Bakersville: Korean Bakery and Cafe

I fully intended to spend my morning off work doing a full Ashtanga primary series, but I took a detour and ended up at Bakersville, a relatively new Korean bakery and cafe on Golf Road, just west of Milwaukee. The woman behind the counter said they've been open for about three months. The space is quite large with a lot of seating, pleather couches and chairs as well as larger tables.

This was my first experience with Korean "pastry," having only eyed it at places like Mitsuwa and H Mart. I tried to mix it up, filling a small box with sweets and savories.

Red bean doughnut:


I usually like sweets with red bean. A trip to Argyle or Chinatown is never complete without a stop at Chiu Quon for two red bean paste cakes to eat on the way home. However, the warm donut this morning did nothing for me--there was a lot of filling, but I couldn't taste the bean through the sugar coating of the exterior.

Sweet potato and chestnut cookies:


The sweet potato cookies tasted vaguely cinnamon-y, but that's it. I couldn't make out any chestnut, besides the shape, in the other cookie. It was like biting into an extra dense, flavorless bean paste cake without the oh-so-flaky casing.

Tapioca pizza:


I couldn't figure out what makes this a tapioca pizza. My first impression when I saw it on the shelf was that it would make a great Martin Parr photo (it didn't travel neatly, so my photo doesn't do it justice). When I tasted it, it struck me as a thicker version of a horrifyingly sweet slice of pizza I had in Manila about 15 years ago. Bakersville's verison is very sweet. The sauce, which loosely held together the toppings of onion, carrot, green pepper, corn, tasted like a sweeter version of Miracle Whip.

Curry croquette:


Another disappointment. The curry filling of pork, celery, carrot (from what I could tell) seemed pretty generic. However, given my experience with the other things I bought, I was happy to be able to taste in this item the filling through the dough.

Toast:


Sadly, this was my favorite item from this morning. It wasn't particularly savory, but it was well fried. I liked the contrast between the crunchy exterior and spongy interior.

Can I expect more from Korean pastry? I was very underwhelmed and, before I knew it, I had eaten too much to get to yoga.

Bakersville
8357 W. Golf Rd.
Niles
847-966-0404

Try stopping in at H-Mart. They've got a Korean bakery there that, judging by the few items I have tried, is quite good. Normally Asian baked goods tend to be less sweet that their American counterparts. It sounds like Bakersville is the exception to this rule.

happy_stomach wrote:Can I expect more from Korean pastry?

I'm not a big fan of Korean pastry, and I grew up on it. That said, I wouldn't judge any form of Korean fare by the offerings available in Chicago.

And, as stevez noted, Korean pastry tends to be less sweet than its American counterpart. So Bakersville may be an outlier, of sorts.