Lido Area

Savory love affair with Korean bread
By Jackie Zhang

Falling in love with the cakes and breads in Coups is a sure-fire way to gain weight, but once inside the bakery, it’s impossible to only sample one or two of its breads.

Coups Bakery & Café’s manager and all its bakers are from South Korea. Its breads, cakes and snacks are prepared from high-quality, costly ingredients in a strictly Korean fashion.

“I couldn’t have imagined a bakery having such high production costs before I came to work here,” Cai Lina said. “When I made the first month’s financial report, I found that the bakery spent a lot of money on materials and production.”

Cai said that the first bread she ate in Coups was the Tuna French. Before her first visit, she read comments online and found that almost everyone recommended it.

“I bought one and found that there was really at least half of a tuna inside the bread. The posters didn’t lie. I thought the baker had put a whole tin of tuna inside.”

Coups offers many other bread flavors. “Seventy percent of the customers are foreigners. All of them can find at least one kind of bread they like,” Kim Soung Ho, vice president of Coups, said.

The cafe provides some simple dishes like spaghetti, salad, soups and pizza. Various coffee, ice-cream, cookies, tea and cakes are also available. The first floor is for customers to sit, rest and enjoy a cup of coffee or tea with cookies, cakes or ice cream.

Wireless Internet service is available on the second floor.

“The second floor is also available for group parties.” Cai said, “Some people come here for wedding ceremony or regular parties. Just give us a call, and we’ll arrange it for you.”

For Christmas, Coups will introduce several of Christmas cakes. The star attraction is its gingerbread house. The house, standing nearly a half a meter tall, is made of cookies and edible materials. It keeps easily in the home, and can be placed in the living room for some added Christmas atmosphere. Enjoy picking it apart with your family and friends over the holidays.

Coups Bakery & Café
Where: Block 3, Hairun International Condominium, Chaoyang District
Open: 6:30 am – 11 pm
Tel: 5135 8024