I first discovered Zapangi while walking through Mangwon one day, when I stumbled across their famed vending machine door. As I was with a friend we took some photos and videos and shared them on Instagram, and after a flurry of comments asking for more info, I vowed to go back and actually try some of the drinks and desserts this time.
Zapangi is located just by the indoor market in Mangwon, which has very quickly become one of my favourite places to go and eat and drink in. Being on the brown line it is super quick and easy to get the train there for a day of exploring , eating, and instagramming. There are so many cute and quirky places, which I have documented here, but Zapangi is the cream of the Instagram crop. We visited on a Wednesday afternoon and still had to wait for two other sets of girls to finish taking their photos of the door before we could get inside.
Once inside the cafe itself is quite large with plenty of cozy nooks, plus a large seating area outside. The donut vending machine door, along with a little pink dog chair is the main photo point but inside there are also a few cute spots that will make nice backgrounds for your cakes and drinks.
For dessert they have a variety of donuts and tin cakes. After much inner debate I settled on the Mermaid Tin Cake (9,500), I mean how could you resist. I was so excited when I saw it, I was squealing with delight. Honestly I didn’t have high hopes for the taste of the cake, as I like my desserts to be quite sugary and Korean ones are usually less so, but this was actually quite tasty. The yummy strawberry cake was topped with strawberry frosting, and there were chunks of white chocolate strewn throughout. The mermaids tale was made of chocolate too. If you can resist the lure of the mermaid, there were several other varieties of tin cake too which also looked delicious.
For my drink I had to try Rainbow Sherbet (9,500). This magical drink was topped with a unicorn cookie, which in my eyes just made it impossible to resist. The rainbow slushy drink had a multicoloured whipped topping. While this drink was too beautiful for words the taste left a lot to be desired. Honesty the drink itself had a very mild unappealing fruity flavour, I was hoping for a punch of fruity sweet and sour like you get with the rainbow sherbet ice cream at Baskin Robbins but it was nothing like it. The whipped cream was also rather tasteless, it was disappointing as it looks so pretty, so if you want something more flavourful I would advise ordering one of the other drinks. My companion stuck with an Americano (4,500) which was pretty standard, though we liked the pink cup.
Overall I think Zapangi is a very adorable cafe. While I think you can get tastier drinks and desserts elsewhere in the neighbourhood, its worth stopping by if you like pretty places that are very photogenic. Though if you just want to come and get a shot by the door they don’t seem too strict about you buying things.
Zapangi is located at 400-2 Mangwon-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul. To get there take a train to Mangwon Station (line 6) and come out of exit 2. To your right (behind you) there is a big long market street. Keep walking straight along this street. You will see Zapangi on the left handside opposite the entrance to the covered market. For more information you can call them on 02-325-8185 or check out their Instagram page.