Eeoreop, Somewhere Between a Neighborhood Café and a Living Room

Beloved Place in Our Neighborhood — Eeoreop, Somewhere Between a Neighborhood Café and a Living Room

With a very personal curiosity, we asked the two founders of Eeoreop, tucked inside Jeongneung Market, to sit down for a conversation. How did they create such a warm space, why this particular neighborhood, and where did their shared taste come from? Here is the tender, behind-the-scenes story of Eeoreop, recorded from a regular customer’s point of view.

Interviewee Yoon Gahye, Nam Mina (Co-founders of Eeoreop)
Interviewer Ryu Sunwoo

What does your day-to-day look like these days?
Gahye We’ve introduced all our new spring drinks and desserts, and now we’re preparing our summer menu.

You roll out new menus almost like a fashion brand. (Laughs)
Gahye Jeongneung is surprisingly sensitive to F&B trends. (Laughs) In areas like Seochon, cafés see a constant influx of new visitors, but for us, it’s mostly regulars who keep coming back, so we actually need to keep releasing new menu items.

I understand that before the café, the two of you started a stationery brand called ‘eat. apology’ together.
Mina I first met Gahye in graduate school. We studied design and content planning, and started the brand together in 2022. Two years later, we opened Eeoreop. We work in a way where she handles planning and I handle design.

Is the café an extension of the brand?
Gahye It’s more like an expansion. Building on the brand name ‘eat. apology,’ we drew inspiration from the film title ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and named it ‘eat. apologize. love.’ We wanted it to be a space for eating, apologizing, and loving.
Mina I really wanted to create a space where our taste was subtly woven in, and that’s largely why we opened the café.

I’m curious what led you to open a café inside Jeongneung Market rather than in central Seoul.
Gahye Honestly, Jeongneung wasn’t part of the original plan, and the opening happened earlier than we’d intended. I love this neighborhood so much that Mina and I got a studio here and ended up living here too. We used to walk past this spot every day, and when it suddenly became available, we made a quick decision. As far as we could tell, there wasn’t really a café worth going to nearby. The foot traffic on the street in front turned out to be higher than expected, and the view of the rice mill, which really captures the atmosphere of Jeongneung, wasn’t bad either. Mina was worried it might not work out, but I managed to convince her — since this was our first time running a business, and living nearby meant we could put even more care into it.
Mina From talking to the owners of nearby shops, I heard that people in Jeongneung usually don’t stay in the neighborhood — they go elsewhere. And I related to that so much, because we used to do the same thing.
Gahye A café you’d actually want to bring a friend to when they visit Jeongneung — that’s the vibe we’re going for with Eeoreop.

How has it been in reality?
Mina I think we were a little too optimistic, especially at first. (Laughs)
Gahye We thought that if there were a pretty café in Jeongneung, people would come often, so early on we put a lot of effort into styling the space.
Mina At first we told ourselves not to worry too much about revenue and to focus on creating the space itself, but once we actually did it, that alone wasn’t enough.
Gahye We learned a lot along the way. In the end, I think people come back when the staff is kind, the atmosphere is comfortable, and the drinks actually taste good. That’s especially true in Jeongneung, since there’s almost no influx of outside visitors, so it really matters that people who’ve come once keep coming back.

How did the neighboring shop owners react?
Mina In the beginning, everyone assumed we’d fail. (Laughs) These days, a lot of people tell us they’re glad it’s doing well. We sometimes give coffee to the owner of the rice cake shop across the street, and she’s been spreading the word that it tastes good. We’ve also become close with the owner of Sanmaeul, a restaurant nearby, and she often invites us to stay for dinner.
Gahye Lately it still feels surreal and overwhelming in a good way. As we kept working hard at the café, people started recognizing us and rooting for us. A few days ago, the writer Lee Seula even stopped by. I’m a huge fan, so my hands were shaking as I got her autograph — and she’s come back twice since then. It motivates us to work even harder, and makes us feel like we made the right choice after all. (Laughs)

Do you have experience working in the food and beverage industry? Your drinks are delicious and your hospitality is great too.
Gahye I used to work as a reporting writer. I interviewed merchants all over Seoul for content about back-alley commercial districts run by the Seoul city government. I met the owners of shops that had been loved by their neighborhoods for years — like a pharmacist who always kept the door open in case a sick customer found it too hard to open it themselves, or a corner store owner who cooked ramyeon for customers at 5 a.m. because there was nowhere else to get breakfast. Doing those interviews made me realize that running a small business requires that kind of mindset. After starting the café, I put a lot of pressure on myself trying to live up to that example. (Laughs)

