Seoul: The Hello Kitty Cafe In Hongdae

I have a weakness for the pink Japanese cat. The latest fad in Singapore is to collect the McDonald’s Hello Kitty series and I just got myself the Hello Kitty Frog Prince that comes with the purchase of a value meal. On the Thursday when McDonald’s release the new Hello Kitty plush, I see a long queue at the drive-through near my office early in the morning!

One of the cafes in Seoul that I wanted to visit during my trip in March was the Hello Kitty cafe in Hongdae. I followed the directions to the cafe on a blog which stated that the cafe was round the corner from a Ho Bar cafe. There are a number of Ho Bar cafes scattered around Hongdae but none was the right one, and I got terribly lost wandering around in the maze of alleyways in Hongdae. I just could not find the cafe. I was about to give up when I finally came across the “landmark Ho Bar pub”.

I turned the corner and squealed. 🙂

The entire shop was so PINK. Not a refreshing light pink but a hot fushcia pink.

It was really difficult to decide what to order. I was already stuffed from churros, coffee, lunch and more coffee. In the end, I picked a pink strawberry mousse cake in the shape of a Hello Kitty face and a glass of cold tea. Drinking another cup of coffee, I would be bouncing off walls.

Isn’t the cake cute?  I couldn’t bring myself to stick a fork into its cute little face.

I was amused by this chap. I don’t think you will find many Singaporean guys doing this in a Hello Kitty cafe.  Practically everyone in the cafe was busy snapping away on their cameras and smart phones…

Or busy playing games on their smartphones. You would think that the customer base of such a cafe would be the young, but it wasn’t the case. I saw women and men of all ages drinking coffee in the cafe. Grannies with their young grand-daughters, young men in their 20s with their girlfriends, middle-aged ahjusshis wth their wives (I think). I doubt my husband would be caught dead in the cafe.

The warm red tones of the room made me feel very claustrophobic after 30 minutes and I had to get out before I started feeling nauseous.

I toyed with the idea of getting one of the Hello Kitty T-shirts on sale, but decided against buying more stuff since I had to drag my near-bursting suitcase to SF.  I really liked the one with the Hello Kitty face, maybe the next time.

Coooooo…..!

The cafe is right in the middle of Hongdae and the landmark Ho Bar to look for is the one shown in the photo below, above a Watsons (though I cannot be sure that Watsons will stay in that location). Turn the corner from this building and the Hello Kitty cafe is 50 metres away, on a slope. This blog has a good map showing the directions to the cafe.

358-112 Seogyo-dong (94-3 Eoulmadang-ro)

View Hello Kitty Cafe in Hongdae in a larger map