Modu Cafe

Jiyoon Jang, a former competitive golfer who studied film, baked her first sourdough in the spring 2020 lockdown, made croissants at Clark Street and ran Mil, a pastry drop baked in her apartment kitchen, out of Koreatown locations for less than a year before her parents, who run Misaki Sushi & Grill in La Quinta, became her investors. Her sister Yoonji, who managed Misaki, moved to Los Angeles to run Modu's front of house as GM.

Modu's room is warm beige plaster over a run of white tile, with a built-in bench of pale wood along the wall, square wood tables on white pedestals, round wood stools and a single round sconce, and the counter ends in a white-framed frosted glass screen. The pastry case is a glass box on a white counter with each pastry on its own black pedestal, a steel airpot at one end and a flower arrangement in a copper vase on top.