Cafe Knotted, South Korea’s favorite dessert cafe and cream donut specialty shop, has made its first U.S. appearance with a location in Westfield Century City shopping mall. The cafe opened its first location in Seoul in 2017, and has since opened locations near Haeundae Beach in Busan and in Anguk-gu, Seoul. In addition to donuts, Knotted is also known for its in-store cartoon character “Sugar Bear,” a stuffed bear with a smiling face on its belly.
Cafe Knotted is part of a trend of Korean dessert cafes—beautifully designed cafes that serve a variety of Instagrammable desserts, such as cheesecake-shaped cheesecakes, fluffy bread mountains sprinkled with icing, and this cream donut.
Cafe Knotted is perhaps best known for its seasonal strawberry cream donut, which is a donut with a cut top filled with lightly sweet cream and strawberries. Other flavors include kaya jam, milk cream, and chocolate. The cafe also offers croissants, savory bread, and other pastries, as well as creative coffee and matcha drinks.
At the Century City location, Knotted continues to focus on creative coffee drinks, including iced and cream lattes in flavors like chestnut tiramisu, corn cream, and banana. For matcha, the café offers basic matcha lattes, signature iced matcha cream lattes, and strawberry cream matcha lattes. More classic options include drip coffee, Americano, and vanilla lattes, as well as a variety of hot and iced teas.
Speaking of pastries, Knotted Donuts in Century City offers a full range of cream-filled donuts in flavors including Boston chocolate frosting, lemon curd, and raspberry. The Banana Pop donut is cut open and topped with a small banana and a strawberry cream filling covered in jam. The tiramisu donut is topped with caramel marshmallows.
In addition to donuts, the café also serves specialty croissants with spinach peppers, strawberries, chocolate, and almonds. Cookies range from Mexican hot chocolate, gluten-free chocolate chips, and matcha white chocolate.
Knotted is one of many restaurants that have recently arrived in 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 in LA’s Koreatown.
Most recently, Korean sot bap (rice crust) chain Dam Sot opened its first U.S. location in Koreatown in January 2025. The wave of arrivals doesn’t seem to be slowing down either — GFFG Hospitality, the group behind Knotted, plans to open a branch of Korean Hojokban in the Arts District this year, along with another Knotted location.
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