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Café Muse
Categories: Food Coffee & Tea Food Bakeries Coffee & Tea, Bakeries [Edit]
43 W 32nd St(between 5th Ave & Broadway)
New York, NY 10001
Neighborhoods: Midtown West, Koreatown
(212) 290-1414
- Nearest Transit:
-
34 St - Herald Sq (B, D, F, M, N, Q, R)
28 St (N, R)
34 St - Penn Station (1, 2, 3)
- Price Range:
-
$$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Wi-Fi:
- No
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- No
26 reviews for Café Muse
Review Highlights
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"Now, I must warn you, this is no ordinary Bing Soo." In 7 reviews -
"It comes in a huge martini glass the size of my head and..." In 3 reviews -
"...goodness all sitting atop shaved ice (which cut the crazy..." In 8 reviews
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26 reviews in English
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Review from Taiyo O.
1/25/2011 1 photo
Offers FREE cake or cookies. It may be because it was late (around 9pm). We went after dinner. Last time was cookies and last night was cheese cake.They were yum! The cheese cake was dense and not too sweet and had a nice tartness. It worked well for not sweet tooth like myself.
My fave is Green Tea Latte (about $7). Green creamy and smooth. Love the art work from the milk form they create. I wanted to add the photo but I could't add the photo today......somehow I don't know why? -
Review from Abraham B.
Manhattan, NY
7/7/2011
BING SOO!
i've only been here for bingsoo and I am satisfied every time. They don't understand me when i ask for condensed milk though which I always thought was a must for bing soo but even without it i am really happy with their strawberry and green tea bing soo. And if you go at night they'll give you complimentary cake slices. -
Review from Janice L.
New York, NY
4/18/2011
HORRIBLE SERVICE, the waitress must be PMS-ing the time i went, seriously. She had an attitude problem while serving us, and 'tossed' us the check when we asked for the bill. Woah.
The cakes inside look gross, you could probably get fresher and more attractive looking cakes from the grocery store next to you. The only up side to this place is their drink menu. Green tea latte is good, and so are the korean teas.
Shaved ice isnt served during the winter time
My only comment: skip this cafe and go somewhere else. -
Review from Audrey J.
5/25/2007
Hello??? Can we get some service up in here??????
After being callously abandoned at a table in the back of this small establishment, my fellow Yelp ladies and I sat with our menus closed for what felt like 525,600 minutes, waiting for the servers to come by to take our orders. Ummmm...just a heads-up, Cafe Muse, if you're going to charge $2 extra for table service (we paid $7 for our bingsu -- Korean shaved ice -- as opposed to getting it to go for $5), you might want to try actually doing that -- performing services.
Anyway, after we placed our orders, specifically confirming that our shaved ices would be topped with mochi, we sat and waited...and waited...and waited.
At the table next to ours was a group of three older ladies and a little girl. Hey you, older lady with the white mesh hoodie, pink striped shirt, and inch-thick layer of makeup! Yes, you! Stop staring at me!! No really, STOP staring at me! Okay, so I know it might be unusual to see an Asian who has boobies, but didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to stare??? And so this lady keeps STARING at me throughout our wait. Anyway, my point in mentioning this table -- they were seated AFTER we were, yet they received their shaved ices eons BEFORE we did. Conspiracy??? I think SO!
Once our shaved ices finally arrived, we dug in...only to discover there was, after all, NO mochi. What's the dilly yo?! So we wave our arms frantically (as we had concluded at that point that arm-waving was the only effective way to indicate we needed service) and pointed out the dire lack of mochi in our lives -- where our lives = our shaved ices. Aiy yi yi.
They bring a little dish with the mochi. Cool. We're good. And so we try round two of "digging in." And...it's a little disappointing. Sort of like that time you were outgrowing Disney movies, but you hadn't yet figured that out, so you went to go see "Pocahontas" with your little brother, only to sit there wondering (1) WTF you were doing there and (2) how much cheesier that song could be (and, yes, you know which song I'm talking about). And then you notice in retrospect that all Disney movies post-Lion King were just pretty crappy. That kind of disappointing.
The ice was just TOO icy. Ideally for me, shaved ice texture should be that of powder snow. The texture of this shaved ice was that slushy snow that is really good to pack for snowballs, but horrible for skiing or other winter sports. Just too chunky and overall not so great.
I've heard wonderful things about the red bean cake, though, so not a full-blown onesie...yet. However, after the hellacious service experience, I would safely conclude that their (less expensive) take-out service is the only way to go.Listed in: Shit List, I made a funny!
