Sokcho café for black potato bread: Sokcho Bultan Gamja Bread

I knew potato bread was a Sokcho travel-gift thing 🥔🍞, but this was actually my first time ever trying potato bread. And it looked completely different from the potato bread I had imagined. True to its name, it had the look of a pitch-black “burnt potato”! 🔥

Bultan Gamja Bread in Nohak-dong, Sokcho

Sokcho Bultan Gamja Bread Main Store (속초불탄감자빵 본점)

📍Address 1F, 34-20 Haksapyeong-gil, Sokcho-si, Gangwon State, South Korea ⏰Hours Daily 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. *Closed every Thursday Takeout, group visits, reservations, Wi-Fi, and separate restrooms for men and women available.

An exterior like a pop-art exhibition

✅ The exterior of the Bultan Gamja Bread Main Store in Nohak-dong, Sokcho really catches your eye, haha. The entire wall is decorated with colorful characters, so it feels less like a simple bakery and more like a little pop-art exhibition! When you are traveling in Sokcho, having a place like this makes taking photos more fun, right? I stared at the exterior for quite a while before going in, and the potato-bread-and-character concept worked so well together that it stuck with me even more!

Country-of-origin sign at the entrance

Ordering Bultan Gamja Bread and jjondeugi

Here is the inside. Since it is a café, there are drinks as well as the main Bultan Gamja Bread and jjondeugi, a chewy dried snack.

• Sokcho Bultan Gamja Bread ₩10,000
• Sokcho Jjondeugi, 12 pieces ₩10,000

This is what I ordered.

There were so many celebrity photos on one wall!

What are the ingredients and calories in Bultan Gamja Bread?

Such an unusual look, right? 🥔 What goes into Bultan Gamja Bread? According to the package, it contains 39.4% Korean potatoes, with potato, cream cheese, and butter among the main ingredients. Its black outer layer is made with squid ink—that is its signature feature. I was curious about the calories too: 90 g × 4 pieces, 360 g total / 815 kcal total!

Chewy like gamja-tteok

When I broke it in half, there was a generous amount of yellow potato filling inside the black shell. My first thought after one bite was, “Huh? This is more like gamja-tteok (potato rice cake) than bread?” haha. Instead of the fluffy texture of ordinary bread, the outside is quite chewy and springy. The inside has that fluffy potato quality, along with a creamy, soft taste, and it goes really well with the chewy shell 🥔

It is a little different from the sweet dessert breads you might expect. It is closer to a snack that brings out potato’s natural nuttiness, so I actually found it easy to eat without feeling weighed down.

How to heat it and store it

The box also kindly explains how to eat it! For a room-temperature product, heat it in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Warming it slightly brings out more of that chewy outer texture and makes the potato filling softer, so I preferred it warmed.

✔️Storage I also liked that it can be frozen for up to two months. The photo above has the instructions for eating it from frozen, too!!

An unexpectedly delicious find: Sokcho jjondeugi

I did not just try the potato bread—I also had the Sokcho jjondeugi sold here. It is a little different from the thin, junk-food-style jjondeugi I had expected. It has some thickness, which makes it nice to pull apart with your hands, and the more you chew, the chewier it gets, so I kept reaching for it 🙊

This is totally a beer snack, haha.

It has a salty flavor and that fun, tough chew, so it would go really well with beer when you are heading back to your travel accommodation 🦑 The shop also sells squid-, red-crab-, and dakgangjeong (sweet crispy fried chicken)-flavored jjondeugi made with Sokcho specialties.

A snack for a Sokcho trip

What makes Sokcho Bultan Gamja Bread special is that it is a travel snack you can only find in Sokcho. At first, the black appearance made me think, “What on earth will this taste like?” 🤔 But once you try it, it is not an overpowering flavor—the key points are ✔️ the nuttiness of potato + a soft filling + a chewy, gamja-tteok-like shell!

Each box has four individually wrapped pieces, so it seemed nice for casually sharing with family or friends after a Sokcho trip. If, like me, you have never had potato bread before, I think it would be worth trying while looking for a good Sokcho bakery! Next time, I will probably bring home not only the potato bread but the jjondeugi too... It was just perfect with beer!