Popo & Miru: dog café in Yeongtong, Suwon!

Yeongtong-gu in Suwon does not have much to offer… or so I thought. However, very recently I discovered there was a new dog café in the neighborhood, so I decided to give Victor a surprise by bringing him to the dog café. I found Popo & Miru through TMon (Ticket Monster) with the keyword “영통” and got a coupon for 2×1 on weekdays. With this coupon, we only paid one drink (W6,800) to enter.

Popo & Miru is on the second floor of a small building near the Yeongtong big post office (check the table at the end for more details). You will see it from the street easily. As you enter the building, there will be a lot of signs, including this one that has a very poor English translation, but surprisingly a very decent and correct Spanish traslation!

The owner must have a degree in Spanish, given how bad the English translation is, but how decent the Spanish one seems to be

What you can read on this sign is: there’s no admission fee but you need to buy a drink (1 person 1 drink), there’s a party room available, but you must reserve at least 3 days in advance.

So when you go to the 2nd floor you will first see the coffee area, where you have to first order and pay your drink. They have Coffee (Americano, capuccino, mocha, white mocha, caramel mocha, caramel machiato) from W5,800~7,800, Latte & Frappe (latte, vanilla latte, caramel latte, green tea latte, red tea latte, sweet potato latte, dark chocolate latte, white chocolate latte; java chip frappe, cookie and cream frappe, mocha frappe, green tea frappe) from W6,300~8,500, Smoothies & Tea (plain, blueberry, strawberry yoghurt smoothie; orange juice and milk only for children under 7; lemon ice tea, peach ice tea, earl grey flower tea, chamomile, pepermint tea, berry berry, and fresh roiboos lemon) from W6,500~8,500 and W3,500 for the kids drinks.

They also have pizza and some cakes. You can buy several dog accesories and snacks in their shop as well. We ordered 2 Ice latte (W6,800) with our 2×1 promotion, so it was very cheap for us to get in ^^ As we were ordering our drinks, some dogs had already come to the fenced gate waiting for us to go in and play with them.

We played with the dogs for a while. I was surprised they had so many big dogs, as it is hard to see big dogs in Seoul. Most people usually own smaller dogs due to their smaller apartments (no big backyards like in LA county). They had a big fluffy chow chow that was rather solitary and retreated to the “do not disturb” me area. There was another calm big black dog (a Rottweiler), and three that were very playful. These three kept playing with each other, biting and jumping. I am not very used to dogs, so I was worried all the time that one would go crazy and start biting for reals.

There were also many small dogs, like a Dachshund wearing a little dress that would never let go the blue toy bone from his mouth. Or the black French bulldog and the Chihuahua that would always follow the pointer laser like crazy.

There are several toys you can play with there, like the laser pointers (although they were running out of battery when we used them), some plastic balls and bones, and the head massage spider, which we used to give Popo (the Golden Retriever) a pleasant time.

The drinks were nice, and the straws come with a small paper cut of their logotype. There are also two cute big figures of Popo the Golden Retriever and Miru the Labrador Retriever.

Victor’s favorite dog was one that was medium sized and with a lot of hair. I think it was also a bit far, and it walked really slowly and didn’t engage in the games with the other dogs.

My favorite was probably the chow chow, because not only he was fluffy, also the fur on his ears and legs was dyed, making it look like he had socks. He didn’t want to play with us either, but I still managed to take a picture with it ^^

We had a great time, and the café was cleaner than I expected. A friend had told me dogs usually pee anywhere and make the place really smelly, but the staff was cleaning every time a dog made something dirty. There was some dog smell, but not unpleasant at all, and got used to it very quickly. We went on a Monday 6pm~7pm and there was only 2 couples there, so we had a lot of attention from the dogs.

If you like dogs and live in Yeongtong, go see them! The shop has been opened only for 4 months, so let’s spread the word a bit so they get enough customers to ensure these dogs have a happy life. Unlike in cat cafés, here most dogs were very active, so for sure not drugged ^^ I’m still more of a cat person, and as I entered the dog café and some came to lick my legs, I was screaming around and trying to get the dogs off me. But Victor likes both cats and dogs, so I wanted him to receive some canine love 🙂

Opening hours:	Everyday from 11am~10pm
Contact:	031-206-9222/ http://popomiru.com / blog.naver.com/popomiru
How to get there:	Yeongtong Station Bundang line (yellow) exit #1 or #2. Walk around 10min to destination
Address:	1037-11 Yeongtong-dong, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do (2nd floor) / 수원시 영통구 영통동 1037-11 (2층)
Mimi’s Rating:	Total 8/10 (Drink: 7, location: 9, price: 7, service: 9)
Plus:	Many dogs to play with. When we went, we were only 4 people and 5 big dogs, 1 medium dog, and 3 small dogs. There were more resting inside.