South Korea’s most popular dessert cafe and cream doughnut specialist, Cafe Knotted, has landed in the U.S. for the first time with a location at the Century City Westfield Mall. The cafe, which opened its first location in Seoul in 2017, has since expanded with locations near Haeundae Beach in Busan, in the Anguk neighborhood in Seoul, and more. Alongside the doughnuts, Knotted is well-known for its store character, Sugar Bear, a stuffed bear with a smiley face on its stomach.
Cafe Knotted is part of a wider trend of dessert-focused cafes in South Korea — highly designed coffee shops that serve Instagrammable pastries like cheese-shaped cheesecake, sugar-dusted mountains of fluffy bread, and, in this case, cream-filled doughnuts. Cafe Knotted may be best known for its seasonal strawberry cream doughnut, which comes sliced open at the top and filled with slightly sweet cream and strawberries. Other flavor options include kaya butter, milk cream, and chocolate. The cafe also serves croissants, salt bread, and more pastries, as well as creative coffee and matcha drinks.
At the Century City outpost, Knotted continues its focus on inventive cafe drinks, including iced and cream-topped lattes in flavors like chestnut tiramisu, corn cream, and banana. For matcha options, the cafe serves a basic match latte, a signature iced Knotted cream top matcha latte, and an iced strawberry cream top matcha latte. More classic selections include drip coffee, Americanos, and vanilla lattes, alongside a handful of hot and iced teas.
For pastries, Century City’s Knotted offers a full line-up of cream-stuffed doughnuts in flavors including Boston chocolate glazed, lemon curd, and raspberry. A Banana Kick doughnut is sliced open at the top, with a small banana resting on top, while the strawberry cream has a swipe of fruit jam on the interior. A tiramisu doughnut features a flourish of burnt marshmallow on top. Alongside the doughnuts, the cafe serves specialty croissants with spinach and pepper, strawberries, chocolate, and almonds. Cookie options include Mexican hot chocolate, gluten-free chocolate chip, and matcha white chocolate.
Knotted is among a lineup of recent arrivals to Los Angeles from South Korea. In May 2024 Korean cafe Camel Coffee opened in the former Silver Lake Cafe Caravan space, followed by spicy noodle chain Jjampong Zizon opening in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. More recently, in January 2025, South Korea-based sot bap (pot rice) chain Dam Sot opened its first U.S. location in Koreatown. The wave of arrivals doesn’t seem like it is slowing down anytime soon either — the group behind Knotted, GFFG Hospitality, is planning on opening an outpost of South Korea’s Hojokban in the Arts District this year, along with another location of Knotted.
