Someday Romance, Daejeon: Tropical Fantasy on the Sixth Floor

In Daejeon, on the sixth floor of a shopping mall, someone built a resort.

Someday Romance doesn’t ease you in. Before you find your table, before you touch a menu, you pass through a carved stone gate — ornate, moss-grey, elaborately detailed in what reads as Balinese temple architecture — and descend toward a reflecting pond where fountains pulse and stepping stones bridge the water. Palm trees, real and artificial, crowd the edges. The city is somewhere below. It has been left behind.

The premise here is pure maximalism: a tropical resort fantasy assembled on the rooftop of Savezone department store in Dunsan-dong, and committed to the concept at every turn. No corner goes understaged. The outdoor courtyard alone contains a two-story iron birdcage tower with a spiral staircase and upper seating; bubble dome tents lined with white drapery; a second carved stone arch rising directly from the water; and enough synthetic and real vegetation to sustain some kind of ecosystem. A small sign reads Sky Lounge. A frog sculpture holds flowers. It is not subtle, and it is not trying to be.

Through the Gate

The entrance arch sets the register for everything that follows. It’s the kind of gate that belongs in front of a temple on another island, in another climate — a dense composition of carved relief panels, scrolling finials, and layered eaves, strung with fairy lights that must do considerable work at night. Stepping through it, you cross into the courtyard with the mild surprise of someone who expected a café and has instead stumbled into a film set for a story set somewhere else entirely.

The pond at the courtyard’s center is the compositional heart of the outdoor space. Stepping stones trace a path across it toward a second, smaller gate that marks a threshold between zones: the outdoor domain of palm trees and thatched parasols, and the interior spaces beyond. On a clear day, the water reflects sky and stonework in equal measure, and the fountains keep the surface in a state of constant, gentle agitation.

Inside the Jungle

The indoor sections translate the same energy through different materials. One zone reads as a greenhouse café — wooden boardwalk paths cutting through dense arrangements of banana leaf plants and tropical specimens, pendant lights woven from natural fiber hanging above rattan seating. The floor-level stream running under the walkway is a quiet theatrical touch, audible underfoot if you stop to listen. Hanging macramé egg chairs appear throughout, suspended from overhead frames, suited to the general proposition that you might as well settle in and stay.

A neon sign on the brick wall — Some Day Romance, in alternating pink and green — marks the interior’s social center of gravity. The sign shows up in nearly every angle of the room, reflected in an octagonal mirror beside it, doubling itself. The chairs here are woven bistro style; the pendant lights are thatched; the walls are tropical green and exposed brick, layered together in a way that shouldn’t cohere but does. A flat screen on the wall plays looping ocean footage, in case the point needed reinforcing.

The Hammocks and the Sky

Deeper inside, a dimmer room breaks entirely from the daytime brightness of the courtyard — olive-green walls, cascading artificial ferns, and a row of colorful fabric hammocks suspended from timber frames. Orange and blue and multicolor striped, they are the least curated objects in the building, and somehow the most immediately inviting. The whole room feels like a beach shack that has been transplanted indoors and slightly upgraded. The neon sign appears again here, smaller, glowing against the dark wall.

Back outside, the birdcage tower earns its name: two storeys of iron lattice formed into the shape of an oversized birdcage, accessible by spiral staircase, with seating inside. It is an absurd piece of architecture and works completely.

Something to Eat

The menu runs broader than most cafés permit themselves — pasta, pizza, pilaf, calzone alongside the standard coffee and drink offerings. The cream calzone, stuffed with chicken and finished in a thick cream sauce, is frequently cited as a signature. The Mongolian pilaf, a smoky, lightly spiced fried rice, is another. Drinks lean tropical: layered gradient ades in sunset colors, the house Someday latte. The rainbow ade — striated in red, orange, yellow, and green — arrives looking like something from a resort poolside, which is, of course, precisely the point.