I want this to feel like a hug in a bowl — like the cafés I missed when I first moved to LA, but made by hand, the way I'd serve it to my best friend.
Made in small batches every morning. Everything is shareable, but we won't judge if you don't share.
Yu-jin trained as a pastry chef at Passion 5 and Tartine Bakery Seoul before moving to LA in 2022, where she missed the kind of cozy, small-batch Korean dessert café she'd grown up in. There were boba shops, sure. There were bingsu chains. There was nothing that felt like a friend's kitchen.
So in 2023, with a tiny lease in Koreatown and a too-big pile of borrowed kitchen equipment, she opened daldal. She still bakes every morning. She still answers the DMs. She still cries a little when regulars bring their kids.
If you come in and ask her what to try, she'll ask what kind of day you're having first. That is on purpose.
It's a serious snack, but it's also just shaved ice. Take your time. Eat it slow.
Milk ice, oat-milk ice, or matcha snow. The foundation of feelings.
Strawberry, mango, injeolmi (toasted rice flour), or red bean.
It's tiny on purpose. Share or don't. Then come back next week.