Café Shin brings real Seoul to Paris

Photography: Jules Focone

Paris and Seoul are both famous for their coffee culture, but aesthetically, they couldn’t be more different. While Seoul’s cafes have a distinctive soft-minimalist edge, Paris is synonymous with timeless, cosy sidewalk cafes decorated with wood-panelled interiors, patinaed mirrors and round tables.

French collective Uchronia has harnessed the best of both worlds for the interiors of Café Shin on Paris’s Rue des Petites-Écuries – a Korean-inspired café with speciality coffee. The colourful haunt is a creative collaboration between French chef Julien Sebbag and South Korean pastry chef Eun Jung Shin Akrich, so naturally, when designing the café’s interiors, they asked the firm to embody this cross-cultural dialogue.

From the outside, Café Shin looks like a typical Parisian café, with large shop windows for people-watching and simple signage written in French and Korean. Below the glass are tiled panels, a material repeated inside the café (more on that later).

Seoul cafés favour concrete and natural materials and a spartan design sensibility, and Café Shin leans into this vibe. The coffee counter and open kitchen take centre stage, made from light wood and Korean washi paper to create a Hanok-inspired roof. The lower section of the bar is clad in reflective hammered metal sheets (perhaps a loose spin on the brass accents of the classic French bistro) that add an industrial element, complemented by chunky bar stools by Oryu Elements. The sculptural chairs are made from ash and stained in pastel shades, as are the brightly coloured stools that pepper the interior and the pavement in front of the shop.

A tiled seating nook also ties to the exterior: inspired by a traditional Korean bathhouse, it’s covered with inky ombre tiles by Palet, as are shelves and wall-mounted counters, contrasting the white walls and concrete floor of the main space.

47 R. des Petites Écuries, 75010 Paris, France