Banana Tree (Seoul, SOUTH KOREA) ★★★☆☆

There is a joke between our friends that goes something like this - "if a restaurant wants to go onto the road of stardom in Korea, the first thing they need to do is to get themselves on the Korean TV show Tasty Road". OK, that wasn't all that funny. And yes, we are admittedly exaggerating a little but many restaurants and cafés do take great pride in their appearance on the show.

After a pretty enjoyable lunch at Ryunique, I decided to visit one of these lucky places. This one called Banana Tree, is a tiny little café at the edge of Sinsa.



Walking into Banana Tree felt like going into somebody's old house rather than a coffee shop. The rugged interior provokes a real rustic vibe that is quite unique in Sinsa-dong.




The space was truly remarkably small and there were only 3 tables here.



The bread and butter of Banana Tree includes their flower pot dessert which they called "Flower Paap" that comes with 3 different flavors (strawberry, banana and coffee). Another house specialty is their cotton candy latte that looks like a big cloud on a tall glass.



I went with their banana flavor (₩5,800) and look, it came with this cute little shovel spoon.

These banana cakes were made to order. I could see our server putting some cake and banana together into a blender and after less than a minute, she went on to pour the purée-like "cake" into the pot and applied the finishing touches with the plastic flowers and chocolate powder on top (as the soil).




I thought the texture was kind of nice. It reminded me a little of serradura or sawdust pudding (木糠布甸️), which we all knew was one of the greatest food coming out of Macau this past decade.


Food Rating: 4.5/10 

Price: ₩₩

Address: 526 Sinsa-dong, gangnam-gu, Sinsa-dong, Seoul, South Korea
Closest Metro Station: Sinsa
Tel: +82 2-3442-6050
Website: www.facebook.com/bananatree6020