Sumi Chang
Back when Sumi Chang was a registered nurse at 
County USC, she went to a lot of office potlucks. “Everybody would say how good my food was,” she says. “They never realized how much I did to make it—I read books, and pored over recipes, and tried so many things.” Eventually Chang, who emigrated from Korea as a young woman, decided to get serious about her hobby. She took a three-month sabbatical to study cooking at Tante Marie in San Francisco, then came home to a job offer from Reflections, a popular La Canada restaurant in the ‘80s. She never carried another bedpan again.
After stints at L.A.’s Four Seasons and Paris’s famed Lenôtre, Chang landed a life-changing job at Campanile with L.A.’s master baker, Nancy Silverton. The experience inspired her to open Pasadena’s EuroPane, a sunny little bakery and café where for the last 13 years she has set the standard—not just in the San Gabriel Valley, but in Southern California—for croissants, tarts, chocolate cakes, breads and pressed sandwiches.
3 Questions
1. Please settle a longstanding debate: Is it pronounced europahn or europanay?
Well, the “pane” means bread in Italian, so it’s supposed to be europanay, but people say it every way. Some even say “europain.”
2. What was your favorite kind of candy when you were a kid?
I never had any candy! In Korea we have fruit after dinner, and because the food was spicy, sometimes we had chewing gum. I didn’t grow up with sweets—this is a new passion for me. I’m just crazy about dessert now.
3. Pasadena isn’t quite the serious food town that, say, San Francisco and Santa Monica are, but it is just as sophisticated (or more so) in many other ways. Is there hope for us, foodwise?
I think so. Some westside restaurants that were really good didn’t make it here, like Pinot at the Chronicle. I don’t know why. We’re not quite there yet. But now we have an influx of new people, so I have hope.
3 Favorites
1. Do you have a favorite Pasadena restaurant?
I think it would be Bistro K in South Pasadena. He does amazing things. I just ate there and tried a tamale with ants’ eggs…. really, ants’ eggs! The eggs were kind of grainy, and there were flavors of lime and cilantro. It really worked! I also like Shiro for fish.
2. What do you most like to do that does not involve cooking or eating?
Traveling. My next trip is to Turkey. I haven’t been there before, and I think it will be fascinating. I’m always planning a trip.
3. What’s the best croissant you ever had, apart from your own?
I can’t remember the name of the place—it was at a little bakery I passed by when I was visiting a friend in Paris. I was just walking down a street on the Left Bank. I don’t think I had a bad croissant anywhere in Paris. But that one was the best.