Gilpost · Seongdong-gu, Seongsu-dong 1-ga
GRIN ROOM
그린룸 Geurin-rum The name is "grin", not "green" — the red carpet up the stairs reads GRIN IN THE JOURNEY, which one writer was told at the counter means keep smiling on the way; Korean writes it 그린룸, the same spelling it would use for "green room", and the plants on the terrace do nothing to clear the confusion.
Other · Seongdong-gu, Seongsu-dong 1-ga
Updated · Published
Grin Room is a café and bar on the third floor of a red-brick building on Wangsimni-ro, three to five minutes' walk from exit 1 at Ttukseom. The name is grin, not green — the red carpet up the stairs reads GRIN IN THE JOURNEY, and one writer passes on what she was told at the counter: keep smiling on the way. Inside is wood, a red floor and a coffered ceiling; alongside it runs the terrace the shop bills as the largest in Seongsu. From it the elevated Line 2 trains pass at eye level and, further off, you can see N Seoul Tower. Coffee and dessert by day; house wine, bottled beer and a few savoury plates in the evening, with a DJ booth that gets used at weekends. On the ground floor of the same building is Grin Hole, a similar name and a separate business. We read twenty-five posts from April 2025 to September 2026; twenty-two of them are actual visits, by twenty-one different people.
The basics
| Address | 서울특별시 성동구 왕십리로 136, 3층 (성수동1가) 136 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul |
|---|---|
| Phone | 0507-1424-0746 |
| Typical spend | ₩3,500 – ₩20,000 |
| Floor area | 24 m² |
| Status | In business |
15 posts say it is walkable from the station.
When it opens
| Open | 11:00–23:00 15 of 17 posts last seen 2026-09 | |
|---|---|---|
| Open | 11:00–24:00 8 of 17 posts last seen 2026-09 | |
| Open | Daily | 11:00–23:00 2 of 17 posts last seen 2026-08 |
| Open | 11:00–01:00 2 of 17 posts last seen 2025-10 | |
| Open | 11:00–19:00 2 of 17 posts last seen 2025-08 | |
| Open | 11:00–21:00 2 of 17 posts last seen 2025-08 | |
| Last order | 22:30 7 of 8 posts last seen 2026-09 | |
| Last order | 23:30 3 of 8 posts last seen 2026-09 | |
| Closed | 없음 2 of 4 posts last seen 2026-09 | |
| Closed | 월요일 2 of 4 posts last seen 2025-08 |
The values differ, but the periods they were written in do not overlap. This looks like a change over time rather than a disagreement, and the top row is the most recently reported. We did not confirm it with the restaurant.
What sets it apart
- The terrace is the whole point. All twenty-two visits mention it, without exception. On size, one writer makes the comparison that matters — most rooftops have a handful of tables, this one runs along three sides and you are not competing for a seat; another turned a corner expecting the end of it and found a bar counter, then a table for four beyond that. Three mention the parasols and awnings that keep the sun off; four describe the planters in the middle, which amount to a small garden. The elevated Line 2 runs past at the same height — seven posts watch the trains go by, and the words that follow are usually Bangkok, or simply foreign. Six can see N Seoul Tower from where they are sitting. Five more note that the glass wall and folding doors mean you get the view from inside too. But it is open sky, so the weather decides: one writer went in high summer and looked round quickly before retreating, one sat inside in the rain and watched through the window, and four simply resolve to come back when it cools down.
- There are two ways in, and the front one is a door disguised as a wall. Twelve posts tell the same story: climb to the second floor, arrive at what looks like a dead end, and find PUSH TO OPEN written on it. Nobody finds it first time — one circled the building, one pushed while asking herself whether this could possibly be right, one reckons she would still be out there without the sign. Behind it, a red carpet runs up to the third floor, and the reversal is what people write about: a writer describes taking the wrong shabby staircase and arriving somewhere enchanted. Round the back, an external iron staircase goes straight up to the terrace — four posts mention this second entrance, and one recommends it over the first. If you would rather not hunt for the hidden door, take it. From the station it is exit 1 at Ttukseom, though the walk is given as three, four and five minutes, and the distance as 265m or 326m; we have not counted the 265m, which comes off the shop's own listing. One writer offers the most practical landmark — think of it as opposite the bus stop.
- The inside is roomy too — fourteen posts make the point that this is not just a big terrace bolted to a small café. High ceilings and no sense of being hemmed in, says one. Another, who went when it was busy: plenty of people, but the room is large and the seats are spread out, so it was more comfortable than she expected. Several describe the layout — tables for two to four either side of the central stairs, a counter along the window for looking out, and, between the glass wall and the terrace, a run of seats where the window ledge has been turned into a table. Two mention that the chair height and the spacing suit sitting a while. On whether a group fits, the posts disagree: one counts a large table seating up to seven, one says eight to ten could talk around it, two copy the shop's line about bookings from eight to a hundred, and two more think it would make a good party hire. The people who counted and the marketing copy are not saying the same thing, so ring ahead if there are a lot of you.
