On my way to Samcheong-dong to hunt for clothes (work dresses, casual tops, kimono cardigans, shoes, costume jewelry) one morning, I walked past Cafe Mamas, a popular cafe near the Cheongyecheon stream.
I have gone past this cafe many times during my trips to Seoul, but have never been in there. It is usually very crowded in the evenings with long queues forming during the weekends. In a city with so many cafes and bistros, I have always wondered what is the attraction of this place, to attract queues on a weekend when there are so many attractive options in the vicinity.
As there was no queue forming outside Cafe Mamas that morning, I decided to drop in for a cup of coffee. I was quite full from eating a huge bowl of porridge at Bonjuk so I didn’t think about ordering food.
I looked around and saw that almost every table ordered the ricotta cheese salad, and this made me very curious about the dish. What is so special about a slab of ricotta cheese with salad leaves and bread? To get the answer, I had to order one for myself even though I could not eat another bite of food. Or so I thought.
It was incredibly good! The ricotta cheese was creamy, slightly sweet and flavored with lemon juice. The chopped nuts and raisins gave it crunchy bite. The bread was soft and delicious, and was a lovely accompaniment for the ricotta cheese. Overall, this was a simple, tasty and appetizing dish. I mopped up everything in the bowl, including bread, tomatoes and salad leaves! I don’t know where I found the space in my stomach to put in that extra food, but I did.
I came home and attempted to make the lemon-flavoured ricotta cheese. I managed to get the same flavor, but I could not get the same thick and creamy texture as Cafe Mamas. The texture of my ricotta cheese was a little too thin and runny – not sure why but heck, it worked fine as a sandwich spread.
I looked up Cafe Mamas on the Internet and realize that they have 4-5 locations in Seoul. I went to the one near the Cheongyecheon stream and the SK Telecom Building (exit 4 on the Euljiro-1ga subway station). Even though I don’t usually eat Western fare whenever I am in Seoul, the ricotta cheese salad will be an exception. I just hope it doesn’t get retired from the menu when I next visit Cafe Mamas.
Walking into the restaurant for the first time, I was impressed by the cool vibe and uncluttered feel of the space, largely due to the high ceilings and a dark interior. Unlike most restaurants who feel a need to pack as many tables as possible into the space, the owner of Dstllry did not try to maximize the seating space. Just a simple U-shape bar counter and a narrow ledge lining each of the two walls. I did not feel boxed in by the close proximity of diners huddling around the counter. 
Dstllry has a fairly small lunch menu. A couple of donburis and no cocktails. During dinner, they serve a 10-course omakase for $100, or you can order ala-carte from the menu. From what I gather, the omakase menu is different every month, and changes are announced on their Facebook page. 
Their bara-chirashi is quite popular. At $18 a bowl, it came with a generous pile of salmon and tuna, dressed in a yummy sauce, topped with ikura and dried seaweed, on top of a warm bowl of rice. Delicious. Love how the pearly globules of roe pops in my mouth. I like that they give fresh wasabi, and not the stuff that comes out of a tube. 
Love these fresh and tasty cockles. May not yet be able to rival the ones at Putien and Two Chefs, but still very good, especially so when you can sip a cocktail while eating the shellfish.
Grilled ika with some mentaiko. Good combination and the ika was grilled to perfection.
Beautiful yuzu-laced with gin concoction. I have tried quite a number of cocktails served up by their bartender, but my favorite is still their G&T, which is one of the best that I have ever had. Unlike the watered-down versions served in many places, this one had plenty of gin. Be sure to order that if you are a G&T fan. 
Another exotic concoction made with beer and coffee. 
Dstllry is really a fun place to chill out either with your other half, or with a group of friends, without having to dress up and watch your table manners. It is comfortable, easy and unpretentious, and I like the communal dining concept that you get at the bar counter. You get to see the chefs up close and personal, prepping the food that they are going to be serving you. 
Phildar yarn! I was so excited to see the French brand at Needle Story. I have never seen the brand in Singapore, and I have been toying with the idea of buying some online. I love Phildar’s wide selection of colors, which are popping bright and cheery. I wanted to grab every color that was available in the shop. Needless to say, I spent a huge amount of time deciding on the colors to bring home.
I love the cushions, especially the cream lace one and the vermillion one with little puffs. So I bought a pile of Phildar yarn from Needle Story to make a cushion, which I have just completed.
I have tried my hand at amigurami and I suck at it. Maybe I should try crocheting a top one of these days. Looking at the beautiful knitwear on these models is giving me ideas. I could try making something quite simple, something along the lines of one of these 
The cafe. Nothing to shout about, but I like that it is quiet and a great place to relax and browse the crocheting pattern books that I bought from Needle Story.
Needle Story is a place that I must stop by on all future trips to Seoul, to stock up on Phildar yarn. It is very easy to find, just a short walk from the Ehwa Womens University subway stop on the green line.
