The Place Seoul is a café paradise and the latest craze to sweep the city of cafes is Artist Bakery by the same team behind the hugely popular London Bagel Museum. Located in Anguk near the subway station, Artist Bakery opened last December and specialises in salt butter bread (sogeumbbang), and it is quite hard to miss it given the huge crowd of people waiting in line daily.

It was my first time back to Seoul after more than two decades, and one of the most convenient and cost-effective ways I found to get from Incheon International Airport to the Seoul is via the limousine bus service which I booked on Klook.

I visited the bakery café in the afternoon and do expect to wait any time between 30 minutes to 2 hours! The good thing about the queue system is that you can scan a QR code to input your details with your Apple ID (in the event you do not have a local Korean mobile number) and simply check back on your queue status. My virtual queue took two hours to clear, and I just took the time to explore Insadong. 

The space of Artist Bakery is split into indoor and outdoor seats. How it works is that you can choose to dine-in, or takeaway. Takeaways queues are typically shorter, where you can grab an outdoor table for takeaways. Indoor seats are only for dine-in diners, where the queue is typically longer. The indoor space is mainly decked in white and black tones in a cottage-like setting, where you get the full display of all the salt butter bread flavours by the window. 

The Food There are more than a dozen salt butter bread flavours at Artist Bakery, and I had a serious dilemma as to which flavours to try as every flavour looks delish. You can expect flavours like potato cheese, spring onion cream cheese, truffle, earl grey, cheese, and more. Prices from 3,800 KRW per bread. 

One of the flavours I had was the Eary Grey Salt Butter Bread and what I really like is how soft and chewy the texture of the bread was, where the Early Grey element here is more of the coating on the bread.

Other than the insane salt butter bread options, you can also grab sourdough bread and like bites like mushroom soup here. 

Rants Of course, it has to be the long waiting time but thankfully, you are not required to queue physically. No reservations taken. 

Will I Return Again? While salt butter bread has been around for a long time, it is amazing how Artist Bakery is able to revolutionise the whole take on it. While I only managed to try two salt bread butter flavours, I am impressed with what I had and this is one spot I will return if I am back in Seoul, just to try other flavours next time. 

TheRantingPanda says:
Taste bud: 4/5
Hole in the pocket: 3.5/5
Ambience: 3.5/5
Overall Experience: 4/5

Artist Bakery 
167 Anguk-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul 
 
Opening Hours 
Monday to Sunday: 8am to 8pm 

Ranted by The Ranter