- A lot of posts are about the view, and they do not all see the same thing. What comes up most is the elevated Line 2, running past at close quarters: nine posts. Six can see N Seoul Tower, and one of them chose an outdoor table for that reason alone, describing the place as a cafe hidden between buildings with a tower framed in the gap. Two write about Seoul Forest in the distance, two about the low roofs of Seongsu in the foreground. Six note that the inside wall is entirely glass, so the view holds up from a table indoors — though which table you get changes what you see. Four write specifically about sunset, and they are emphatic about the timing: arrive as the light goes, one says, and the room becomes a different place as it drops. Two more describe the party lights and candles coming on afterwards, which changes it again.
- Coffee by day, wine by night. Fifteen of the twenty-two visitors mention wine — the most repeated fact after the terrace, and more often than beer, which nine mention. The place bills itself as a café and bar; one writer notes a coffee machine at one end of the counter and a wine fridge at the other. House red and white are ₩12,000 each, a figure eight posts record. One post prices the beers — Heineken, Peroni, Samuel Adams at ₩11,000. To eat with it there are small plates: buffalo wings, brie at ₩20,000. Eight posts record actually ordering a drink, and six of those chose the house wine. One describes the deliberation: whether to pick the same glass or split one each and compare, settling on compare. Most of the writing, though, is from people who came in daylight for coffee — there are fewer accounts of sitting here in the evening for a drink than you might expect.
What 22 bloggers said
We read all 22 in full. The most common claims are “Roomy” (14) and “Quiet” (5).
What they liked
Things you can check on site
| Outdoor terrace seating | 22 of 22 posts |
|---|---|
| Second floor | 20 of 22 posts |
| Reachable by transit | 15 of 22 posts |
| Wine served | 15 of 22 posts |
| Large windows | 11 of 22 posts |
| Beer served | 9 of 22 posts |
| Toilet outside | 3 of 22 posts |
| Review event | 2 of 22 posts |
| Dogs allowed | 2 of 22 posts |
| Takeout | 1 of 22 posts |
| One dish per person | 1 of 22 posts |
| Bag storage | 1 of 22 posts |
These are raw counts, not percentages. Someone who did not mention something is not someone who disagreed.
What people order
The prices here are what bloggers wrote down in their posts, and they may have changed since. Check Naver Place for the current menu and prices. This list is not a menu board — it counts what bloggers actually ordered and ate. Check on Naver Place
Who came, and with whom
| Date | 2 of 22 posts |
|---|
Getting there
Naver Map has a full English mode — Settings → Language → English. In Korea it gives better walking and transit directions than Google Maps.
Getting inside
| Second floor | 20 of 22 posts |
|---|---|
| Toilet inside | yes 0 · no 3 |
| Separate restrooms | yes 0 · no 1 |
It is on the third floor, and both routes are stairs. Twenty posts put it on the third floor (one gets it wrong and says second): at the front you climb to the second, push the door and climb again; at the back you take the iron staircase up the outside wall. Not one post mentions a lift, in either direction. Only one writer describes the stairs at all, and what she says is worth repeating: the treads are narrow — she takes a size 240 shoe and still had to go carefully, having had ankle surgery, and advises anyone with larger feet to go up on their toes. Nobody counts the steps, mentions a handrail, or says anything about a ramp. Nobody says whether a wheelchair or a pushchair can get in either — which means we do not know, not that it cannot. Ring and ask if it matters.
No one mentioned: In a basement · Lift to the floor · Ramp at the door · Step at the entrance · Step-free access · Accessible toilet. That is not the same as there being none — it means we could not confirm it. Worth calling ahead, and do tell us: we will put it here.
How to read these posts
- Someone else paid1 of 22 posts
- Posts saying they paid themselves4 of 22 posts
- Posts saying nothing either way17 of 22 posts
Posts that followed a TV spot
Of the 25 posts we gathered, 3 went up on a single day right after a TV spot and show no sign of a visit. They retell the broadcast, so we left them out of the counts.
We do not discard them. That a TV spot produced a burst of posts is itself something worth knowing about a place, and a star rating will not show it.
