The Sungsimdang strawberry cake — the “strawberry siru” — has become a phenomenon. A cake so loaded with fruit that people take the train to Daejeon just to buy one, then queue for hours to do it. The good news: with a little strategy, you can skip most of that line. Here’s how to actually get one, based on two visits where I barely waited at all.
(This is the “how to buy it” guide; for the full run-down of siru flavors and which to pick, see my Sungsimdang siru guide.)
First: what is the strawberry siru?
The strawberry siru is exactly what the photos promise — a chocolate cake so buried under fresh strawberries that locals joke it’s “strawberries pretending to be cake.” Fruit on top, fruit tucked between the sponge layers, all over soft chocolate cream. It’s heavy, genuinely impressive in person, and it sells out fast. It’s a seasonal cake (strawberry season, roughly winter into early spring), so it isn’t sold year-round — in other months the siru rotates to flavors like mango or cheonhyehyang citrus.
The open-run reality
Officially, sales start at 8:00am, though when crowds are heavy the shop sometimes opens around 7:30. In peak season — especially around Christmas — people line up before dawn and wait two to three hours, and the popular cakes can sell out by lunchtime. There’s no online reservation; it’s first-come, first-served only.
That’s the version most people brace for. But you don’t always have to play it that way.
How to skip most of the queue
Two strategies worked for me:
1. Go on a weekday, at lunchtime
On a weekday around midday, the crowd thins right out. I walked up to the Cake Boutique at lunch on a weekday and bought a strawberry siru with essentially no wait. If your schedule allows a weekday visit, this is the simplest fix — skip the weekend entirely.
2. Use the siru specialty store, not the main Cake Boutique
Sungsimdang opened a siru specialty store (시루케익 전문점) that sells only siru cakes and roll cakes — nothing else. Because the choices are simple and the packing is quick, the line moves much faster than at the Cake Boutique, which sells the full range of cakes, tarts and rolls. I went on a weekend morning around 9am, and despite a long-looking queue, I was inside in about 20 minutes.
Where to buy the strawberry cake (the options)
- Cake Boutique (본점 케익부띠끄) — the flagship, biggest strawberry-siru supply, including the giant original size. Also the most famous open-run spot. Near Jungangno Station.
- Siru specialty store (시루케익 전문점) — siru and roll cakes only; shorter, faster queues. About a 4-minute walk from Jungangno Station Exit 2, near the main store. Open until 10pm Fri–Sat, 7pm Sun–Thu.
- Lotte Department Store (Daejeon) and DCC branch also carry the strawberry siru, and department-store lines tend to be shorter and more comfortable.
How the pickup works
Here’s the part that confuses first-timers. At the Cake Boutique you pay at the counter and receive a voucher, then walk to the separate “siru pickup” building/line next door, hand over the voucher, and collect your cake. It sounds like a second queue, but it moves fast — you hand over the voucher and get the cake almost immediately. My whole payment-to-pickup took under 10 minutes.
At the specialty store the flow is similar: queue on the right, choose your siru from the menu at the entrance, add any roll cakes on a tray, pay once at the register, then join the pickup line and collect when your name or number is called.
Prices and sizes
- Strawberry siru “maknae” (막내) — 43,000 KRW: the 3-tier version, and the one I’d recommend for most people.
- Original strawberry siru (2.3kg) — 49,000 KRW: a 4-tier monster. Genuinely enormous — only worth it if you have a lot of people to feed.
A note on size: the original is bigger and heavier than you’re picturing. Unless you’ve got a crowd, the maknae is plenty.
Getting it back to Seoul
This is the question every visitor has, and the answer is reassuring: they’ll pack it with a cooler pack. When you buy, staff ask your travel time and pack accordingly (small extra charge). On one trip mine survived the 2-hour journey to Seoul with the cream intact and the fruit perfect. Just know it’s heavy with all that fruit, so plan for carrying it.
A couple of eating tips
- Cut it with the paper collar still on. There’s so much fruit that if you remove the collar first, strawberries tumble off as you slice. Leave it on, or just spoon it straight from the box.
- If the strawberry siru is sold out, the strawberry seolgi (a fresh-cream strawberry cake) is a good alternative that’s often easier to grab.
Verdict
The strawberry siru’s queue is real, but it’s beatable: go on a weekday lunchtime, or use the siru specialty store instead of the flagship, and you can walk away with the Sungsimdang strawberry cake in minutes instead of hours. Get the maknae size, let them cooler-pack it, and carry it home carefully — it’s as much strawberry as it is cake. Pair it with a proper Daejeon day trip and it’s worth every bit of the effort.
