A Modernized Cafe In the Midst of Nature: Caffe Raum

Behind our apartment, there are mountains that are open to hiking and our family has taken advantage of that luxury several times. On that road towards the entrace of that hiking trail, a rather large two-floor cafe sat rather isolated and a bit out of place. In a sense, it felt like a piece of modernization in the midst of complete nature, but seeing how society's gradually become that way it was not the most surprising.

Nevertheless, every time I passed through that "Caffe Raum", I kept thinking that I should visit it to see how it is like. What prevented me from visiting might have been the presupposition I held that such large cafes were incomprehensibly expensive, but with much courage and curiosity I finally got my chance to take a look after taking a quick hike with my wife and youngest daughter.

The seafood pasta.

Before heading into the cafe, my wife prompted us to go into the cafe just to drink some coffee, but thoughts changed when she looked into the menu placed neatly on the table. Suddenly, she was ordering an entire meal: pasta, pizza and last but definitely not least.. coffee.

As soon as the food was served, we immediately grabbed ahold of our forks and began to eat. The food was great but the pickles that were served as side dishes stood out to me. Most pickles that are sold in markets in Korea at times have people making spontaneous and unintended faces due to their sourness but these beautifully colored pickles were just right in their mixture of sweetness and sourness.

To my surprise, quite a variety of seafood was placed atop the cream-infused pasta. It had a very soothing taste and the fragrance coming out of the different herbs sprinkled on the pasta made it that much better. After a few fork dabs unto the pasta, it almost magically disappered.

Garlic bread is delicious no matter when it's eaten, but it's especially good when it is eaten after using it to clean the cream sauce off a cream pasta that people have finished eating. It's quite an eerie yet satisfying feeling when both the original crispiness is tasted after the soft and deliciously soggy part of the garlic bread melts in your mouth.

It was undoubtedly not enough for three people to eat this relatively small pizza, but these pizzas are not meant to fill hungry customers up anyways. The thin crusted pizza was crunchy and the baked taste of the sliced almonds fit quite well with the melted cheese atop the crust.

For coffee, I got a latte. I personally like the feeling when the bitterness of the coffee flows into my mouth mixed with the foam floating over it.

It's different for everyone.

Address : Gyounggi-do Bucheon-si Sosa-gu Songnae-dong 449-16