Concerto Bakery Cafe

The salt bread is what people drive to Koreatown for. Concerto Bakery Cafe lives inside the H Mart shopping center on West 6th, and the owner sources and roasts the coffee from his own farm in Hawaii, which is not a sentence you write about most bakeries inside a grocery plaza. The salt bread comes in original, sweet potato, and blueberry, and buying six gets you ten percent off, which is the move whether or not you think you want six (you will eat six). Regulars call it the best in downtown LA, and the claim holds up after one bite. The room is clean and well-decorated, with indoor tables and outdoor fire pits in the courtyard, though the H Mart-adjacent setting means some people read it as cozy and others read it as food-court adjacent. Both reads are honest. Both can be true on different days, depending on whether you came alone or with the family doing a grocery run. The drinks worth ordering are the Salted Double Matcha Latte and the banana latte, both house specials that earn the menu space. The croissants are worth the detour on their own. The Korean pastries and cakes case is where you should also pause, because the bakery side is doing serious work alongside the salt bread and the coffee. This is a bakery-shopper's stop with serious coffee attached, not a cafe-first operation. It is not where you go to settle in with a laptop, and it is not a small intimate room. It is where you go when you are already at H Mart, when the salt bread is the actual reason for the trip, or when you want to taste what an owner who roasts his own Hawaiian beans does with a banana latte. Pick up six salt breads. Drink the matcha walking out.