The Bread Room in Philadelphia, PA.

Ellen Yin, Owner

Origins

I grew up in a suburb of New Jersey. Everybody in my family loves to eat. We would meet my grandparents in Northern New York. We’d go to New York, to Flushing, to eat Chinese food. I was raised in a very non-Asian community and I always wanted to feel this sense of belonging. We moved there in sixth grade. I never found my groove, so I found a job in a restaurant around the corner called Fromagerie. This was old school from the 70s. They had a pastry cart with Black Forest Cake, Sabayon Cake, cheesecake, chocolate mousse. We would present the tray to every table. I loved this French restaurant so much. It wasn’t food we grew up eating, but when I went to college at Madison University where there are tons of Asians, I didn’t connect with anybody. So I got another job in a French restaurant. I always loved hospitality and wanted my own restaurant from the time I was in my early-20s, but I realized after majoring in entrepreneurial management that it takes a lot of money to open a restaurant. It’s not going to come from my parents or from me. How could I open a restaurant? So I worked a lot of different careers and finally went back to grad school. I ended up working in New York.

I met my classmate in grad school who loved wine. We are still partners. We opened Fork in 1997. It wasn’t until 2004 that we could afford a full-time pastry chef. We brought in a baker who could make pastries and bake bread. His amaretti cookies were to die for. He was our first pastry chef. We’ve had four pastry chefs in the history of Fork and they’ve made the pastries for the entire group.

We were also baking our own bread and selling it retail and making pastries. We started High Street as a sandwich shop in the daytime and a pasta-driven restaurant in the evening. And we happened to have this amazing young woman, Samantha Kinkaid who was super creative and started making our pastries in High Street.

When the pandemic hit, we relocated to this building because bread was becoming a big thing. During the pandemic, everyone wanted to buy bread and pasties, not things you could easily make at home. Our bread sales escalated. Our regional bread became a huge component of the business and that made The Bread Room possible. The Bread Room sells all the bread retail. We also sell it at High Street and at the Farmer’s Market. We didn’t do any more wholesale … until (laughs) we became a pastry shop. I think people were craving comfort and community. The place exploded the first week we were open. There was a line out the door. Our team said: This is unsustainable. I said, “Don’t worry, everything is going to subside.” But it didn’t.

Company Mission

All our restaurants have been intentional about sourcing local. High Street, with grains and cheese and artisanal products, has always been our ethos. We took over A Kitchen and Bar, so that one we didn’t name. We loved it because the wine program was very terroir-driven. So local, local. All the bread is made here in The Bread Room. Hence the name. All our pastries are made at High Street, which is led by Kate Hughes. Originally, when we were so small, we didn’t even have a laminator.

Signature Products

We have a cinnamon cardamom bun. I feel like sometimes when you have a cardamom bun, you don’t taste the cardamon. Ours has a strong spiced flavor. We have a crispy matcha croissant with matcha cream. Everybody loves matcha. It’s the in-thing right now. With the Fromage Danish, we use fromage blanc from Valley Milk House, which is a local dairy. It has pickled onion and capers, so it’s supposed to be like a bagel with cream cheese. There’s a Miso Tahini Sesame Cookie that’s nice and soft in the middle. Our Bay Leaf Vanilla Kouign Amann has a beautiful crispy outside. Our adult pop tart has been really popular. It has strawberry rosewater filling with a saffron glaze on the outside.

Every day, we put out 20 different pastries. There are three different flavors of crullers; there are biscuits; right now, we have bacon parmesan; our candy ginger scone is delicious. We have three different types of cookies; typically, rye chocolate chip, an oatmeal currant cookie, a malted molasses ginger cookie. There are walnut sables. Sometimes we have a cinnamon bun. We have a pastrami and rye croissant today. There’s focaccia that has cured salmon on it today, but it rotates different flavors. Then we have all our sandwiches that are on our homemade bread. We have chocolate cake, polenta cake. And they all come out at different times of day. As we learn about our clientele, not everyone comes at the same time.

Every few months we’ll get a wedding cake order, and they’re never small. We spitball back and forth. What do you like? We customize it to what they’re looking for.

Equipment ‘Must-Haves’

[From pastry chef Kate Hughes]: Our Classic Kitchen-Aid mixer. It’s our most used, prized possession. I would say it’s actively running about 70% of the day. It’s constant. We actually have five bowls and multiple paddles for one mixer. It’s our Old Faithful. We do have other mixers, but that one – each time it breaks down, we save all the parts, so we have extras.

Production Tip

One is stay true to yourself. Some people don’t want to grow. They want to have a small neighborhood bakery. As soon as you open and you’re successful, there’s always someone in real estate saying you can have another one. But if you’re the one doing everything, it’s really hard to scale without having a system in place. That’s what we’ve been working towards for 20 years – building a system that allows us to understand our production, understand our demand and meet them as closely as possible so that you don’t have tons of waste and you’re not wasting labor.

Secrets of Success

Our team is the most important aspect of the success of our business. We’ve been lucky to have great chef leaders, but also management leaders as well. Christina McKeough is our culinary director. She curates everything to how it looks out there. We’ve been so lucky to have Kate Hughes as our pastry chef, Kyle Wood as baker. For the first 15 years of my career, I was like the general manager. I had to be there every day. We have people who have not just talent, but who also want to inspire their teams to create a high standard. I wish I knew the secret to that, but we’ve been able to find those people, retain those people and continue to see them grow.

Future Plans

We outgrew our space over there. We make bread for the farmers market and for all our restaurants. High Street; High Street Fork; A Kitchen and Bar; A kitchen and Bar. We outgrew the tiny kitchen space and this was our storage room. Our landlord was like: “This is a very expensive storage space. You either take it or we’re going to rent it to somebody.” We really needed a spot for our bread department. Our bread has grown much from being a restaurant amenity to being a wholesale retail product out in the marketplace. So we decided to open here in October, 2025.

People love it. This market, the Market East Jefferson Hospital neighborhood, has really been a desert for food. It’s a vibrant daytime destination, but there’s really no place to eat.

We’ve been very lucky. The people who live in the neighborhood have been very supportive. This area North of Chestnut Street is a whole topic of development for the city. It’s a huge opportunity. This is a historic building. It houses people who are on short-term leases. Was the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. Lincoln delivered a speech on the way to his inauguration.

We filled out time with classes, so we had numerous chefs from all over. We have a pizza class at least once a month. In November, we had a whole cookbook series. Dorie Greenspan stopped by here. We’ve had so many incredible pastry chefs come through here.

We have a sourdough class that sells out pretty much as soon as it goes out. We can only take 15 people because it’s a hands-on class. We want to do more advanced classes. We want the space to be a gathering spot for this neighborhood. You never know. Maybe we’ll have another Bread Room.

Photos Courtesy of High Street Hospitality Group
Photo of Ellen Yin: Photo Courtesy of Stevie Chris

For more info, visit www.instagram.com/thebreadroomphl

(This article appeared in the Spring 31 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)