When my boyfriend’s mother came to visit she stayed in Koreatown because she’s Korean. Bearing Korean pears from the neighborhood and armfuls of small plastic bags from Olive Bakery she showered us with her foodie finds because she loves her son. When the bag of pastries fell before our eyes in a crinkling heap of bountiful bliss upon the counter, they were gone within 10 minutes. Because we have standards. And when someone offers you a free sampler of tender, brioche-style sweet breads filled with coffee, peanut butter, chocolate or vanilla flavored cream, red bean curd or whipped butter, you have a responsibility to your tongue to get that joy inside of your mouth as fast as you can. As a pastry lover, I can’t really say I remember a finer day in recent history.

So dazed and wide-eyed-face-stuffing were we from this sudden encounter with Olive Bakery, another trip was planned, camera and heavy wallet in tow. My man and I, alongside fellow friend and pastry-pressing- enthusiast Laure, pranced about the bakery squeezing, smelling, and all around inappropriately ogling the tidy rows of freshly made Korean wonders. Actually, loafves of thick-cut, dense and lightly melting white bread (that makes the best grilled cheese I’ve ever had), probably isn’t hanging with the Kim Chi in most Korean kitchens, so this might not be the most authentic Korean bakery you could find.

Even so, the fact that Olive Bakery sits in The Koreatown Plaza south of The Wiltern Theater gave it enough cultural curiosity to get me in the door and buy as much as I could bear. They serve LA Mill coffee which, I’ll admit, was a total shock. Not that I should be surprised, the simple design of the bags show that Olive Bakery cares a lot (perhaps a tad more?) about thier aesthetic appeal then maybe they do about the baked goods. A few nasty reviews came up on Yelp.com and though I still remain a sugar-shocked and smiling fan, I’m certainly not the world’s authority on Korean baked goods. All I know is we spent 20 glorious minutes gathering the bounty; sampling the breads filled with nuts, the spongecake square, the mochi, the slabs of bread filled with cream that bake in such classic form that a cartoon character should be eating it, as well as drinking the coffee and I was hard pressed to find anything to complain about.

Except that I didn’t buy an extra 10 loaves of bread so I could make what I imagine will be the best French toast I’ve ever had.

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Neighborhood: Koreatown

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