How do you go about developing Eeoreop’s menu?
Gahye Someday I’d like to open a tea café that also sells living goods, so lately we’ve been focusing new menu items around tea. I get a lot of insight from following cafés in China and Taiwan on Instagram. I prefer things that are light and fruity rather than heavy cream-based drinks, so I buy tea and fruit syrups and experiment with making them myself.
Mina Sometimes unexpected ideas come to me while reading a book.
Gahye That’s actually how our signature lemon green tea came about. I was reading a book about Japanese tea and got inspired by a Japanese-style shaved ice dessert where you crack green tea ice and pour lemon syrup over it.
Mina When we travel abroad, we sometimes buy dessert or drink recipe books too.
Gahye But even so, we don’t actually release that many new menu items. (Laughs) We have a long list of menu ideas, but it takes a while before we’re confident something tastes good and will actually work, so we usually spend about a month mulling it over.

These days, the area around Seongbuk Stream in Seongbuk-gu is getting a lot of attention. What about Jeongneung?
Gahye It would be nice if Seongbuk Stream connected all the way to Jeongneung, but it’s a bit of a shame that it’s cut off partway. Jeongneung Stream isn’t as wide as Seongbuk Stream, but it has its own cozy, close-knit charm, where you have to sidestep each other while passing by. (Laughs) I want to keep living here because of how uncrowded it is, with no tall buildings and a modest, unpretentious atmosphere.

Your taste really comes through in the books, plants, music, and interior of the café. Did your tastes naturally align from the start?
Mina They were different, but I think they merged as we studied together and experienced a lot of things side by side. Honestly, I haven’t read all the books in this café. (Laughs) They’re all Gahye’s books. And all the little phrases and text written around the café, including those, are things she wrote herself.
Gahye Mina took charge of the custom-ordered plants and furniture.

Is there a place you’d recommend to people visiting Jeongneung?
Gahye There’s a pavilion in front of Jeong Bakery Café along the Jeongneung Stream. I think that’s the essence of Jeongneung. (Laughs) Around the pavilion there’s a large protected tree, old shops, villa buildings, and elderly residents gathered to rest. Especially during this season, it gets so lush and green that I end up taking a lot of photos on my way to work.

Do you tend to visit a lot of cafés when you travel?
Gahye When we go to Japan, I think we go with cafés in mind. We buy tea, and sometimes we bring back teacups or other tableware.
Mina We can hit up to three cafés in a single day. We also visit places like tableware markets.
Gahye It’s hard to travel with a completely carefree mind, without thinking about work at all. I think our real trip will be the one we take after we’re done with the café. (Laughs) We’re thinking about two years from now — by then, we’d like to go somewhere long and leisurely. Some of our café regulars live in the U.S. and Canada, and we’ve become friends with them. There’s also a regular who runs a guesthouse on Rota Island. In two years, we’d like to travel to the U.S. and Canada to visit them, and also go to Rota in the Northern Mariana Islands to take it slow for a while.

What do you do on your days off or after work? What are you most interested in these days?
Gahye We take turns going to a woodworking studio once a week, preparing for a new brand.
Mina What I’m most interested in these days is recording things — taking a lot of photos, writing in a diary. I’m really into putting feelings into words and writing them down. I’m also doing a monthly review.
Gahye My interest these days is photography. I recently bought a new camera. I’ve always liked taking photos, using vintage digital cameras or film cameras, but now I want to really dive into it properly, so I’ve been working hard at it.

Can you give us a hint about anything new you’re preparing?
Gahye We want to hold community gatherings like book clubs, monthly review meetups, or beer parties to make Ear-up a lively place. Around summer, we’re planning to launch a new woodworking brand. We’ve already picked a name: ‘Handstand Park.’ We both do yoga, and to do a handstand, you actually need to relax your body rather than tense up. It’s the same with sawing in woodworking — the saw actually cuts better when you relax and don’t force it. We combined ‘handstand’ with ‘park,’ a place full of trees where you can rest comfortably, and it turned into a fun name.
Mina There’s a lot we want to do through Handstand Park, which is partly why we added the word ‘park’ — so it can encompass all kinds of different work.

Lastly, is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
Gahye I want to brag about our regulars. Around Chuseok or Lunar New Year, they bring us japchae (stir-fried glass noodles), namul (seasoned vegetables), and even make us kimchi.
Mina We’ve even received galbi (short ribs). (Laughs)
Gahye We’re discovering how fun it is to grow close with our café guests.
Mina Sometimes we set up a desk and chairs in the backyard and chat with customers. More introverted guests often hand us letters, and sometimes we cry reading them.
Gahye I’m grateful that Ear-up has become a place where people feel comfortable coming to.