was chilling to see how ordinary people living ordinary lives won’t hesitate to throw stones once given the chance.
It wasn’t just ordinary people; watching the self-styled experts online go on about how the shop would go under at this rate was painful too. 15,000 to 20,000 won for two people is pricey if you call it pricey and cheap if you call it cheap. Not knowing the real weight of money, they couldn’t accept the fact that no matter how much abuse Themselves took online, it wasn’t about to go bust. Since this incident, I’ve come to read the writings of people who call themselves experts on the internet with a very critical eye.
And if you truly think it’s a big problem that a shop runs things differently from other shops, then you can go to Caffe Bene, where the service is nice, the atmosphere is nice, there’s no line, and nobody says a word if you sit down with a takeout cup. Wanting Themselves to keep its flavor and atmosphere while offering Caffe Bene-level service is like chasing after the perfect guy next door or a prince on a white horse, neither of whom exists. How did demanding the extraordinary become the norm?
The problems of the Korean internet aren’t something I can fix, and whatever a minor blogger like me writes will have zero effect on Themselves’ business, which is doing just fine anyway. That’s exactly why I could write this without any pressure. And honestly, I really do wish business at Themselves would slow down so that a seat opens up within five minutes of my walking in. I mean it.
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