FatManSeoul

Sometimes you need more from your baked goods. You don’t just need good taste, ample fillings, and delicate decorations.

Sometimes you’re craving nostalgia. Not just any sweet cake or cookie will do. You’re looking to reclaim your childhood and all the tastes that thrilled your tongue when you were five and your parents took you to the local cake shop as a special treat. If your memories take you back to an earlier, simpler time in Seoul, there’s only one place to relive those special childhoood moments: 태극당.

Taekeukdang is the oldest continously operating bakery in Seoul, first opening in 1946 and moving to it’s current location in 1973, she is the grande dame of baked goods in this town. Older sister to the Crown Bakeries and Paris Baguettes who came after her, Taekeukdang has managed to retain all the grandeur and style she had when the bakery was at its heyday in the ’70′s and 80′s. The old-fashioned interior has seen generations of students pooling their allowances for a shared slice of cake, countless first dates where shy couples smoothed over the lack of conversation with a serving of patbingsu, myriad businessmen taking a few moments out of their busy day for a relaxing cup of coffee, and the endless scheming and planning of well-heeled ajumas.

But how’s the food, you ask?
It too packs a powerful Proust punch. Remember those cupcakes that would beckon and call to you with that irresistible maraschino cherry on top?

Well, we hate to ruin your day, but they’re not as delicious as you remember. When you were five years old, this was probably great stuff. As an adult, you’re likely to find yourself gagging on the sugar overload that this little treat has in store. Even your inner child is likely to give up on this particular taste, so save it for your real children . . . but cautiously, because they’re likely to be up for the next seven days, bounding off the ceiling from the sugar rush this will give them. That said, we have to confess that this was the most cupcake-eque cupcake we’ve had in Seoul. Unlike other places where the cupcakes seem too much like muffins and too little like little cakes, the ones here have just the right crumb and texture to seem like miniature versions of their full sized cousins.

Other cakes were similarly sweet, and recalled the tastes of the seventies perhaps a bit more than they ought. A slice of pound cake went over like a pound of lead, particularly when topped off with a dousing of waxy, unpleasant chocolate.

But there’s still something powerful about a taste that has remained so unchanged, so particular to a time and place despite changes and trends in other bakeries. It doesn’t have the refined tastes of more modern bakeries, but it somehow clings to it’s own staid sense of elegance. Even when it doesn’t taste very good, there’s still something worthwhile in the sensibilities it exudes.
Sometimes though that refusal to change means a tastier treat than the dolled-up modern versions.

The castella cakes here are something extraordinary and different from their light, fluffy contemporary cousins. Most of the castella cakes you’ll eat nowadays are insubstantive bits of puff, with nothing to hold in flavor. They get gummy, they don’t hold anything more tasty than the tinge of artificial vanilla, or worse yet, they’re just dry bits of airy cake. Not this castella ~ this is a real, tangible, almost pound-cake slice. Just pick it up, and you can feel the difference. This is substance, and the substance extends to the flavor, with hints of vanilla and citrus. Marvelous in every way, this is the item where your memories are matched with an adult taste you can still appreciate.
Still, our inner child does need succor, and for that you should turn to Taekeukdang’s most famous contribution to the Korean culinary scene:

Behold the Iced Monica! A crispy cookie container for sweet, slowly melting ice cream hits exactly the right note, poised perfectly between the icky-sticky sugary treat you craved as a child, and the adult who still wants to take a few moments to remember what it felt like. There may be better, fancier, more upscale ice cream sandwiches around nowadays, but none that can carry with them the nostalgic feel of this ice cream in old-fashioned coquettish cookie clothing. Sure, sitting in the freezer may have dulled the crunch just a tad, and nobody is pretending that the ice cream is the world’s greatest, but the combination of the two hits a magical sweet spot between memory and modern palate.
To go relive your memories (or make new ones) take line 3 to Dongguk University Station (동국대), exit 2. The bakery will be on your left. There’s a second, newer location outside exit 1 of Seongshin Women’s University Station (성신여대) on line 4.