Dawon 전통다원

I love tea. And one of the nice things about Insadong is that there are a ton of traditional tea houses. I wanted to meet up with Nathalie because I hadn’t seen her since her birthday so we both agreed to meet up in the afternoon for some traditional tea to just catch up and relax. I found Dawon on Kakao maps while looking for a hanok style tea house. A lot of the cafes in Insadong have traditional tea but they’re not all in traditional looking buildings. This one was.

Dawon is inside the grounds of the Kyung-In Museum of Fine Art (경인미술관). There are art galleries and event spaces on the grounds that you can explore. Or you can just stop by the hanok cafe for some traditional tea, which is what we did.

Their menu is in English, Japanese, and Korean with lots of pictures, so it’s pretty easy to navigate. Nathalie beat me there and scored us a nice table outside since the inside of the Hanok style building was full. This was actually really lovely since it was in the midst of fall.

Every year at my old school for the various festivals we had and graduation the cooks would make us a traditional cinnamon tea, 수정과 (7,000 won). My new school hasn’t had this yet and I felt kind of bummed and was craving it, so when I saw it on the menu I quickly ordered it. Dawon however does not serve Sujeonggwa tea hot, they serve it as an icy punch which was a little chilly with how brisk and cool it was. It was still good though.

We had also assumed due to the pictures that our tea would come with a snack set. However it did not. Instead we decided to order one to split. The yugwa set came with traditional snacks and even some dried persimmons which was nice. (6,000 won) It was however a lot of sugar.

The traditional tea cafe is open from 10am until 10:50pm. But is closed on several holidays like New Years Day, Seollal, and Chuseok.