Seoul, South Korea is one of the greatest coffee cities in the world. Just last week in fact we published a guide to the Mapo-gu district (because trying to tackle the entire city in a single guide is a fool’s errand), and it serves as a great primer for the level of coffee found in Seoul. The cafes featured could easily comprise a coffee guide for an entire city, and a lucky one at that, and yet in Seoul it’s only a single neighborhood.
The South Korean capital loves coffee, so it makes sense that it would also be the home of “the very first on the planet” La Marzocco shop-in-a-shop. Nestled inside the Shinsegae department store in the Gangnam district, the new La Marzocco shop is a coffee lover’s dream.
As reported by Superfuture, the consumer-focused La Marzocco shop is a blend of showfloor and tasting room and is part of a re-opened premium home appliance section of the Shinsegae department store, which also includes brands like Smeg, Miele, and Gaggenau. Opened at the end of June, La Marzocco occupies a small footprint inside the larger store, just 24 square meters (258 square feet). The space was designed alongside spatial design studio RVMN and was built around the concept, “the Flavor of Emptiness.” The design is minimalist in nature, leaning on simple, almost Brutalist elements, all working around the focal point of the installation, a blue and white wave-like wall created by multidisciplinary artist Kwangho Lee.
Customers to La Marzocco’s Gangnam shop can taste coffee made from one of the espresso machines while perusing many of the home-focused equipment available for purchase.
It’s a little hard not to be jealous when a department store is home to a cooler coffee shop than you yourself have access to, but that’s what’s going on in Seoul. Which makes sense. I’m just envious is all. For more information, visit La Marzocco Korea’s Instagram page.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
All images via La Marzocco Korea
