Ireui Cafe & Haengwon Cafe: beautiful Jeonju cafes 카페이르리, 행원

Exploring Jeonju Hanok Village, visiting two lovely hanok cafes and eating beef jeon outside with some makgeolli.

Day 6 and 7 of my 7-day trip to Byeonsanbando and Jeonju

Cafe Ireuri

Today, Romana and I explored the Jeonju Hanok village. While wandering around the lovely hanok village streets in the morning, we popped into Ireuri Cafe (카페이르리). It’s a large coffee shop in a nicely refurbished traditional house, with a few outhouses and courtyard garden. We sat on the upper level of open air building which gave us views of the courtyard below and the surrounding village rooftops.

I was quite taken with the rain-water watering system installed; rain from the roof is channelled to the tree in the courtyard with some metal pipes. Cool!

Ddeokggalbi

We wandered some more over the river into a so-called art village. However, we didn’t really know what we were looking for and ended up heading back across the river. We ate at Gangchon Ddeokgalbi (강촌떡갈비). It’s a local dish of Korean-style beef patties and rice cake.

Hanok Cafe Haengwon

Our second hanok coffee shop of the day was Hanegwon (행원), a lovely old teahouse just outside the village area. Again there’s a courtyard with a more mature garden than the other place. Also, the decor was a little older and more formal. The room we were in had windows open to the garden and a little stage at one end for traditional Korean music performances; and so yes, we played with the drums! We drank traditional fruit teas and styed for quite a while resting our weary legs.

Beef Jeon

We were having trouble getting in to places we wanted to eat at, so found a place selling beef jeon (육전) and we could eat them outside in a little area the kitchen had reserved a few metres away. That and a bottle of makgeolli in the evening warmth was perfect!

Areumdaun House

Our accommodation, Areumdaun House, was small and the futons were thin; I wish I could have stayed at the other place, but this one had breakfast and no annoying host to deal with.

Next and final day

The next day, we had breakfast at the hanok, then took a bus to the train station. We left our bags at the station and went for lunch. We bought some some chocopie souvenirs, then had coffee at Cup of Joe (컵오브조), then took the KTX home.