Formula: Quality, fair price, stability

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Formula: Quality, fair price, stability

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Sandwich and cheese bread from Kim Young Mo Bakery. By Cho Jae-eun

During a particularly restless afternoon this week, I was flipping through a magazine and came across a photo of Elizabeth Jagger, daughter of Mick Jagger. Nauseous from a nasty cold, I found myself daydreaming about how fabulous my life would be if I were related to a Rolling Stone.
Rummaging through Keith Richard’s closet sounds mind-blowing, but I’ll have to admit, my childhood was more “The Wonder Years” than rock and roll ― it was suburbia with a capital S.
I was snapped back to reality when my mother walked in with a Kim Young Mo Bakery bag. One of the typical symbols of Seoul’s suburbia is Kim Young Mo Bakery, a 24-year-old franchise selling baked goods including sandwiches, cakes and pastry. There are four branches in total - all located in the Gangnam area, at the heart of upper-middle class apartment complexes in areas including Seocho-dong and Dogok-dong.
Although not physically a suburb, these areas possess the mentality of suburbia with the good school districts and soccer mons, all fleeing to the bakery in time for their children’s arrival from school.
In my neighborhood, Seocho-dong, where the first store opened, it is busy all day long.
The story of its owner, Kim Young Mo, has been featured many times in the press. A self-made man, Kim started working in bakery factories at 17 when he dropped out of high school after his father’s business went bankrupt. He is famous for bringing advanced Japanese techniques to Korean baking during the 1980s and has since published books about baking, including a children’s book which was awarded the prestigious Gourmand grand prize.
The suburban quotient of Kim Young Mo Bakery is simple ― it is quality enveloped in reasonable prices with the help of the stable reputation of the owner. Their sandwiches (ranging from 4,000 won to 6,000 won) are almost top quality, my favorite this season being the blackberry and ham in walnut bread. However, there is always a distinctly Korean element in Kim Young Mo Bakery, as the sandwiches are a bit overloaded with honey mustard or mustard-mayonnaise, the typically preferred sandwich spread among Koreans, along the lines of Thousand Island dressing being a preferred salad dressing.
Although the bakery sells hundreds of different kinds of bread every season, (this spring, the bakery incorporated a lot of walnut bread and dried fruit into its menu), I am particularly fond of its sponge cake, an early hit of Kim’s from the 1980s. It is everything that a sponge cake should be, light as air and moist, but not soggy with excessive oil.
With my mouth full of sponge cake, I wondered what was so wrong with “The Wonder Years.”


For more information, call (02) 3473-5484.


By Cho Jae-eun Staff Writer [jainnie@joongang.co.kr]
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