Sinaru — There's a Boat Upstairs
Sinaru is built to look like a ferry dock from the 1880s. The neighborhood earns it. You come out of Incheon Station, walk about ten minutes past the edge of Chinatown, and you're in the district where the old foreign concessions sat. The name comes from naru, a ferry landing, the wooden-boat kind.
We walked the Japanese Street to get there, which I'd tell you to do even if you weren't stopping for coffee. It's the preserved stretch of the Japanese concession from after Jemulpo Port opened in 1883, and the buildings are still up — low wooden and stone shopfronts with the shop built into the front of the residence, the way Japanese merchants laid them out. They're cafes and little exhibition halls now. You're walking past 1883 and most of it is selling lattes.
From the street Sinaru gives you nothing. Grey brick, three stories, corten steel around the entrance, string lights under the overhang, and a sandwich board out front pushing a green tea americano they've named Nokcano.
The Coffee
You order off a digital board, same as most places in Korea now. It's a long menu, and there's a whole section on it for slow drip. That's where I found the Ethiopia Geisha cold brew, somewhere around 4,000 won.
It was very good. Clean and bright, floral, that tea-like thing a good Ethiopian does, and they served it plain over ice so there was nothing for it to hide behind. I've paid a lot more than four thousand won for a Geisha and gotten less out of it. My girlfriend got an iced latte and a slice of baked cheesecake, too cold right out of the fridge but once it got room temp it was quite good.
They roast in-house. There's a glassed-in room off the bar with two drum roasters sitting in it and a wall of framed certificates behind the espresso machine, which tells you where the attention goes in that building.
Getting Upstairs
The ground floor is one long corridor. Dark wood, damask wallpaper, brass sconces, bentwood chairs pulled up to a mirrored rail. Both walls are mirrored so the hallway runs off forever in both directions and you honestly can't tell how deep the building goes.
There's no staircase anywhere. You go into the map room and press down on one of the books on the shelf, and the wall slides open to the left, and behind it is a staircase lit in neon, white on white.
The Rooms
Three of them up top, all built for photographs.
The book room has pages torn out of old books covering the ceiling wall to wall, hanging down over your head, lit warm from behind, with brass telescopes and steamer trunks and a globe set up underneath. My girlfriend got some of her best pictures of the whole trip standing in there.
Then there's a small gallery of cat paintings called Gallery Bom. Framed kittens sitting in fields of flowers, floral wallpaper, green astroturf on the floor, and a sign asking you to look and not touch. I'm not going to complain about a room full of kittens.
The main room is the ship. Two full-size wooden rowboats on the floor between facing mirrors, so the boats repeat off into the distance in both directions, and every half hour or so they run a fog machine and the whole room goes white. You climb in the boat and someone takes your picture. It's kitschy and I had a good time.
Who It's For
The crowd was mostly women out together, older, a few mother-and-daughter pairs, with maybe two or three younger people in the entire place. I'd walked in assuming couples.So that's the read on it. Sinaru is a date afternoon or a nice lunch with your mom, and people come for the rooms and for the pictures they take in them. The coffee just happens to be good enough that you'd order it anywhere.
The Drip Bags
I took home three of their single-serve pour over pouches. Ten grams each, matte foil, ship's wheel logo on the front with the tasting notes printed under it. Nutty Blending, their house Sinaru Blending, and the Geisha.
If You're in Incheon
The shop: 시나루 (Sinaru), Sinpo-ro 23beon-gil 62, floors 1 and 2. Ten minutes on foot from Incheon Station Exit 1. Instagram
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What to order: The slow drip section on the board. The Ethiopia Geisha cold brew ran around 4,000 won. If you want something with cream, the Korean reviews all point at the einspänner.
Take home: The drip bags, 1,500 to 1,700 won each. Get all three, it's nothing.
Getting upstairs: Map room, press down on the book. You will not find a staircase before you do this.
Timing: Fog runs about every half hour. If the boat room is empty when you get up there, give it a minute.
Nearby: Chinatown and the Japanese Street. Walk the old concession buildings first and finish at the cafe.
Hours: Kakao lists them open until 21:00. Older posts from the shop said 10:00 to 20:00, closed Wednesdays. Worth checking before you go.
— Jonathan
Coffee Passport, stamp no. 4 · Sinaru · Incheon, South Korea