She expected to see some fans from her pop-up days, but what Jiyoon Jang didn’t foresee were lines out the door, countless new faces and selling out every single day.
After years of popping up with black sesame mochi bars, tarts adorned with sugared whole perilla leaves and some of the best cookies in the city, Jang finally opened Modu, a cafe of her own that expands on the sweets informed by her Korean American heritage with a full coffee and tea program that’s just as inspired.
But on Oct. 9, Modu’s opening day, she quickly realized her popularity outpaced her staff — and production. The following days proved a crash course in pivots.
She opened with 200 pastries, then immediately realized she’d need to increase production — and ramped up to 400 pastries for the weekend. “And still we’re selling out after a few hours,†Jang said.
On Saturday a line consistently trailed out the front door and to the sidewalk from 8 a.m. until mid-afternoon. “No one took a break that day,†she said. “Saturday was just survival.â€
Jang and her team prep the dough of the fluffy, multiday-process milk buns with some intended to remain hidden away as a freezer reserve, but even those are almost immediately used. On Sunday they implemented a new rule — one that’s also found at the nearby croissant bakery Fondry. At Modu, guests now are limited to four pastries per person.
The demand for hojicha mochi muffins and misugaru cookies and ssuk pound cake is a whirlwind for the baker and her new shop, but her pastries have always been popular — even if her road to baking was never planned.
Jang, a former competitive golfer who studied film, graduated college in spring of 2020 and, like so many who sought reprieve from lockdown, attempted baking sourdough bread for the first time. It consumed her. She made her own starters and fell down the rabbit hole of YouTube cooking tutorials; her family gave her a stand mixer for her birthday.
“I’m glad I started with that because it taught me so many things about baking: the process of it, how intricate everything is,†she said. “Just making cookie dough couldn’t really teach you. I had to use all of my senses to make sure that I got a good loaf.â€
She was raised surrounded by excellent food with a mom who could cook well — especially when it came to Korean cuisine — but Jang said she never came from “a pastry family,†and even today isn’t partial to sweets. She credits this as a large influence on the balance of sweet-savory, sweet-tart flavors she uses in her baked goods today.
In early 2021 she moved to Los Angeles from the Palm Springs area, where her parents operate restaurant Misaki Sushi & Grill in La Quinta, and gained her first exposure to working in professional bakeries at Clark Street. She dove into making croissants as well as food photography for the local chain’s social media accounts. The photo tags and credits on Clark Street’s posts began funneling traffic and followers to Jang’s own Instagram account — eventually inspiring her to offer a pastry drop under her own name, baked from the kitchen in her 300-square-foot apartment.
Her first customers picked up variety boxes that immediately sold out, and featured items now found in Modu. A few months later In Hospitality, the local restaurant group behind Chimmelier and Jilli, approached Jang about opening a bakery. She called it Mil, which translates to “flour,†and it ran for less than a year out of multiple locations in Koreatown, her Korean American pastries available for pickup as well as in some of the city’s best coffee shops, which purchased Mil baked goods wholesale.
But Jang wanted to maintain control over her product, and as the wholesale accounts grew she wanted to focus on the quality of the items — and on opening her own storefront. She left In Hospitality amicably in early 2023 and returned to her independently run pop-ups and pastry drops.
She launched a newsletter. She poured energy into promoting her baking on social media. All the while, her parents encouraged Jang to find a space and open her own storefront.
“They’re very business-minded people,†Jang said. “They were like, ‘Eventually you’re gonna have to open something if you want to do a real business, and give it a proper try.’â€
Early in 2024 she began looking for spaces and her parents became her investors. Her sister works the cafe’s front of house. The 1,700-square-foot family affair is modern and minimalist in its aesthetic: A wooden communal table runs down the center of the room, flanked by small tables, and at the far end is the ordering counter and Jang’s pastry case, where the day’s balanced and earthy and citrusy sweets wait.
Madeleines are glazed in tart yuzu frosting; hojicha muffins sprinkled with black sesame offer a satisfying chew. Kabocha cakes, topped with rice water-soaked ribbons of dehydrated persimmon, supplement a menu of Korean loose-leaf teas, classic espresso offerings and house lattes designed by Jang. She wanted the focus of Modu to be as much on coffee and tea as her baked goods, and serves hotteok-inspired cream-top coffees made with Korean black sugar; ceremonial matcha with koji milk; and espresso crowned with cream and dusted with dark cocoa.
In the coming months Jang hopes to introduce a savory menu to Modu. The baker, who was born in Korea but moved to the U.S. in early childhood, wants to extend her use of nostalgic Korean flavors by way of avocado toast with Out of Thin Air’s gochujang bread, or Korean porridge with a range of toppings.
“I just want [Modu] to be familiar enough to people but at the same time be something that maybe they haven’t tried before,†Jang said. “I think because I don’t have the traditional pastry background, at first it felt like impostor syndrome, but now I’m kind of like: Because my mind hasn’t been molded to how this [pastry] should be made, it helps me create things that people don’t expect.â€
Modu, 5805 York Blvd., Unit A, Los Angeles; 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday to Friday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
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