Daejeon Dunsan-dong café for crème brûlée madeleine: Frank Coffee Bar

I went to Frank Coffee Bar Daejeon Dunsan Branch, a coffee spot in Dunsan-dong, over the weekend~ Such a satisfying visit, let me tell you about it!

What kind of café is Frank Coffee Bar Daejeon Dunsan Branch?

Frank Coffee Bar Daejeon Dunsan Branch started in Jeonju and this is its first directly-run store to open in Daejeon. Even the exterior has this exotic feel, giving off strong foreign espresso bar vibes, right?

I think photos taken right out front would come out really pretty! And this café runs every single day, no closed days.

Inside Frank Coffee Bar Daejeon Dunsan Branch

The interior overall has an exotic feel with wood-tone decor. It looked even prettier blending with the green scenery outside.

Word's clearly gotten out that this is a coffee hotspot — customers kept streaming in nonstop, couples, families, people with kids. The age range was really varied too!

The low lighting paired with the wood-tone interior so well, great for a good mood.

True to its bakery-café reputation, you can watch staff continuously making bread inside. There were so many customers that three staff members were working, and orders and packing moved along smoothly without a hitch.

My personal secret for spotting a good bakery café!! Whether they have a Balmuda oven. Sure enough, Frank Coffee Bar has one too, so you can get your salt bread warmed up — so nice~~

Drink menu at Frank Coffee Bar Daejeon Dunsan Branch

Along with the basic coffee menu, Frank Coffee Bar Daejeon Dunsan Branch has a good variety of non-coffee drinks too, which seemed great for coming with family.

The beans are a blend of Brazil and Ethiopia, and their signature menu is an espresso with a flavor somewhere between milk chocolate and dark chocolate, apparently! There are 6 kinds of espresso prepared, perfect for espresso lovers.

Croffle is also a signature item — cooked to order, and available in 4 kinds: original, cheese, strawberry, churros, so you can pick to your taste and enjoy with coffee.

The 12 salt breads and baked goods menu

The coffee's famous, but the baked goods at Frank Coffee Bar are really famous too! Baked goods and salt bread can be reserved on Naver, so I'd recommend reserving and picking up directly! Madeleines, canelés, financiers — so many kinds, and each one looked really delicious.

There were seriously~~~ so many kinds of salt bread. Original, pollock roe mayo, green onion cream cheese, garlic cream cheese, jambon arugula, chestnut streusel, corn cheese, mocha, sesame, dirty choco, plain milk castella, potato — 12 kinds of salt bread total.

So many salt bread flavors you rarely see at other bakeries, it was honestly hard to choose.

Even bakeries famous specifically for salt bread don't sell flavors like these, so I really agonized over what to buy ㅠㅠ

After much deliberation, I picked original and pollock roe mayo! This egg tart looked so good too but I held back given my stomach's limits ㅠ

They had the trendy wakku too. It's made with peach, in season for summer, so it looked even more refreshing and tasty. This one seemed popular too!

Café Albero espresso: the drink that changed my mind

I ordered a decaf americano, strawberry latte, and café Albero.

I usually don't drink espresso much because I have this bias that it's bitter, but maybe because Frank Coffee Bar is a coffee specialty shop, the espresso here was distinctly different from other coffee shops.

A dark espresso with cacao topping

That description fit perfectly. Not more, not less — exactly a dark espresso with a rich cacao aroma, no sourness or bitterness at all, just the coffee's own natural flavor coming through, enough to win over even me, who doesn't usually enjoy espresso. If you go to Frank Coffee Bar, definitely order the espresso! ⭐important⭐

Crème brûlée madeleine and salty caramel financier

The crème brûlée madeleine looked unique so I ordered it. The outside is torched cream, crisp and crackly, and inside is cream filling, so it's really soft. Not too sweet, you can taste the cream's own flavor, moist — highly recommend!

This is the salty caramel financier. The outside is coated in salty caramel, and it was so delicious.

Original salt bread and the top pick, pollock roe mayo salt bread

The outside is like a pretzel and the inside is chewy — that's the original salt bread. The butter tunnel was carved out well and the butter aroma came through nicely, a flavor that made me want to keep eating.

My top pick! This is the pollock roe mayo salt bread. You really have to try this one. The pollock roe mayo cream is packed inside the salt bread.

I usually prefer original salt bread and have never once liked a cream- or sauce-slathered salt bread, so I really don't go for those, but Frank Coffee Bar's pollock roe mayo salt bread was so good it could beat the original. The ratio of pollock roe to mayo was just right, not too greasy, not too salty, and the butter went sooo well with the pollock roe mayo.

I really, really love salt bread, and finding a great salt bread spot makes me so happy haha. Recommending this as a Dunsan-dong café hotspot and Dunsan-dong salt bread hotspot~!