My friend chanced upon this bakery during our last trip and has been craving their bakes ever since so we decided to stop by since we were in Insadong
The bakery used to be housed within the Tong In Store which is the oldest traditional crafts shopping center in Korea. The centre is home to over 100 shops that sell ancient and contemporary traditional crafts, as well as galleries that display craft collections by emerging artists. Taegeukdang used to be on the 2nd floor. My friend visited them here in 2022
This time round when we visited, they had shifted out of Tong In store to the 2nd floor of the building just next to the centre. We nearly missed the bakery until we spotted this Korean signboard with a 1946 year. Our instinct told us that this should be the oldest bakery my friend was talking about and we went up to check it out
Taegeukdang is the oldest bakery in Seoul and its main branch is located at Jung-gu near Dongguk University Station. The founder, the late Shin Chang-Geun took over the Midoriya Bakery after the Japanese colonisation and started Taegeukdang in 1946. The founder created the Mugunghwa logo and name Taegeukdang to embrace the nation’s identity
The cashier, beverage counter as well and bread counters are on the 2nd floor of the building with many pre-packed bakes which are perfect as gifts. Some of the popular items include the Monaca Ice Cream, Namdaemun Jeonbyeong and Butter Cake. Unfortunately, the ice cream is only available at the main branch
As there were limited seats on the 2nd floor, we moved on to the 3rd floor which has bigger table seats as the entire floor is dedicated to areas for customers to eat their bread or desserts. Once you made your order on the 2nd floor, you will be passed a buzzer to pick up your drinks when it is ready
There was a huge selection of bread available at the bakery and as we visited during September, there was also a variety of moon cakes which were available in single pieces or in gift box sets. I bought a couple of mooncakes; mung bean, black sesame, chestnut and red bean filling. As the expiry date was short, I finished the mooncakes during my trip and it is really delicious with a sweet filling and fakey pastry
We bought the Oranda bread which is a castella cake wedged in the middle of the loaf itself. There is also apple jam inside the castella. The bread itself is fluffy and soft while the castella is buttery but slightly dry for me. I would like the castella cake oilier but I think it is quite an interesting combination of 2 different textures combined in 1 bite
The cream puff bread is loaded with custard cream which is not too sweet and has a nice milky and creamy texture which is perfect with the soft bread. We also had the Soboro bread and red bean bread which were equally delicious but nothing too unique. Personally, I liked the cream puff bread and my friend swears by the butter bread and whipped cream bread which we did not buy this round as we were very full from other meals
Overall, the bread sold at Taegeukdang tastes wonderful and is of good quality. The variety is also unique with some items not found elsewhere like their butter bread. If you refer to their website, you can see that they have a wide variety of breads, cakes and cookies so you can visit them to try different items each time. For beverage, we got citron tea and cold omija tea which was perfect to wash down the bread. I would visit the main branch the next time I am in Korea to try out more bread
Address: 32, Insadong-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul ( this is the address of Tong In centre but the bakery is just next to it)
Operating hours: 10 am to 9 pm
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