After six years in the making, Seaforest Bake Shop opened in September 2025 in Philadelphia’s Graduate Hospital neighborhood. The bake shop sells Korean flavored pastries, some of which use homemade traditional Korean fermented products, such as gochujang (Chili paste), doenjang (soy bean paste) and kimchi.  After a career in social work, the owner spent six months between 2018 to 2019 in Korea and Japan studying bread-making and viennoiserie. In 2023, she rented a commercial kitchen to bake in and started baking for small events and pop-ups and sold custom cakes.  Now in 2025 she has a fully fledged coffer and bake shop.

The Dumplings:  OK, Seaforest doesn’t sell dumplings, but it does sell stuffed puff pastry hand pies, including pies filled with ricotta and kimchi, kabocha and curry, and mushroom bulgogi.   The combination of ricotta and kimchi is delicious – creamy, spicy, funky and umami – and the kabocha and curry is also really good, with a decent curry kick. The had pies are vegetarian but, due to dairy used in the puff pastry, are not vegan.  Seaforest also sells a gochujang, cream cheese and scallion sticky bun which is crazy good.  The gochujang is mixed into the cream cheese, so there are spicy creamy ribbons of filling throughout the bun, which is a savory bun with a strong scallion flavor. 

While everything I tried has been delicious, I feel that the hand pies are expensive for their size. They are quite small and I would guess the ricotta and kimchi pie had a only tablespoon of each ingredient in it.   

The Location:  Seaforest Bake Shop is located on the corner of 16^th and Bainbridge street in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood.  The shop is an easy walk from the Rittenhouse Park area.