Urban Plant: Plant cafe in Mapo-gu
Seoul is known to have an abundance of cool cafes on every street and with many restaurants not open until 11am, we were searching for a cafe to eat at for our first morning in Seoul. After browsing for awhile on Kakao Maps (because Google Maps doesn’t work very well in South Korea), we found Urban Planet, a plant cafe in the Mapo-gu area.
Recommended: Read about my first few days in Seoul in my travel recap blog post.
The vibe
The entrance of the cafe is is already brimming with plants, but at first glance you may not know it’s a cafe – Kelvin thought it was some sort of plant store 😅.
Once inside, there are even more plants – literally plants everywhere. The chairs and tables are an assortment of wooden crates and benches, and more sturdier forms of chairs.
After checking out the first floor and second floor, we opted to sit in the second floro cause it was less humid. The top floor had more sunlight though.
You order and pay at the counter and they give you a buzzer for you to come back when the food and drinks are ready.
Food and drinks review
This is what we ordered for 2 people. Prices are converted 1000:1 KRW to CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar.
Vanilla latte ($6) + Espresso ($4)
For beverages, I ordered a vanilla latte and Kelvin got an espresso. I would say the prices are similar to Vancouver prices (so not that cheap), but there’s no tax or service tip.
The vanilla latte was quite sweet.
Signature omelet ($14)
I order the omelet, which is actually one of the biggest omelets I’ve ever eaten 😂. The thing is literally huge because the plate is also really big. I feel like they used at least 3 eggs to make it.
Inside the omelet, we have spinach, mushroom, tomato and cheese. They serve it with a mix salad, some tomato salsa, sour cream, rye bread and a little cup of pesto. Overall, the dish had many elements to it but I felt like everything worked really well together. I found the pesto to taste really good with the bread, eggs and tomatoes.
Carbonara cream pasta ($16)
Kelvin ordered the pasta – which, surprise – was also huge portions. It’s a carbonara pasta so we have the bacon, parmesan cheese, and a more cream-based sauce (vs. real carbonara that is mostly egg yolk based). He also gets a whole roasted garlic on the side and some garlic bread.
Kelvin’s dish was a bit too heavy for me as a morning meal, but it was still pretty good. Although with Asian pastas I do notice the taste is less cheesy and more sweet (especially with the cream base).
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I would say this is closer to a 3.5 star, but I will just give it 3 stars for simplicity.
I originally wanted a light meal to start the day. I was thinking a coffee and a baked good would be good, but Urban Plant did not have any single pastries, only actual dishes so we were pretty overwhelmed by the amount of food we ordered.
Out of our 2 dishes, I think the omelet is a better choice – definitely one of the top omelets I’ve had in recent years. The egg was fluffy and it was stuffed with spinach, mushroom and cheese. The salad was refreshing and all the other sauces and components did a really good job of balancing out the omelet.
The pasta, I found to be just too heavy but I may feel differently about it if we came for lunch.
The vibe of the restaurant is really cool. Even though it was kind of a rainy morning, all the plants did make us feel like we were in a more tropical place. I just wish they had more comfortable seating as some of the bench seating upstairs offered no back support.
Sincerely, Loewe