Mermaid’s Recipe — a Café in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do
There’s a two-story house tucked away in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do, about an hour southeast of Seoul, that doesn’t quite look like any café you’ve been to before. The sign above the counter reads Mermaid’s Recipe in gold cursive script. A black-and-white cat sits on the checkered floor like it owns the place. And upstairs, Kurt Cobain is watching you from the ceiling.
Welcome to one of Korea’s most quietly iconic cafés — operating since 2017, still very much itself, and still very much worth the trip.
The Concept: An American House Frozen in Time
Mermaid’s Recipe isn’t themed so much as it is inhabited. The whole building feels less like a set and more like stepping into a house that was lovingly assembled from the props department of every American film you loved growing up — the retro kitchen from a wholesome family movie, the living room from a 70s period drama, the teenage bedroom from a 90s coming-of-age story.
Each floor, and almost each room, has its own distinct era and mood. The effect is disorienting in the best possible way. You keep turning a corner and finding a completely different world.
Floor 1: The Bakery Counter
The entrance brings you straight to the ordering area — a handsome dark wood counter under the Mermaid’s Recipe sign, with a “Pick Up Here” window opening onto the garden. Pink gift boxes are stacked on the counter. A small chocolate fountain sits beside a cake stand. It has the unhurried feel of a neighborhood bakery that’s been there forever.
The display case holds the café’s signature item: shell-shaped macarons in pastel rows — lemon, raspberry, salted caramel, matcha, corn butter, dark chocolate, black sesame, salted vanilla, earl grey. The shell shape is a patented design unique to Mermaid’s Recipe, and they’re available to ship domestically as well. Behind the counter, a wall of vintage tin signs advertises iced coffee, fresh milk, homemade pies — the kind of American ephemera that feels both foreign and deeply familiar.
Floor 1: The Retro Kitchen
Step through the arch and you’re in the kitchen — the heart of the café and the room most people come for. The walls are covered in strawberry-and-gingham wallpaper. The cabinets are buttercup yellow. The refrigerator is pink. Copper jelly molds hang in a cluster on the wall like a trophy collection. The checkered floor tiles are teal and cream. It looks like a 1950s American kitchen magazine spread made real, and the details are obsessively right.
There are multiple seating areas within the kitchen space — chrome-legged tables with laminate tops in red, yellow, and blue; vinyl chairs; diner-style banquettes against the wainscoting. Each table feels like its own little set. The cat, a black-and-white regular who appears to have no fixed schedule, might be sitting on the checkered floor when you arrive, or might be occupying the bed upstairs. Either way, encountering it feels like a bonus.
A note for K-pop fans: aespa’s Karina visited the café and reportedly spent a good while with the resident cat. The group’s autographs are framed in the shop. The Boyz also commissioned Mermaid’s Recipe to create the oversized cake featured in their “ROAR” music video.
Floor 1: The 70s Living Room
Connected to the kitchen through the arched hallway is a sitting room that belongs to a completely different decade. Orange wallpaper, olive-green ceiling, a low teak sideboard with a small CRT television and a row of books. A sheepskin-draped rattan chair. A cowhide ottoman. Flower-patterned curtains in gold and rust. A brass sunburst wall decoration.
It’s the kind of room that feels like it was assembled by someone who genuinely loved the 1970s rather than someone performing nostalgia for it. The proportions are right. The clutter is earned. If you sat down in that rattan chair with a book, you might forget where you were.
Floor 2: The 90s Teen Room
The staircase leads upstairs to what might be the most photographed part of the café.
The entire second floor is essentially one large room, and the moment you step in, something shifts. It’s the feeling you get in the first scene of a teen movie — when the camera pans slowly across a bedroom and you already know everything about the person who lives there before they’ve said a word.
Kurt Cobain watches from the ceiling. Nirvana, Spice Girls, Clueless, Gremlins posters cover every wall. A cheerleader uniform in blue and white hangs by the window. A pink iron-frame bed sits underneath it all, Care Bears on the pillow. Across the room, shelves of Barbies still in their boxes, Furbies, Sesame Street plush toys, Star Wars figures, magazine cutouts covering the wall above a study desk. In another corner, an older CRT TV on a mid-century wood stand, a lava lamp, a floral-skirted armchair, a glass-topped coffee table. A full-length mirror leans against the opposite wall.
You keep expecting someone to walk in, throw their bag on the bed, and start talking to you about their crush. The room is that specific — not a recreation of the 90s in general, but of one particular teenage bedroom, belonging to one particular girl, at one particular moment. It’s less a photo set and more a scene that’s been paused mid-frame, waiting for the rest of the story to continue.
The black-and-white cat has been known to appear here too, curled on the yellow gingham bedspread as if it always lived in a 90s teenager’s room and found the arrangement perfectly natural.
Photography Tips
The entire space is designed with photography in mind, and the staff clearly expects it. A few things worth knowing:
- Lighting on the first floor is warm and directional. The kitchen windows give the best natural light in the afternoon, particularly on the stove and sink side.
- The 70s living room is darker and moodier. Give your camera a moment to adjust when you walk in from the bright kitchen.
- The teen rooms upstairs have slanted ceilings that make wide shots interesting — the ceiling posters in the 90s bedroom work especially well shot from a low angle.
- The cat is not guaranteed to appear, and when it does, it moves on its own schedule. Worth the wait if you have the time.
- Weekday mornings are significantly quieter than weekend afternoons. If you want the kitchen to yourself, Tuesday or Wednesday before noon is your best bet.
- The garden visible through the “Pick Up Here” window adds a nice green backdrop to bakery counter shots.
The Desserts
The food matches the setting. Mermaid’s Recipe bakes everything in-house and changes the menu seasonally — peach cake in summer, Christmas cakes in December, parfaits made with handmade yogurt ice cream. The cakes are displayed on vintage cake stands in the glass counter, and they lean deliberately retro in both flavor and presentation.
The shell macarons are the signature and the souvenir. Nine flavors are available individually or as a boxed set, and cold packaging is available for travel. They also ship domestically via the café’s online store.
Getting There
Address: 207-7 Pabal-ro, Gwangju-si, Gyeonggi-do
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM (last order 9:30 PM)
Closed: Mondays
Getting there: Most visitors come by car or taxi. Approximately 50–60 minutes from central Seoul by car. Check Naver Maps for public transit options.
Instagram: @mermaids_recipe — check here for seasonal menu updates and schedule changes before visiting.
Reservations: Available via Naver Booking for certain time slots.
Mermaid’s Recipe has been running since 2017 and keeps getting stranger and better — adding rooms and details over time. It’s the kind of place that rewards a second visit, because you’ll notice things you missed the first time around.
