🍍Pineapple Buns 🍞

Not too far from Boston Chinatown’s iconic gateway stands a cozy Cantonese bakery. With its peachy-orange walls (now tinted with brown from age) and the wafting smell of freshly baked breads and sweets, this bakery is hard to miss and easily draws in customers whether they want pastries or not. This bakery is called “Corner Cafe Bakery” or “Cafe Corner” on Google Maps, named after its spot on the corner of Beach Street and Harrison Avenue. Corner Cafe Bakery is often easily mistaken for something other than a bakery. This is because of the orange awning placed above the entrance, blocking one’s view of their sign. Thus, the sign, name of the bakery, and the identification of the business, is easily missed even when the sign is fully lit at night. However, despite this oddity, customers continue to constantly flow into the store. This ability to keep and bring in customers despite not having a visible name perhaps alludes to the bakery’s homely customer service and high quality and taste of their pastries.

One of Corner Cafe Bakery’s most famous pastries are their pineapple buns. With their crisp, flakey outer crust hiding the chewy softness on the inside, these buns are a staple snack originating from Hong Kong. With a high Asian population in Boston, many look for a memory of home or connection to their culture, often through food. As such, Hong Kong originated pastries including the pineapple bun are often restocked multiple times throughout the day and eventually sold out when the bakery closes. To describe pineapple buns a little more, they are small, round, sweet breads. They are known to have a caramelized, sugary top crust that becomes flakey when bit into. The bread underneath is fluffy and soft, but when being bit down on, becomes chewy allowing one to savor the iconic light sweetness of Asian desert. This combination and surprise of a harder crust versus a soft inside, both sweet, is perhaps a commentary of Britain’s colonization of Hong Kong (a British - Cantonese fusion pastry).

Picture by Corinne Lam

However, the most interesting part of the bread is that even though they are named “pineapple buns,” they don’t taste like pineapple at all! They’re not even made with pineapples or fruit. They simply are styled in a way that the caramelized top layer is fashioned to look like the crust of a pineapple. Before being put in the oven, the baker draws criss-cross lines across the top to represent the pineapple style. Perhaps this is because fruit is typically a universal delicious item, so having a bread that looks similar could increase curiosity and sales. Or, perhaps it’s another try at surprising customers.

Pineapple buns have personally become a staple of my college life. They were such an iconic part of my culture, yet I had never tried them until arriving in Boston. As such, I have become infinitely curious about them,

history, and even how to make them. I believe that pineapple buns could be another portal into better understanding the Cantonese side of my family, and potentially even becoming closer to my family members. I also understand that pineapple buns came to fruition during the British colonization of Hong Kong. As such, pineapple buns were often eaten with tea. This combination of daily tea and pineapple buns also brought forth another fusion of Cantonese and British culture: Cantonese milk tea. In seeing these two cultures work together, I’m curious about how the pineapple bun is viewed in other cultures, as well as if other cultures have created different versions of the bun. For example, the red bean filled bun is popular in China, while the melon bun in Japan is a spin-off of the pineapple bun. There’s even a variation in Mexico. I’m excited to continue learning about the pineapple bun, and hopefully someday, I’ll make my very own!

Video by Michael Lim