One day I happened to have some business in Cheongdam-dong, so while I was there I dropped by L’atelier Monique, which had just opened nearby. They were advertising that a Japanese “king of bread” had come over to do the baking. It wasn’t a name I’d heard while I lived in Japan, so I didn’t expect much, but the bread turned out to be really good.
The entrance
It’s behind the Jil Sander store, but the building sits back a bit from the street (and on a slope, too), so it’s easy to miss. Thanks to that, I ended up circling the block once when I was already right next to it.
The breads
It’s not that they don’t have bread for meals, but mostly they sell breads closer to desserts. I love hard breads like baguettes, and the one on the left was crispy on the outside yet slightly sweet inside, which I really liked. The rest were of a high standard too. They’ve recreated the taste of the bread I used to eat in Japan exactly. That day I found, for the first time, a bakery in Korea that’s actually worth eating at. Life in Korea isn’t so bad after all~
Bread and milk
They had milk milked at dawn, so I bought a bottle, ate some of the bread in the little café space and took the rest home. The seating area isn’t big, but it seemed to be popular with the locals.
The workshop
You could say it has the kind of atmosphere where good bread comes out.
The display case
The prices aren’t that high and it tastes good, so I think it’ll get popular. Cheongdam-dong is an awkward location to travel to from far away, but bread this good is worth going out of your way for.