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Review from Julie K.
New York, NY
2/21/2007 2 photos
Yes, it is in K-town..
I never thought i would get the cakes from here..
OK... I went for non-sweeten cake... and tea or coffee...
those two colorfully cutie girls didn't give me any smiling.. cuz am I cuter than them? =)
on my top of expectation, the Red Bean Cake (debated w/ Green Tea Cake.. skip for next time) was really really awwwwwwwesome!!!!! if u'd ever ever ever tried pat-bing-su (icy red bean sherbet) before, easily can be addicted w/ this tiny pleasure.. no sugary sweet at all!! smoooootchly moooooosy soft!!!
WOW~~ that's what I want to say~~ WOOOOOOW~~
why only 3 stars?
its incredibly unbelievable price minus TWO stars!
==============================
update: today, I tried Green Tea Cake, but it wasn't good as Red Bean Cake..Listed in: Sweeten Kill
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Review from Miriam W.
7/15/2008
QUESTION: Bing Soo for breakfast?
ANSWER: Why the hell not?!
And so began my morning. Me, Andrew and a Bing Soo fit for a king (and six of his subjects!) Now, I must warn you, this is no ordinary Bing Soo! This thing is a punch bowl sized container of shaved ice, red bean sauce, mochi, grapes and other assorted fruit, ice cream and whipped cream. We attacked it viciously but our attempts failed and we ended up leaving nearly half the bowl filled when we departed.
I dig that they serve Mighty Leaf's Green Tea Tropical (a personal favorite) but charging $5 for it seems a touch cheeky to me.
Overall though, Cafe Muse was a fun experience! -
Review from Sienna K.
Philadelphia, PA
12/20/2007
Ah, Cafe Muse is gone. And my friend and I will never solve the mystery of the non-existant Cafe Muse in Morningside Heights (The m2m near Columbia sported the exact same Cafe Muse sign, but when asked, said the cafe was no longer).
All things aside, I suppose Cafe Muse, with all its flaws (many), was a step toward the Korean cafe scene in New York (I swear it's not as laughable as it sounds). Just some notes:
1) The breads are o.k.. The cakes are a little too sweet, the cookies are cute and delicious, and the breads are unnotable either way. The peanut butter bread is much much much better than the one at Koryodang, but is much too buttery.
2) Coffee is awful.
3) Go tea. I think the only reason I kept going back to Cafe Muse was because of their teas. Someone already mentioned the gingseng tea, but there's a lot of other Korean teas that was worth trying (or if you still want to, you could go to Hanareum and buy the tea jars).
a) Citron tea (Yool-mo-cha): This was the tea I grew up with. Every winter, whenever it got really cold, my mother and I would drink this while watching movies together. I think if it wasn't nostalgic, I'd say its way too sweetened, but it's part of me. It's really great on a cold day, and also a great tea for a starting tea learner.
b) Green Apricot tea (Mae-shil-cha): It's a really fun tea if you've never had it before. It's a bit thick and sweet, but also tartish. A sip and your lips pucker up, but in a good way. It's also suppose to be really healthy for you.
4) Bing Soo (shaved ice): I'm convinced that New York can't do shaved ice right... it's really not that hard! This bingsoo just had no flavor, and the mochi was too hard.
I really think Cafe Muse had a good potential to be really excellent, it was just too lazy. Yeah, the service was spotty at most. Yeah, the teas came in really awful disposable cups where you could taste the wax.
But it was better than Koryodang.Listed in: Coffee Stained, W 32nd
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Review from Maria M.
Woodside, NY
1/1/2008
I noticed this place on the way to Kun Jip for dinner. It looked really nice and charming inside, kind of old school. I made a mental note to go for dessert.
I think we sat in here for about as long as it took to notice the following:
1. Peppermint lattes!!! YAY!!!! $6.50. Boooooo.....
2. Pat Bing Soo, only during the summer, and at $10 a pop. WTF??
3. The only desserts on the menu were cakes, but not much of a variety. No mousses, no shakes, no tarts, no ice cream, NO MOCHI.
Koryodang?? Mmmhhhmm...let's go. -
Review from jonh r.
New York, NY
2/28/2011
best coffe and free cookies... before work
What can be better? -
Review from Buo Z.
8/16/2009 1 photo
Two words: shaved ice.
It comes in a huge martini glass the size of my head and everything in it just blends so well together. It's so big that you actually have to bring a friend just to finish all of it. -
Review from Andrew U.
New York, NY
7/15/2008
Today I ate breakfast out of a giant martini glass, and I loved it.
