Bored with latte art yet?
Then you haven't seen the coffee created by South Korean barista Lee Kang-bin, co-owner of the C.THROUGH cafe in Seoul.
Using colored cream (a technique he calls "cream art") Lee transforms ordinary cups of coffee into incredible works of art.
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"Coffee is a fairy tale to me," he says. "It helps me express exactly what I want, and it brings my dreams to life. People who specialize in latte art usually use only two colors: black and white. But I wanted to break through that color barrier."
His unusual creations have earned him nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram.
While his takes on famous works of art are the most popular (including Van Gogh's "The Starry Night," Edvard Munch's "The Scream," and Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa") he also fills custom orders for customers.
Requests run the gamut, from fairy tale characters like the Little Prince to the cover of Vogue Korea. But whatever the design, Lee says it's important that his art actually be edible.
"My rule is not to make coffee that people can't drink," he says. "I only do cream art on cold coffee. If I do it on hot coffee, the taste changes as it cools, and I don't want the flavor of the coffee to change."
Each cream art coffee costs 7,500 won ($6.63). Since each cup can take up to an hour to make, he makes only three a day, by advance order only.
The exception is his teddy bear cream art coffee, which takes just 40 seconds to make. C.THROUGH's menu also has other, more traditional options for guests who haven't ordered ahead.
"We're baristas who make coffee, not just artists who draw pictures on coffee," he says.
More Than Just "the Coffee Guy"
Lee has been making coffee for 10 years now, having started doing latte art seven years ago.
"I started learning about coffee when I was 18," he says. "Baristas weren't well known in Korea back then, so I was a little worried. That worry soon passed, though, because I became really fascinated by the work."
He says it helped that his parents always supported him.
"People around me criticized me for becoming just 'the coffee guy,'" Lee says. "But I stuck to my decision, like a lot of Koreans do. I wanted to show that I could succeed with coffee."
These days his cafe is so busy that he says he sleeps only a couple of hours a night. The key to his success, he says, is passion and persistence.
"I never studied drawing, but I did it as a hobby," Lee says. "Then, after studying coffee, I realized that you can put not only technique into coffee, but artistry too. That led me to combine coffee and art."
With the cafe's success, he says, they can export a new side of South Korean culture to the world.
"South Korea has become really well known in recent years thanks to K-pop," Lee says. "But few people know about Korea's coffee culture. Some may think coffee is just coffee. But to me it's a bridge that can always connect one person with another."
C. THROUGH cafe, 403-3 Itaewon-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea
