Bluejay Coffee, Wangsimni: a quiet cafe with a wave bench
After a weekend brunch with a friend around Sangwangsimni, you want a cafe where you can sit with a coffee and keep talking. This part of Seoul is dense with apartment towers, so there are chain cafes on every corner. What is rare is a place with big windows, some taste in the room, and a table where the next conversation does not drown yours. The cafes by Wangsimni station feel like shopping-mall units, Sindang is a bit far, and Seongsu is not worth the subway time for one coffee.
So we walked to Bluejay Coffee, which sits almost exactly between Sangwangsimni and Wangsimni stations. If you live in the Centras or Tenz Hill complexes it is an easy walk. From Wangsimni or Sindang it is one subway stop, or a longer stroll.
Before you go
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| What we ordered | We had an iced americano, an iced latte and a green tea terrine. Egg tarts come in boxes of four to take away |
| Seating | The signature seat is a curved lounge bench built into the wall. If your knees or back complain, ask for a normal table |
| Getting there | Three to five minutes on foot from Sangwangsimni station. Parking on the street is hard; use the Centras office basement or a lot near Wangsimni station |
| Korean name | 블루제이커피 |
A blue bird on an old block
The cafe takes over a whole three-storey building. A big blue pictogram of a blue jay is painted on the outer wall, so the name and the brand colour are the facade. Among the older low-rise shops in the back streets of Wangsimni it stands out, and somehow the old buildings around it make it look better rather than worse.
The side wall is finished in rough sprayed concrete rather than something smooth or matte, which I liked. The window carries BLUEJAY in large letters and a round COFFEE SPACE logo, with white snowflake decals and a cluster of white ball lamps hanging inside. Above the door hung a large wreath with a blue ribbon, silver stars and pine cones. It was July. There were more wreaths inside, so I decided it was a permanent object rather than leftover Christmas, and the blue ribbon made it feel intentional.
The bench
Inside, a dark navy curved counter faces the door, with beans and merchandise lined up on a concrete-grey wall under thin strip lights and one large white disc lamp overhead. The brand colour runs through the counter, the wall and the lighting without becoming loud. It is a room you can sit in for two hours without getting tired of it.
The part we enjoyed most was the lounge bench: an ivory bench that curves along the wall like a wave, with small stainless cube tables jutting out and dark navy round cushions dotted along it. At first I was not sure how you were meant to sit on it. Once I did, my back rested against the wall naturally and it was comfortable. A wave-patterned rug lies underneath, and a small duck object sits in the corner as if to mark the spot. I have not seen a cafe seat carved out like this anywhere else, and it is the thing I would tell people about.
The ceiling is exposed concrete with pipes, the front wall is glass, and a deep blue carpet covers half the floor. That carpet does more than look good. Footsteps disappear and the whole room stays quiet even when it is full. By the window there are folding chrome high chairs and round white-topped high tables, and from there you get the shops across the street, scooters and green trees framed in the glass. That is the seat for a laptop. A woman with a tablet and a man with a laptop and an iced drink were already using it that way.
Small objects are everywhere: five silver, crystal and gold deer on the ledge above the bench, an abstract print in blue and beige, a Bang & Olufsen speaker filling the room evenly. Every seat has something to look at.
What we ordered
By the counter is a tray of egg tarts under an EGG TART label, evenly caramelised and clearly fresh; someone picked up a box of four while we were there. A dessert case held something that looked like a Dubai chocolate terrine or fudge, which I stared at longer than I meant to.
We ordered an iced americano, an iced latte and the green tea terrine. The americano came in a white cup with a B logo, the latte in a cup with blue marbling that matched the carpet. The coffee leaned toward a darker roast, with weight rather than acidity, which suits an after-brunch cup. Large ice cubes kept it from watering down too fast.
The terrine is a square of green tea cake under a layer of white cream, dusted with dark green tea powder. Cream first, then the tea rising through it as you chew. It is dense in the way terrines are, nothing like the packaged green tea tiramisu you see everywhere. I used to be a tiramisu person. I have switched sides. It did not fight the coffee, and it was not sweet enough to be a problem after a full brunch.
The card on the table listed the wifi password, the Instagram handle and the restroom code, which meant we never had to ask. I wish more cafes did that.
The room on a weekend afternoon was people in their twenties and thirties: someone working alone on a laptop, pairs of friends like us, one person with a book. Different groups, one quiet room.
If you know Elephant Bagel in Seongsu, where I once spent a long afternoon at a big table with a laptop, Bluejay is a different animal. Elephant Bagel is big tables for work. Bluejay is the lounge bench for a small conversation, or the window for working alone. Ttukseom for the first, Wangsimni for the second.
It is a good sign for this neighborhood, too. With this many apartments there is always demand for cafes, but very few of them have any taste. One like this in the back streets lifts the whole block a little, and you do not have to go to Dosan or Seongsu for it.
I’d recommend it to friends looking for a quiet dessert stop after brunch around Wangsimni, to residents who want a cafe with some design in it close to home, and to anyone who works alone and wants a big window. Next time I am taking a box of four egg tarts home and trying the signature latte.
My rating: 4.5/5. Easy to reach, clean, quiet, and I will be back.