Seoul Bakery

Salt bread, soft and buttery

Salt bread is the reason to stop at Seoul Bakery in Box Hill. It comes out through the day, soft and buttery, with the salted-butter finish that has made the style a fixture in Korean bakeries, and it sets the tone for everything else on the counter. The house pitch is simple enough: a slice of Korea in Melbourne, built on soft enriched breads rather than a French pastry case. Box Hill gives that a ready audience, since the suburb’s shopping strip is one of the densest concentrations of East Asian food in the city. Start with the plain salt bread and let the rest of the counter follow it.

Pistachio, bingsu and the sweet end of the counter

The most specific thing on the shelf is a Dubai pistachio salt bread, the same salted dough turned toward the pistachio-and-chocolate flavour that has swept Korean and Australian bakeries alike. It is a good indication of how the bakery works: a stable bread programme underneath, with current flavours layered over it rather than a fixed menu that never moves. Beyond the bread, the shop runs the sweet side of a Korean bakery-cafe, with bingsu, the shaved-ice dessert built for sharing in warm weather, and Korean sweets by the counter. It is a bakery first and a cafe second, but the cafe half is real. The shop describes its own corner as one made for slow mornings, and the room is set up that way rather than as a queue that never sits down, which is a different proposition from a bread counter you pass on the way to work.

How to work the order

Take the plain salt bread first, because it is the clearest statement of what the bakery does, then decide whether you want the pistachio version beside it. Add something sweet after that, from the Korean side of the counter rather than the European one, since that is where the shop is actually distinctive. Bingsu is the order when the weather turns, and it changes the visit from a takeaway stop into a sit-down one, which is the difference between using this place as a bread shop and using it as a cafe. The bakes move quickly and the counter restocks through the day, so what is out when you arrive is a fair guide to what is worth taking.