Smoking Tiger Bread Factory

Very few brands are intriguing enough to catch our attention from a distance – Smoking Tiger is one of them. Referencing a common saying from Korean folktales (“once upon a time, back when tigers used to smoke”), Smoking Tiger soft-launched locally in late 2019, and has since opened bakeries and coffee shops around northern Orange County and southern LA County. In addition to unique pastries, it has leveraged retro marketing with Korean design elements to impressive effect.

Note that the young brand is still evolving. Early locations (including the first Buena Park store) had “Smoking Tiger Bread and Coffee” labeling, but now, the name is shifting to two alternatives: Shops in Cerritos and Whittier are called “Smoking Tiger Bread Factory,” focused on pastries, breads, and sandwiches, while Brea, Gardena, and San Gabriel have “Smoking Tiger Coffee Labs,” focused on drinks. Each shop sells both bread and coffee products, but perhaps more of one than the other. In 2025, Garden Grove will have its own Smoking Tiger location, though which type is presently unclear.

Our first visits were to the Cerritos “Bread Factory,” where one side of the serve-yourself display case is devoted to savory items, including trendy Korean cream cheese-oozing buns with bacon/potato, cheese scallion, and ham/cheese variants, “everything salt breads” riffing on everything bagels, and spicy sausage croissants. The other side, just a little too close to a line of people waiting at an ordering/payment counter, is filled with sweet treats: matcha, blueberry, and ube scones, oreo, lemon earl grey and almond “sconkies,” kroong-ji crispy flattened crossaints with nutella, pop tart, or ‘original’ honey toppings, and gigantic candied matcha pistachio croissants, to name just a few options. Though there were fewer options on our visit, many of the same choices were available at the Buena Park store, as well as a passion fruit kouign amman that tasted even better than it looked.