Korean-American restaurateur opens dessert cafe

A new American Dream is taking shape in Hamburg. It happens to taste of fresh Chantilly cream and Okinawan Milk Boba Tea.

The new business is the brainchild of Frieda Barnett, a South Korean-born restaurant owner with more than four years of experience in the culinary industry.

She hopes opening LiBre Dessert Cafe, 3339 Route 94, will bring the borough together with French/Korean-inspired desserts and drinks.

While growing up in Seoul, Barnett helped her mother run the family restaurant, gaining a strong work ethic and a love of food.

“I was 6 to 7 years old when I started helping my mom. I folded the napkins and set up plates and learned how to cook. I would come to the restaurant after school. I grew up in my mom’s restaurant.”

The food she discovered in South Korea helped shape her vision for the cafe.

“When I was young, French and European-style sweets were big inspirations for our desserts and drinks,” she said.

She eventually moved to Manhattan, where she worked as a fashion designer for Levi Strauss and H&M.

Later, she moved to Hamburg with her husband and business partner, Jason, and their children.

Lack of Asian food

She noticed the lack of good Asian restaurants in the area and wanted to change that. “After moving to Hamburg, I wanted to have Asian restaurants like we have in South Korea and Manhattan.”

She visited her mother, a master chef, in South Korea and brought back her recipes, translating them from Korean to English and hiring chefs from New York to work in her new restaurant called Blue Spice Kitchen, which opened in Hamburg a few years ago.

She also used her background in design and marketing in the business. “My experience as a fashion designer helped us with plating and photography, marketing, and restaurant interior design.”

Barnett wanted to expand her business with a chic French-Korean fusion dessert cafe.

“I have a son who is in high school. At the time, I wanted to create a very healthy environment in which my kids could do their homework, have a drink and enjoy brunch,” she said.

Again, she prepared to open LiBre Dessert Cafe by traveling to South Korea to get her barista license and attend the World Desserts Exhibition to learn from the best Korean and French bakers.

“My teachers insisted on using the freshest ingredients and like my mom, no shortcuts.

“I learned how to use and make fresh cream every day ... . We used yogurt instead of butter to make our cakes fluffier.”

She brought her head pastry chef to the exhibition and spared no expense for their training. “We learned so much. I don’t mind investing in my chef. If there is something they can learn, I will provide it.

Name and message

During two months of flying back and forth between South Korea and New Jersey, the Barnetts thought about the cafe’s name and its message.

“The reason we called the cafe libre is for freedom. We want our customers to be free, relaxed, study and hang out with friends, to be free is to be libre.”

Jason Barnett said his wife also wanted the cafe to be a way of giving back to the community. “We wanted to open this here instead of a big metropolitan area so we could give back to the community we care about.”

LiBre Dessert Cafe held its grand opening Nov. 8, but Barnett has not stopped developing it.

She plans to travel to Japan in the spring to study different styles of desserts. “We want to spend a lot of time in Japan to learn their different styles of pastries, which tend to be more advanced than South Korea’s, and then bring it back to our cafe.”

She also plans to expand the brunch menu to include specialty pancakes, ice drinks and snow cones.

A second location is a possibility. “I might open another LiBre. It was pretty big so it would be its headquarters. I could expand it to a smaller town with a smaller size,” she said.