When the posts appeared
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Month by month
| Month | Posts |
|---|---|
| 2025-04 | 1 |
| 2025-07 | 1 |
| 2025-08 | 1 |
| 2025-10 | 3 |
| 2025-12 | 1 |
| 2026-01 | 1 |
| 2026-03 | 1 |
| 2026-06 | 1 |
| 2026-07 | 1 |
| 2026-08 | 9 |
| 2026-09 | 2 |
What we do not know
- Grin Hole downstairs is a different business. The names rhyme, the building is the same and you can walk between them, so posts and people mix them up constantly — four of the ones we kept cover both, and four more that were only about Grin Hole have been moved to its own page. The differences: Grin Hole is a takeaway hatch at unit 102 on the ground floor, ordered by QR code and handed out through a hole cut in the outside wall, with nowhere to sit; it sells gelato, cookie cups and cookies; and it closes much earlier — 8pm on weekdays, 9pm at weekends. It has its own phone number and its own map listing. Prices differ too: an americano is ₩4,000 down there and ₩5,000 upstairs. You may carry what you buy downstairs up to the third floor — one writer notes a one-item-per-person condition on doing so. Two posts from August 2026 say Grin Hole was to close on 17 August and move everything to the third floor; a September post still describes the ground-floor hatch as running. We could not establish which is true now. Every figure and price on this page belongs to the third floor.
- The hours appear to have changed in the autumn of 2025. Two posts, from April and August 2025, have the place shut on Mondays and working short days: 11 to 9 Tuesday to Thursday, 11 to 11 on Friday and Saturday, 11 to 7 on Sunday. From October 2025 the closing day disappears and the days get longer — 11 to 11 Sunday through Thursday, and midnight or 1am on Friday and Saturday. All six posts from 2026 agree on the same thing: open every day, 11 to 11, midnight on Friday and Saturday, last orders half an hour before. Only two posts, both from October 2025, give 1am, and since nothing before or after supports it we cannot tell whether that was a brief arrangement or an error. Ring if you are going late. And do not read Grin Hole's hours by mistake — the ground floor shuts a good deal earlier.
- There is a standing offer of a free drink for a review. An October 2025 post spells it out: write one review, on any of the three big Korean platforms, and choose between a small bite and a basic americano. She wrote hers and collected the coffee in her own tumbler. An August 2026 post mentions a Google Maps version of the same thing. No post here declares a sponsorship; four declare that they paid; the other seventeen say nothing. Still, it is worth knowing what is on offer when you read this shop's reviews. And two of the four posts we struck from the count were wholesale copies of the listing's own review counts and keyword tallies, in near-identical templates — which means there is writing about this place by people who never went.
- Seven posts say dogs are welcome, and five of those are copying the same line off the listing. Two writers saw it for themselves. One watched several people sitting out with their dogs and also passes on the condition — dogs up to 15kg, wearing a belly band — while the other photographed the house notice asking owners to mind their manners. Only that one post gives the weight limit and the band, and we have not verified it, so ring and check if you are bringing one. Bear in mind too that the only way up is stairs.
- The lavatory is outside the room. Three writers say so, and all three had used it: just off the terrace, past the mirror and round the corner, and very clean; a lavatory kept for the café, outside but not far. One says it is not split by sex, and adds that it is clean and roomy enough inside. Two mention the full-length mirror on the way to it. Nobody says how wide the door is, what the handle is like, or whether there is room to turn around. The thing to know is that in the rain or in winter you go outdoors to reach it.
- Whether it is a quiet place depends entirely on when you go. The five who went in daylight all say it is: they came precisely to get away from the crowds on Seongsu's main drag, and found a side street that had not filled up. But there is a DJ booth beside the counter. One writer watched the decks and speakers being set up as the light went and concluded the room turns into a bar in the evening; another was told the DJ plays at weekends and confirms there was none on the Friday afternoon she visited; a third simply reports a lot of DJing. Nobody in these posts actually sat through a set, so how loud it gets we do not know. If the point of the trip is conversation, the afternoon or the early evening is the safe bet.
- Several posts say the place takes bookings; not one writer actually made one. The lines about reservations and group bookings all come off the listing, and although one writer suggests booking if you are worried about a table, she did not book either. Nor does anyone report queueing — nobody was turned away, nobody saw a waiting list. One hurried to photograph the room before it filled; another found it busy but not cramped. It reads like a place with enough seats not to need a queue, but we did not find a single account of a Saturday night. Three posts raise the idea of hiring the space, all of them speculatively, and one notes that enquiries go through the shop's Instagram.
- Not one of the twenty-two says they queued. The word "wait" appears twice, and neither time is it about this place. Once it is the search-engine header line at the top of an August 2026 post — "Grin Room CAFE&BAR: menu, location, prices, parking, weekday/weekend waiting times, how to book, honest review" — while the post itself never mentions waiting at all. The other is a March 2026 post's "*waiting" section, which is about the noodle-and-pork restaurant across the road; that writer came up here for coffee afterwards. One more post describes a queue, and it is also not ours: "I spotted people lined up at a little hole in the building wall" — that is the gelato hatch of Grin Hall, on the ground floor of the same building. What we do know points the other way. An October 2025 writer: "rooftops usually have few seats, but this one runs along three sides, so there is no pressure over a table." Another came up for coffee while waiting for a table at the restaurant downstairs. "Booking available" and "waiting area" are lines from the shop's own facilities blurb and we do not count them — nobody reports actually having booked.