The place is newly renovated and I wasn't hating on the design. It was clean and colorful without sweating pink berry's style half as hard as everyone else in K town who's opening up a dessert or coffee place. They're still yet to put a sign up, so make sure you don't miss it. I thought maybe they were going with the popular pretension of an unidentifiable storefront, but I doubted that after being served one of the least subtle dishes I've ever seen.
The aforementioned mega-sized martini glass was overflowing with green tea ice cream, grapes, pieces of other fruit I found no immediate need to identify in the mid attack (lychee, peach maybe?) mochi and red bean gooey goodness all sitting atop shaved ice (which cut the crazy creamy sweetness of the whole thing wonderfully).
I did not know such a thing as Bing Soo existed, and I think Cafe Muse (and my new pal Miriam) did an excellent job as culinary ambassadors.
I'm certainly no expert on the dish. Maybe, like pizza, it's the type of thing that "is great when it's good, and good even when it's bad." Maybe a really top notch Bing Soo is served out of a battery powered crystal fountain shooting geysers of milkshake over edible mochi representations of famous Korean military victories.
Maybe I'm getting a little carried away and having too much fun writing my first yelp review.
In conclusion it was a super cool breakfast experience. -
Review from Natasha J.
NY
2/7/2007
So, Cafe Muse is a quaint coffeshop/bakery in K-town.
From all the Korean bakeries, I gotta say, Muse makes the best cakes. The cakes arent ur ordinary Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, but fruits or mocha/tirimisui flavored cake. The cakes are lightly fluffed, moist and have a real delicate taste. It actually makes u forget about all the calories u just consumed in tht one bite, hehe.
As for the coffee, its pretty good, but it defintely tastes diff from American coffees. I guess a lil lukewarm,not a strong caffeine pumped taste. But its still good, its steaming hot with milk.
So, if ur ever around K-town and nursing a sweet tooth, check it out! -
Review from Hank C.
6/30/2008
Okay, I'll have to try the bingsu the next time - it looks massive and delicious.
Aside from that, though, came here on the recommendation of a friend to pick up a green machta latte, which was good, although apparently it used to come with a side of honey - no more. I preferred the decor before the renovation, but what can one do?
Service was a bit slow, so down by a star, but other than that, clean, open venue. -
Review from Jen D.
1/19/2008 1 photo
I used to come to Cafe Muse every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:00pm and sit, drink my tea or coffee, eat my bbang and study for my Korean classes that started at 6:15pm.
When I first started coming here, they had shelves on the right side where they sold all different types of Korean breads, cookies and other pastries. They also offered the sweet roll cake and mini fruit tarts and such in the refrigerated case and in the summer they had gelato and pat bing soo. The prices back then were reasonable. And the waiters were really cute!
They closed for a while for renovation and reopened earlier this year. Did they really change anything? It looks pretty much the same to me, just a little more bright and a few more seats.
Oh wait... They did change something. They jacked up their prices....
Vanilla Latte - $6.50
Regular Coffee - $5.50
I don't care if that latte has art. Give me a damn toothpick and a spoon and I'll draw my own fuckin' art. Sheesh...
**Note**
They no longer accept credit card. -
Review from Lily H.
10/23/2006 1 photo
um, don't get the coffee then. It's in k-town what do you expect... what I mean is, asian coffee is different sometimes. I had the chai latte there last night and it was good. Also recommended: the ginseng tea, or the ginger tea which they usually put ginseng in (even better, you get both ;) Though maybe they do that because I order ginseng a LOT. The cake is asian style cake, lighter. Green tea cake is popular. A lot of people have ice cream there though I've never had it. It's a good place to think/ write/ read on most nights. Though not to mislead, it's not quiet. Noise is moderate. The guys who worked there used to be REALLY cute + hip, this wonderful combination of uber cool and yet nice... now they are kinda dorks, though still very nice.
revision 6/7/07: their coffee is AWESOME. I stop by there all the time now, just for a cup to go.Listed in: Near Penn Station, Koreatown highlights
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Review from Dorim L.
6/8/2008
It's really 3 1/2 stars. My friend suggested we go here instead of Koryodang because they completely renovated the place.
The service was good - not great, but good. We ordered bingsu and this establishment puts it in a huge huge martini glass to share. When I first saw that it was $12, I was like what? But once it arrived to the table, you realize you do get your money's worth.
I must say I saw their pastries and it's extremely overpriced. Hence, I took away 1 1/2 stars. -
Review from Gregory M.
