A K-drama Deep-Dive Review
One of Hagyeong’s one-day-off trips in One Day Off was about food—but more than that, it was about memories.
It began with her sharing snacks in school with a colleague, who posed a simple question: When eating a strawberry cake, do you eat the strawberries first or save them for last? The same dilemma applied to sweet bean porridge with chestnuts, noodles with a boiled egg. What you chose, her colleague remarked, revealed your personality.
Hagyeong answered that it was different every time. He told her that she wasn’t the obsessive kind.
But then, she admitted that she does have an obsession—bread. Not just as a love, but as a necessity. As she traced the history of bread in Korea, she showed him a Jeju Bread Map, highlighting the island’s growing bakery scene. And with that, she embarked on a one-day trip to Jeju, a journey dedicated entirely to bread.
The episode almost plays like a documentary—with interviews from what I presume are real bakeries—but what makes it truly compelling is Hagyeong’s quiet observation of a seven-year-old girl in a red sweater.
The child wandered from bakery to bakery, searching for a “snail bread.” But no one knew what she wanted. Croissants? Cinnamon rolls? All kinds of pastries were offered, and each time, she shook her head.
It wasn’t until she spotted a roll cake that she recognized it—though she said it wasn’t the right colour. As she sampled some bread that had been cut up for tasting, she explained that the roll cake was something her grandmother used to buy for her mother, always paired with red bean bread as gifts. And she was the one who enjoyed eating the bread the most. At last, she was directed to the right bakery—where she found and bought the ‘snail bread’ roll cake she’d been searching for.
All along, Hagyeong had been quietly following her, listening to her conversations, her questions, and her remarks in each bakery.
We finally understand why this little girl had been searching all over town for the roll cake. It was for her late mother’s memorial service. She wandered from bakery to bakery, retracing the tastes of her past—not just to find a cake, but to find… a memory. The bread and cake weren’t just food; they were a way to remember her mother, to hold onto the moments they had shared.
Because that’s the thing about food—it’s never just about taste. It carries the weight of our memories, the echoes of people we’ve loved, the moments we’ve cherished. Whether good or bittersweet, the memories we associate with food shape what we seek out and what we avoid.
It was heartwarming to watch this little girl, so determined, so adorable, carefully tasting red bean buns to make sure they were the right ones—so she could find the right bakery, the right cake, the right memory. She knew exactly what she was looking for, not just in taste, but in feeling.
Do you have a memory of a food shared with someone you love—one that you still savour, both the taste and the relationship? Is it something that has deepened over time, becoming even richer, like a recipe perfected with love? Or has the taste faded, like a memory growing distant, the relationship no longer what it once was?
Or is it a memory you cannot yet revisit? Like how I still cannot bring myself to return to the restaurant where I had my last meal with my late mom.
In the end, Hagyeong’s one-day trip wasn’t just about bread. It was about how food holds our histories, how a simple roll cake can carry generations of love. And maybe, like that little girl searching for the taste of her mother’s memory, we, too, are always looking for the flavours that remind us of home.
Food connects us—not just to flavours, but to people, places, and moments in time. Some memories we hold close, savouring them again and again. Others remain untouched, waiting for the day we’re ready to return.
But whether sweet or bittersweet, the tastes of our past stay with us, shaping the way we love, remember, seek comfort, and find our way home.
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