Chocolatier Zino appeared in the Korean drama – Goblin: The Lonely and Great God. The restaurant scene(s) which was supposed to be Quebec City in Canada was actually taken in Café Zino, Paju, Gyeonggi a province of South Korea.
Curious (and having two Korean drama fans with us), we decided to visit this place. It was quite a hilly route to get there and some mean driving skills driving up and down the slopes; the slopes were seriously steep. It is definitely a place that you need to have a car, but for the drama fanatics and the adventurous there is a location course for the drama that you can follow from
Visit Korea.
Apparently it is quite accessible by public transport and a bit of walking to the café, but only if you intend to visit this one place. However, to travel through the whole recommended course, you would definitely need a car as the 4 attractions are at least 16km to 42km apart, and the total travel time by car is 3 hours just to get to the places; Chocolatier Zino being the last one on the list.
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| From the outside, it is a pretty impressive looking mansion like building that was probably someone’s house in the past. |
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| Cute and friendly "guard" dog |
To enter the café, we had to leave our shoes at the entrance and change in to the slippers that were provided. Photos of the scene peppered a board on at the entrance. We came to the conclusion that the photographer must have been an anti-fan of Gong Yoo or just had really bad timing, because in all the photos that had him, his eyes were closed! 😂😂
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| Pardon the lighting, but if you zoom in you can see that his eyes are closed in all the shots. 😂 |
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| The shoe rack and even here there is a hint of renaissance. |
From the moment we entered, we were greeted with dark wood floors, along with European tables and chairs and decorations; the renaissance theme was apparent throughout. It certainly felt as if we were transported and were in some European country, rather than in South Korea.
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| The "old" English paintings next to the cake display |
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| The seating area at the ground level |
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| Another corner of the ground floor |
Since we already had a heavy meal (they server Italian food as mains) before our visit, we ordered some pretty looking coffee and tea, which were accompanies by complimentary (and adorable) cookies.
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| Fancy latte art |
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| Not so much fancy "art", but there were sprinkles. |
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| The simplest, a cup of coffee. |
Verdict: It was more for the experience (I can finally say I visited a filming site!) and sitting in a heavily induced renaissance setting resting our feet and idly chatting the time away. Fans of the drama may find more appreciation for this café, but other than its décor and having been used as a venue for filming a famous drama, nothing else really stands out. The drinks were nothing out of the ordinary and the service was sorely lacking.
Chocolatier Zino
Address：경기도 파주시 탄현면 새오리로 211-31
94-5 Daedong-ri, Tanhyeon-myeon, Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
경기도 파주시 탄현면 대동리 94-5
Geolocation: 37.800980, 126.686468
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