I said last time I wrote that I would tell you about some of the teashops and tearooms that I visited while I was in South Korea. So here’s just a little about some of the traditional teashops and the Western-style tea rooms where I sipped tea with friends while I was in Seoul.

When I discovered that I was to spend some time in Korea, I got in touch with a friend of mine, Heejib Byun, who has an English-style tea room in the Airport Terminal in central Seoul (see the picture of Pekoe Tea Room just below). While I was Managing Director of St James’s Teas a few years ago, I supplied Heejib with various flavoured black teas - which are really popular amongst younger Koreans - and we became firm friends (she even came all the way from Korea to attend one of my tea masterclasses last year). With her interest in everything that’s going on in the Korean tea world, she knows about the various shops and events and so she very kindly arranged to take me on a tour of the city to discover some of the different tea stores and shops.

We went first to Insadong, one of the city’s oldest streets, and wandered in and out of several shops whose shelves were crammed with the beautiful blue-green celadon tea bowls that are the colour of pale precious jade and are so typically Korean. They have their own pottery infuser basket inside and a lid that then neatly becomes the saucer for the infuser (here’s the one that I bought in one of the shops).

Thirsty and a little hungry after our meanderings, we climbed the steep wooden staircase (shown in the photo) that led up to a small traditional Korean tea room that was hidden away from the bustling street and busy shoppers. The light inside was soft and subdued, infused with the warm colour of mellow bamboo; everything was made of dark wood except the walls, which were covered with thin parchment paper on which customers (with the owner’s approval) had doodled, written their thoughts and messages and drawn all sorts of designs. On the wall near us sat a Buddha in contemplation in front of a teapot and bowl (here he is in the photo!). From the menu (hand-written on a large bamboo tube), we ordered green Korean tea and bowls of different iced fruit infusions and nibbled on ginger shortbread, rice cakes and little sweetmeats made from black sesame seeds.

From here, we drove to the Dongsoong-dong area of town where the streets are full of restaurants and tea houses. At one end of Jongno Street stands Rose House - a complete contrast to the tiny traditional tea we had just visited. Rose Lounge, one of the Western-style tearooms that have sprung up in Seoul in the past 5 or 6 years, is a sort of hybrid of Mariage Frères in Paris and an English tea shop. It serves herbal and fruit infusions, black teas from Darjeeling, Assam and Sri Lanka and a long list of flavoured black teas with fantasy names such as British Royal Academy Tea, Valentine, Rose Garden and Diana Afternoon Tea and which are served in traditional English tea pots decorated with flowers and fruits (see the image of then tables set ready for tea). If you’re hungry, you can indulge in the Victoria Afternoon Tea Time set tea or the Diana Afternoon Tea Time set tea with sandwiches, scones and pastries in true British style.

Just around the corner, we found Cha Ya, another Western tea room with quirky pictures on the wall and a mixture of Italian sculpture, French furniture and English teas (the photo shows one of the unusual images on the wall here). We didn’t stay as we had another, more important visit to make - to Heejib’s shop, Pekoe Tea Room. I had seen photos of her lovely shop before but it was such a treat to actually sit and drink tea with her. She owns and runs the shop with her sister and they have worked so hard to create an atmosphere that the young people of Seoul love - it’s welcoming, comfortable, pretty, and very English and attracts locals who come back and back to meet their friends, sit and chat, read quietly, work (the photo shows a local writer who often spends time here), or just say “Hi” to Heejib. The decor is European/British, the porcelains English, the sandwiches neat and crustless and the scones to die for!” Heejib’s sister has perfected her scone recipe and bakes ovenfulls every day - needless to say, they disappear pretty quickly.

Like Rose Lounge, Pekoe Tea Room serves and sells a number of flavoured black teas as well as the single origin teas from China, India and Sri Lanka. Teas blended with flowers, fruits, spices, herbs and additional flavourings such as Scotch Whisky, caramel fudge, chocolate chips and sugar hearts are all the rage among younger people here. I think they love them because they are so different from the traditional Korean green teas, because they have a sweeter taste, and because most of them look really interesting with their added flower blossoms and pieces of fruit and spice. It’s also very fashionable, just as it is in Japan, to eat scones with cream and jam and indulge in all those British tea-time treats and we were thoroughly spoiled with a ‘proper’ English tea of sandwiches, warm scones and a selection of beautiful cakes- which was delicious! No wonder the shop is always busy. Here is Heejib outside Pekoe Tea Room.

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