- Only three writers say who they came with, and all three came as a pair. One (March 2026) with her partner, one (October 2025) with her boyfriend, and one who came up with a friend to wait out a dinner booking at the restaurant downstairs. Nobody writes about coming alone, with family, or in a group. Where those words do appear, they are never lived: ①suggestions — "it'd be fine on your own, but with the seven-seat table it'd be better with friends", "a place that would suit couples and groups of friends alike", "would work well as an after-work spot"; ②the shop's own facilities line, pasted into several posts word for word — "group bookings, wi-fi, takeaway, reservations, waiting area, pets welcome"; ③hashtags — "#familygatherings #groupmeetups #greatcafeforparties". Even the size of the large table is written two different ways, and neither writer measured it: one says groups of 8 to 100 can book, another says the big table seats seven. If you are coming as a group, ring and ask.
Sources (22)
Every number above was counted from the posts below.
- 성수 핫플 분위기 좋은 카페 ‘그린룸 CAFE&BAR 2026-09-15 · My lifelog ෆ
- [서울/성수]성수 핫플 분좋 루프탑 와인바 그린룸 Grin Room 2026-09-09 · 끄적끄적 맛집여행
- 성수 핫플 그린룸 성수, 루프탑 성수 바 겸 카페에서 딸기말차 (브라우니까지) 2026-08-28 · 프로리뷰어 보리맘의 맛집리뷰 · via Daum
- [성수/뚝섬] 그린룸 :: 루프탑 카페 & 와인바 2026-08-25 · 지슐랭가이드
- ［뚝섬, 성수,서울숲 ］성수 바_ 그린룸 카페 앤 바 2026-08-25 · la rouge back, 라루즈백
- [서울 성동구] 💡성수 핫플 루프탑 카페 그린룸 추천 2026-08-19 · HER MESS · via Daum
- 성수 핫플 성수 바 그린룸 CAFE&BAR, 와인 데이트와 테라스 분위기 좋.... 2026-08-18 · 가드니 로그
- [성동] 서울숲 루프탑 성수 와인 바&카페 그린룸 GRIN ROOM 2026-08-14 · Aquarium · via Daum
- 그린룸 그린홀 뚝섬카페 GRIN HOLE GRIN ROOM 뚝섬역 디저트 2026-08-09 · mininote .｡˖°₊・*・.｡˖｡˖♡ · via Daum
- 성수 동굴에서 주문하는 이색 젤라또 맛집 '그린홀 & 그린룸' 후기 🍨｜메뉴, 이용방법 내돈내산 2026-08-05 · 솔찌로그 · via Daum
- ☕ 서울숲 산책 후 들른 성수동 카페 | 그린홀부터 그린룸까지 2026-08-04 · 뀰카이브 [KKYUL | Archive] · via Daum
- 그린홀 성수카페 - 성수 디저트 쿠키컵 추천, 재방문 후기 2026-07-16 · 슈니로그 소소한 일상의 행복 · via Daum
- 그린룸 성수 - 성수 핫플 루프탑 감성 커피앤바 2026-06-09 · 슈니로그 소소한 일상의 행복
- [성수동] 훼미리손칼국수보쌈(성수동 맛집| 뚝섬맛집 | 보쌈맛집 | .... 2026-03-11 · About My Date ♥
- 내돈내산 | 남산타워 뷰 성수동 테라스 카페 '그린룸 카페 앤 바(GRIN .... 2026-01-17 · Every Second Is Highlight
- 성수 루프탑 카페 추천 : 뚝섬역 카페 그린룸 [비 오는 날 더 예쁜 곳.... 2025-12-19 · 영이의 Chilling
- [성수] 성수동 뚝섬역 분위기 좋은 루프탑카페 그린룸 GRIN ROOM 2025-10-30 · 물오름달
- 성수동 카페 추천 | GRIN ROOM | 야외 테라스 뷰 맛집 추천 2025-10-28 · 천천히 굴러가는 Clory
- [성수]모임하기 좋은 카페 성수 신상 카페 테라스 카페 루프탑 카페 .... 2025-10-10 · 세상구경
- 성수 디저트 맛집 카페, 루프탑으로 넓은 카페 그린룸 2025-08-06 · 팩트리의 삼시네끼
- [뚝섬 카페] GRIN ROOM 카페 그린룸 (커피 맛돌이 날 좋은때만 기다린다.... 2025-07-29 · 먹고 먹고 마시기
- 서울숲 테라스카페 카페 그린룸 GRIN ROOM 2025-04-17 · 우미님의 블로그
Of 280 candidate posts we opened 58 and kept 22 as evidence. We stop once 30 are confirmed: beyond that the counts grow in proportion without changing the answer.