Poison Bakery, Busan, South Korea

During my last visit to Japan, I had poisonous fish…that was the title of an earlier blog post.  Somehow, today’s entry harks back to that, in spite of this one taking place in the country on the other side of the East Sea Sea of Japan:

East Asia arguably has some of the most unusual signs around.  Poison Bakery, in Busan, South Korea, certainly earned its place in the weird signs category.

This one confused me on two levels.  Obviously, casually adding the word poison to a place expecting customers to try its food is misguided.

But, as I’ve come to learn from wandering around bakeries of that part of the world, French is equally as popular when it comes to nomenclature.  If you dissect the Korean,
쁘아종 제과점 (ppeuajong jegwajeom), well, the second word means bakery.  The first is – I’m guessing here – a French loanword…presumably poisson, which means fish.

If you know taiyaki (鯛焼き), the Japanese sweet baked in the shape of a sea bream (a type of fish), then you may also be interested in the Korean version, 붕어빵 (bungeoppang), in the shape of a Crucian carp.  They are both commonly stuffed with red bean paste, but I wouldn’t put a mayonnaise and yakisoba surprise past them either.

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Would you dare eat at Poison Bakery?

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