We are not fans of hand-drip coffee, but we learnt that Cafe De L’Ambre’s hand-drip coffee is excellent. Not just the coffee, the ambience is lovely too. The interior is 1980s – brown wood, dark, smoky. You sit at a bar counter and watch them make each cup of coffee by hand, filtered through a cotton bag. It is an interesting place to while away a couple of hours in the afternoon.
Cafe De L’Ambre has been around for over 50 years and serves only coffee. No juice, beer, milk, or any type of food. Coffee is not cheap but in my view, worth the splurge if you enjoy drinking coffee.
This is the coffee version of sitting at a cocktail bar, watching the bartender conjure up delicious cocktails. The barista makes every cup by hand, slowly pouring hot water into the filter bag and letting the coffee glide into a small copper pot, which he then heats up for a quick minute before pouring it into a cup and serving it to the customer. The filter bag is a smaller and shorter version of the ones that our local coffeeshops use to make coffee. 
A delicious cup of hot hand-drip coffee that has well-balanced flavors. I usually find hand-drip coffee too acidic for my liking, but not L’Ambre’s. 
We also tried their cold coffee which is very good. The coffee goes into a cocktail mixer filled with ice, then poured into a cocktail glass. The coffee is good hot, but even better chilled. 
How much coffee can one drink in one sitting? At least 3! We felt as though we were in a cocktail bar, tasting various alcoholic concoctions, and being wow-ed one drink after another. 
Besides the charcoal waffles, the other option is brown butter waffles which sounded just as appealing. I decided on the charcoal waffles and two scoops of ice cream: pistachio and vanilla. I also gave in to temptation and ordered the salted egg yolk sauce.
That’s what I ordered – 5 deep fried oysters accompanied by a huge (and re-fillable) bed of cold, crisp, shredded cabbage and a bowl of miso soup. I like to eat my kaki furai ‘neat’, that is, without any tonkatsu sauce drizzled over the luscious little golden packages of fried oysters. I find the taste of tonkatsu sauce too heavy and it masks the flavors of the food. 
My husband ordered some special cut of pork loin that had only 5 portions a day. I took a small bite of my husband’s pork and needless to say, it was super. But I still prefer kaki furai.
That’s the interior of Maisen. I like the high ceilings and that the windows let in lots of light into what is otherwise a rather sombre dining room decorated in the 1980s Japanese style. I didn’t get any good shots of the dining room because the wait staff kept giving me the evil eye when I took out my camera.
Sorrieeee! I cannot resist putting up more photos of these lovelies. This close-up shot of the kaki furai is making me want a piece so much now.
Look at my parfait! Chockful of strawberries in a cocktail glass. It was too pretty to eat.
I felt sorry at having to ruin the beautiful presentation with my spoon.
My husband does not like eating fruit, so he chose the option that came with the least fruit. 🙂 How is it possible for anyone to not like fruit, especially Japanese fruits?
We walked past Aoyama Flower Market, a beautiful florist-cum-tea-house in Omotesando, and dropped in to use their bathroom. 
I took a peek into the tea-house and decided that I wanted to go in! The interior was so pretty! Like a conservatory filled with flowers and wooden furniture, and lots of lovely Japanese women in 
The next best thing that I do was to wander around the flower market, looking at the beautiful flowers, so attractively displayed with blooms in every possible shape and color spilling out of vintage metal cans and glass jars. I could not stop ooh-ing and aah-ing.
I love how they arranged the flowers by colors. One section held blooms in shades of vermillion, pink, and peach. Another section held the whites and creams. My favorite section is the one in the last photo – the blue, purple, lavender and maroon blooms.
I am very fond of pancakes. My earliest memories of pancakes are the thin crepe-like ones that my maternal aunt used to make for tea. We ate them hot off the skillet, with lemon and sugar. I would roll my pancakes and eat them in two quick bites. They were my favorite tea-time snack.
I took a cursory look at the menu, because I already knew what I wanted to order. Without a doubt, a stack of blueberry pancakes! They were so good – golden brown on the outside, fluffy and moist on the inside, with a generous helping of blueberry compote, and a side of maple syrup. The husband ordered French toast, which he said was good. My stack of pancakes were fabulous – the best that I have eaten in ages. My iPhone6 photos of the pancakes do them no justice at all.
We came to this coffee shop at 7 Crane Road for roti prata last Sunday. Increasingly, it is getting harder to find these traditional coffee-shops in Singapore. You still see them around, but the numbers are dwindling. Many have closed down, or have been converted into restaurants, or modern, air-conditioned food courts. 
The roti prata man – I am always fascinated by how he manages to work the dough into a thin round shape by swinging it in a circular motion in mid-air, then folds the sides to make a square, before placing it on the hot girdle.
Old-school wantan noodles. Simple and delicious. We ate a plate to tide us over the hunger pangs while waiting for our roti prata to arrive.