During my vegan research of Seoul, I was thrilled to find that it has loads of vegan bakeries. I envisioned us eating decadent desserts every day. We picked up a few sweet treats, but it wasn’t quite as indulgent as I’d hoped. Here’s what we tried…

Asheville Bakery Cafe

A lot of the bakeries turned out to be bread heavy, rather than dessert based. We returned to this bakery several times to pick up bread buns to takeaway for breakfasts the next day. It is also a cafe serving hot food, which looked tempting too.

We tried a few different ciabattas from here and enjoyed them all. We tried fig, chocolate and cashew, cranberry and pumpkin seeds, olive, and mushroom and potato. The fig and cranberry ones were probably the best because the fruit added a nice juicy hit, which was very welcome and prevented the buns from being too dry. The chocolate and cashew bun was a bit dry from the cocoa powder on top, but it was so decadently chocolatey that I didn’t care too much.

All of the flavours were generously provided – you would never struggle to remember which one you’d ordered because they were all bursting with the relevant ingredient. A few of the buns were a little overdone in patches on the top, which gave a slightly bitter taste, but mostly the buns were excellent.

O.verte Donuts

Trying to find that good dessert we were craving, we visited a mostly-vegan donut place. We got a box of six doughnuts to takeaway: two black sesame and cream, a peanut butter and jelly, an earl grey and almond, a matcha crumble, and a garlic cream cheese.

The black sesame and cream one had a fantastic taste and the cream was a good sweet addition to balance out the sesame.

The peanut butter and jelly was good, but heavier on the jam than peanut butter. That may not be a problem for you though!

The earl grey and almond was perfect, a really subtle flavour and delicious cream.

The matcha crumble was a little dry, I would have loved a slightly stickier icing on top, but the flavour was good.

The garlic cream cheese was a sweet donut with a savoury topping, and Dr HH assures me that it was really well balanced and tasty. I didn’t take its photo because I was so nauseated by the idea of it – but it’s in the middle of the bottom row in the photo above.

We ended up going back for a few more treats later in our week in Seoul. This time we tried the raspberry pistachio, which had a sweet, sharp raspberry glaze and nice crunchy chunks of pistachio.

The tiramisu had quite a sweet glaze and didn’t taste strongly of coffee (although, Dr HH always says this about coffee-flavoured desserts and when I dare to take a bite as a coffee hater, it is extremely strongly flavoured!). It seemed like this one would lend itself very well to some cream on top, based on the components of an actual tiramisu, so it’s a shame it was one of the few without cream.

Finally, the chocolate donut was very sticky, sweet, and tasty.

In general, we found the dough pleasant enough. The flavours were fun and unusual (for us anyway, with a now fairly disappointing vegan donut scene in Prague), and I appreciate the creativity.

I understood that all the donuts are vegan, but not all of the drinks are – I think it’s clear on the menu though. It looked like when we ordered, the staff took six plain donuts and decorated them based on our order, so it wasn’t immediate service, but didn’t take long at all. That’s useful to know because it means that you might be able to order a donut from the menu even if there isn’t a sample one out on the counter.

mtl cafe & bakery

This is not an all-vegan spot, but it reportedly has a few vegan options which are clearly labelled. We went in on a Saturday afternoon and they had two muffins and one chocolate torte out in the case as the vegan options. We got a couple of banana bread muffins to take away for breakfast the next day.

The muffins kept well for the next day and were tasty. They were moist and dense (but not in a bad way), making for quite a hearty breakfast treat. They were topped with some oats and chopped nuts for texture. There was also a sweet sticky sauce drizzled on top which was a nice addition. They were really good muffins, so it’s a shame the vegan options were so few.

Cafe de Fessonia

This café is located inside the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (more on that below), which means it might be convenient to visit. We went here quite late in the afternoon to pick up some snacks for the following day. There were chocolate chip cookies and fig cookies, so we tried both. They were all quite tasty, but none of it was mind-blowing. Vegan items were clearly labelled with a vegan sticker.

Coconuzm

It’s not a holiday until you have some ice cream! We were delighted to find this all-vegan ice cream shop, and on a rare sunny day in Seoul too. There were about ten different flavours to choose from, and the ones we tried all had good creamy textures. We got a couple of large double scoop cones from here and they were delicious.

Dr HH got earl grey and salted caramel. The earl grey had a nice citrusy flavour, but he didn’t pick up much tea from it. The salted caramel flavour mostly came from the sauce drizzled on. It also contained some bits of almonds, which were fun for texture.

I got mint chocolate chip and chocolate hazelnut. I consider mint choc chip to be one of the all time great flavours, but vegan versions are few and far between. The mint and the chocolate chips were good. The chocolate hazelnut was nice, but the coconut flavour was a bit overpowering in this one.

If you do for the double scoop cone, be aware that it is not very stable! Poor Dr HH was trying to tentatively scoop at his ice cream and sent it all tumbling off the cone. Fortunately (and quite incredibly), he caught the flying ice cream scoops in one hand and was ready to carry on eating from a cup. The staff member kindly made him a new one which he was even more tentative with and successfully ate it all. It did make for a significantly more stressful experience than I like to have with an ice cream! Get a cup if you go!

Activities in Seoul

And in this post I’ll share a few activities in Seoul that are neither a palace nor a temple! (See last week’s post for those highlights.)

Dongdaemun Design Plaza featured on all the Seoul itineraries I looked at, so we made a visit too. The DDP is the world’s largest atypical building, however you might define that. It was fun to look at from the outside, but we had a hard time trying to understand what is actually in it and how to get to the parts that are accessible to the general public. We settled for finding the famous staircase. If you’re an architecture enthusiast or if there’s a good exhibition on, you might want to spend more time there than we did.

Bukchon Hanok village also featured prominently on blogs about Seoul. Our map app took us there in a roundabout way, but ultimately it seemed like there was just this one street of old timey houses that is the big tourist attraction. It felt like a bit of a tourist trap to us.

Speaking of tourists traps – struggling to find another indoor activity to get us out of the rain, we made our way over to Starfield Library at the COEX Mall. Just looking at these shelves you can probably identify some difficulties you might have in accessing the books. This library looked to me like it exists just for social media. At least it was out of the rain and we got to see some top notch posing!

While I was bedridden (I had a mild cold), Dr HH spent a few hours at the National Museum of Korea, which is most famously home to a helmet from some ancient Olympics. We wouldn’t have gone to this museum were it not for the rain, but he said it was fine.

He also stopped by the Leeum Museum of Art but was a bit underwhelmed – though he did enjoy the fun lighting and mirrors in the stairways.

Finally, we did manage to get into the great outdoors on one occasion! We got public transport to the outskirts of the city to Namhansanseong fortress, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. We didn’t pay to go in the fortress, but we did take one of the hiking trails around it for a gentle walk. It was a hazy day, but we still enjoyed a pleasant view of the city. It was good to get some fresh air and feel the sun again!