Daejeon Station Bakery · Fried Bean-Paste Bun
Seongsimdang Twigim Soboro (Fried Sugar-Crust Bun)
🍞
Photo coming soon
The bakery exists almost by accident — its founder only ended up in Daejeon because the train he'd boarded to move his family to Seoul broke down at the station in 1956, and he never left.
A soft bun stuffed with sweet red bean paste is coated in a crumbly streusel crust and deep-fried rather than baked, giving it a crackling, sugary shell around a warm, doughy center. Seongsimdang, the bakery that invented it beside Daejeon Station, now draws lines around the block, and visitors regularly leave the city carrying its shopping bags like a badge of honor.
Why it's made this way: Founder Lim Cheon-woo started the bakery with two donated bags of flour after his family's train broke down in Daejeon in 1956, and the fried soboro bun it created became such a specifically Daejeon phenomenon that locals treat a trip home without a Seongsimdang bag as incomplete.
More from South Korea
Makgeolli
Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes)
Hotteok (Sweet Filled Pancake)
Eomuk / Odeng (어묵)
Korean Corn Dog (핫도그)
Ssiat Hotteok (Seed Hotteok)
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.