Anseong bakery café for mentaiko potato salt bread solo: Chat Baker

You know that feeling of healing on a day off — a nice-looking café, good bread, a drink? Since my days off don't match everyone else's, I end up spending quiet time alone at cafés more often than before. This time, on my way to my parents' place, I stopped by Chat Baker near Anseong Farm Land to pick up some bread and relax haha.

What is Chat Baker, the bakery café near Anseong Farm Land, like?

Chat Baker is a 500-pyeong bakery café in Gongdo, Anseong, with a lot of atmosphere. They say the name was inspired by jazz legend Chet Baker, and the café is meant to be a place where good bread, pleasant conversation, and the feeling of the day linger haha. It's a large café but still has a calm mood, and most of all the bread is really varied and delicious, so I think a lot of people leave satisfied.

• Hours: Bakery/drinks 09:00 - 23:00
• Brunch/pasta 11:00 - 20:00
• Location: 경기 안성시 공도읍 서동대로 4391 3동 101호

Chat Baker also has a second floor. The big windows make the space bright and cheerful. I came on a weekday afternoon and there were still so many people — I guess I'm not the only one enjoying life like this on a day off... jealous.

Choosing bread and a drink at Chat Baker

At Chat Baker there's such a wide, delicious-looking range of bread that it's genuinely hard to choose haha. I quickly picked the one I'd eat there myself, but my whole family loves bread, so figuring out what to pick from all the tempting options took some real deliberation.

And for drinks, they even had something different — Jeju carrot lemon juice? The coffee looked good too, but this time I picked that one.

I'm not going to eat all of this, don't worry, I'm not a pig haha. I was only planning to eat one thing there and pack the rest, but then they offered to pack everything for me. So here's the whole generous spread haha.

Mentaiko potato salt bread with Jeju carrot lemon juice

First up was what I ate on site: mentaiko potato salt bread! There are so many places doing salt bread well these days haha, so I ordered with expectations. And you know how that usually goes — expect too much and you end up disappointed. But this one was actually delicious? No disappointment, I devoured it in no time haha.

The salt bread is split in half, filled with mashed potato and topped with a silky mentaiko (pollock roe) sauce. It's not the salt bread's saltiness exactly, but the saltiness of the mentaiko softened by the creamy potato pairs really well with the bread haha. The bread itself is nutty, and the crisp, firm bottom layer of the salt bread — the key part — was done really well too, so it was genuinely delicious. The Jeju carrot lemon juice that went with it was refreshing, with just a hint of that distinct carrot aroma, and paired nicely with the bread!

The ham cheese croissant at Chat Baker

I also picked the ham cheese croissant, thinking it'd make a good meal bread :) Chat Baker really does croissants well. Biting in, you get that slightly crisp, layered exterior that crumbles into a moist interior — really good. They tuck in two portions each of ham and cheese for a bit of savory saltiness, and the outside of the croissant is glazed sweet, so the sweet-and-salty combo is just the best!

Chestnut milk bread, sliced on the spot when you ask

This is one I bought the moment I saw it, thinking my family would love it — chestnut bread. My family loves plain white bread, but they didn't have that, so I ended up buying the chestnut bread instead. (Plot twist: on my way out I found corn bread and plain milk bread too, don't tell anyone haha.) Anyway, they asked if I wanted the bread sliced, so I said yes, and they sliced it into thick pieces right there.

When you open it up, it's genuinely packed with chestnuts, and the jam around the chestnuts is really tasty too. That sweet flavor is just excellent! The chestnuts are more firm than soft, and since I like that kind of texture, I really enjoyed the slightly dense, firm bite haha.

Almond kouign-amann, the family favorite

Almond kouign-amann is something I already love, and when I brought it home everyone raved about it — this is really good!! haha. If you watch the slicing, you'll see the almonds packed thick and firm on top, giving a crisp bite, with a really nutty, sweet flavor!

But underneath, the bread part is super moist and soft, so combining that crispness with the moistness makes it so good haha. It's a bread that's got sweetness and nuttiness built in as the basics, so I think it'd appeal to everyone, young or old haha. So I definitely recommend this one.

With the weather being so nice these days, a lot of people are heading out to places like Anseong Farm Land for a light outing. If you're looking for a café near Anseong Farm Land, go check out Chat Baker — great bread, great atmosphere.