Oxford, MD
9/29/2011
I've had better south Korean food in north Korea
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Review from Michele W.
Brooklyn, NY
11/26/2005
Okay...not great. You can get a better latte or cappuccino at any of the thirty-seven thousand Starbucks in the area. Regular coffee is not even drinkable.
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Review from Joolie T.
5/13/2007
oh chiffon cake, how i heart you.
i'm pretty picky when it comes down to cake. seriously. i don't like American, Italian, or even French (some!) style cakes. i'm strictly all for Korean/Japanese/Chinese cakes. the light chiffon or fluffy/airy consistence. Cafe Muse is predominately the most popular of Korean Cafes in NYC... the service is the only thing that i have a gripe about.
for milk breads, cakes, and good Korean-style coffee. i miss that about Seoul. at least i could imagine being there by stepping into Cafe Muse and people watch behind the glass.
P.S. read Audrey J.'s review.
our service was horrible. i never ate in... but the whole Paht Bing Soo experience has really dampered my liking of this place. people who came in after AND ordered after us were clearly acknowledged before our table was. plus, we specifically requested mochi (rice cake) be on the topping of our BLOCKS OF ICE (not shaved!)- which was another gripe. i like a fluffy puff of snow for bing... not ice cubes. boo! our mochi never came... until we had to flag down someone yet AGAIN to bring it to us. it definitely makes a difference, people. you cannot eat "bing soo" without mochi. period. -
Review from Li M.
New York, NY
12/11/2005
Always on the lookout for good reading space, I happened to stumble upon Cafe Muse. The coffee, I must say, is pretty awful. One time, in Boston, I needed to pull an all-nighter with my Physics textbook, so I went hunting for coffee. I went to Dunkin' Donuts, ordered an extra large hazelnut coffee...and it was the WORST coffee I've ever had. It was dry and...sour, come to think of it. Yeah, the coffee at Cafe Muse isn't much better. BUT, the vibe is good. I suggest buying a drink just for the space. But is it worth the bad coffee...? Hm.
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Review from Nancie T.
7/26/2007
This place is good, but not $6-green-tea-milkshake good. I think the korean restaurants have some kind of conspiracy in the area.. you see, the korean food we had for lunch was really good, but then afterwards it made us really thirsty. So we stopped into Cafe Muse thinking we could get some boba. Little did we know we were suckered into a $6 milkshake, $5 green tea and $7 bingsoo (shaved ice w/ red bean ice cream, little mochi balls, frosted flakes). They add a dollar or two for table seating and only accept cash. Think twice before you step in. I'm a tourist and didn't know any better, so I'm excused.
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Review from Gee T.
Brooklyn, NY
3/18/2010
I Love This Place, Very Relaxed, And The Workers Are Very Friendly. I Use To Visit Every Week. I'll Start Doing That Again When It Gets Cold, Cause I Love The Tea.
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Review from M. Y.
Flushing, NY
7/15/2008
Here goes my two cents about this place: the place gets busy from time to time, and believe me it will kill the best of anyone who is doing this profession (been there, done that). The remarkable thing about this place is that they are willing to correct what they've done wrong. We've ordered cheese danish (pretty good, btw) and they forgot to pack them in. When we went back, they were so apologetic that they gave us more for free! And they have special plastic caps for the coffee cups so you won't get spilled (donno if it's a novelty or it's been the usual gig for the cafe)...that's a starter for a 4 star from me!
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Review from Renee K.
Brooklyn, NY
12/19/2007
Cafe Muse is closed now *tears* Iam not sure whether they're closed b/c of renovation though..I hope they come back!. I loved their teas, they had great selection of teas and they are also of better quality than ahem *coughs* koryodang *coughs*. Their cakes were mediocre, not the best. Sweet potato mouse cake was very disgusting, so was their cheesecake. They had best service althought this place was always filled up. Iam gonna miss Cafe Muse!
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Review from Stephanie K.
New York, NY
7/13/2010
Their shaved ice, "pat bingsoo" is the best for the hot summer days. It comes in a huge martini glass filled with fruits, ice cream, red bean and of course ice. It's $12 which may seem a lot but compared to the other places in Ktown is considered cheap and you get worth your money.
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Review from Celicia C.
New York, NY
9/26/2006
they have an excellent red bean mousse cake that's perfect for birthdays! we actually stumbled upon this place on our way to won jo for a birthday dinner for one of our girlfriends...the red bean mousse cake is decadent without being heavy, and is in fact light as air but super delish. i had two helpings of it because it was so good despite the fact that i was stuffed full from the korean food =X
