Mr.Brown and Makkuli At HongDae

The Makkuli

Hongdae Street

Makkuli, Muk Muchim, ketnipjun

Mr.Brown Coffee Shop

Public Bathroom Inside Coffee Shop Building (it has button to open automatic bathroom door; pretty fancy)

Inside Public Bathroom

Yuko, Japanese woman who is in my cooking class, and I went to Mr. Brown coffee shop yesterday to have a cup of coffee.  Mr.Yu who is also in my cooking class owns a coffee shop named Mr. Brown near my hotel.  It's right next to Samsung SDS building, although it's more like coffee stand, it was extremely crowded.  Kangnam is one of the most expensive areas in Seoul, even owning such a small coffee stand is expensive (a few hundred thousand dollars).  He even have a certificate from a renowned cooking school (Le Cordon Blue) in Australia.  I think he wants to open up a french restaurant next year.  Coffee was very delicious.  After talking with him for a few hours, I headed to Hongdae to meet my sister in law, it was girls only night.  I met her up at the subway station and started looking for a bar named The Makkuli.  Since it was saturday night, the area was very crowded.  HongDae reminded me of Itaewon since 1/3 of people who were clubbing/drinking there were foreigners (mostly GIs and English teachers).  As it gets darker, HongDae area street was flooded by people clubbing.  Hongdae was great at first, but later on, some of the club street were going out of control.  It wasn't a great scene.  We had 5 bottles of makkuli, Muk muchim (kinda like jelly made out of acorn powder), Ketnipjun (meat wrapped in sesame leaves), and various other side dishes.  We got to HongDae around 6pm, and left the place around 4:30am, but street was still crowded.  Although we had lots of makkuli, we were not that drunk as I expected since we were drinking over 10 hour period.   HongDae was definately a great hangout place.