St. Catharines restaurant offers funkiest takeout find during pandemic
Paul Bang remembers when his mother made kimchee for his sister’s wedding day.
There wasn’t actually a marriage on the horizon when she set to work. In fact, it would be six years before any nuptials were exchanged and that celebratory kimchee was enjoyed to mark the occasion.
Still, ensuring there was kimchee on the big day was important enough to start making the fermented vegetable concoction that’s a staple on every Korean kitchen table years in advance.
“That’s a true story,” Bang said as he sat in the empty dining room of his Korean BBQ Town restaurant in downtown St. Catharines where business is, at most, 10 per cent of what it was before the novel coronavirus struck.
Unlike his mom, Bang isn’t making kimchee at his restaurant to last for years, though it could if stored properly.
Bang’s versions, made with napa cabbage or daikon radish, go quickly at Korean BBQ Town — even during a pandemic when he sells it to go by the kilogram instead of serving it in small dishes alongside the bibimbap, Korean fried chicken, colloquially called KFC, or table barbecue he offers when it’s business as usual.
Bang’s kimchee was a highlight of so many meals I’ve eaten with friends and family at his restaurant, including its previous incarnation, Naysa Fusion.
These days, it’s become a staple in my kitchen since the state of emergency was declared in March. At $10 a kilogram, it’s one of the best values I’ve found since restaurants were forced to close their dining rooms and rely on take-away to get them through.
I’ve put Bang’s kimchee — think of it like the Korean version of sauerkraut — in scrambled eggs at breakfast, used it for savoury kimchee pancakes at lunch and dinner, and snacked on forkfuls in between.
Other restaurants, including nearby Wellington Court, have tapped into the magic that it is, offering takeout hotdogs topped with Bang’s red kimchee — napa cabbage in a brine made fiery hot from the generous addition of crimson Korean chili powder called gochugaru.
But kimchee, with all its funk and heat, is more than just an ingredient or garnish. For Koreans, it’s a way of life.
“You could ask other Korean people how important kimchee is in life, and they’ll say they can’t live without it,” Bang said. “You eat it three times a day; breakfast, lunch and dinner, and each time you have kimchee.”
Kimchee, which has been around since times B.C., is so intrinsic to being Korean that family matriarchs make it years in advance of major milestones like weddings. And households in the country flanked by China and Japan keep dedicated kimchee fridges. The compartmentalized, temperaturecontrolled coolers ensure every batch of the ferment ages properly and doesn’t become contaminated with bacteria that can throw it off.
In a typical North American fridge, like the one in my kitchen, my orders of Bang’s kimchee are disturbed by the door opening more than usual as we’ve hunkered down. They’ve taken on a more sour personality over the weeks they’ve lasted — still edible, though best suited to stir fries rather than eaten straight up, he explained.
To serve it so sour as a side dish wouldn’t be good for business. Something that can tie together a people and culture as much as kimchee can also divide.
“Every Korean person has a different taste for kimchee. Some Korean people love my kimchee but some don’t because it’s not like their recipe back home,” Bang said.
“Kimchee is the most important recipe for a Korean restaurant.”
That’s why even now he carries at least three versions of it based on his mother’s: the red edition of napa cabbage aged with salt and gochugaru that most people are familiar with; baek or white kimchee made without chili powder; and a watery, salty dongchimi kimchee, made with daikon radish.
Sometimes the lineup expands to include spicy ponytail kimchee, its name stemming from the green tops left dangling on the star ingredient, chonggak radish, like a ponytail. Even within those variations, Kimchee is nuanced. Its flavours are shaped by the region of the person making it.
Bang, who hails from Seoul in the country’s northern interior, is more likely to use garlic in his kimchee than lots of fish sauce, the latter an essential ingredient for kimchee made closer to Korea’s coastlines.
“The Koreans from the east coast, west coast, south coast, they don’t like my kimchee because there’s not enough fish sauce,” he said.
Still, there is a lot of effort that goes into it. Bang, who graduated from Niagara College’s hospitality management program before opening Naysa Fusion in 2009, works his red kimchee in 18-kilogram batches.
He combines napa cabbage with kosher salt and a bit of water to draw out the juices. After six hours, he drains the liquid and adds gochugaru, fish sauce, lots of garlic, ginger and a bit of sugar.
The weather dictates how long he leaves everything to ferment before serving.
In winter it can take a week but then “you open the lid and you’ll see it’s bubbly. Once it’s bubbly, you’ll see it’s ready to eat,” Bang explained.
“In the summertime, you put it at room temperature for two to three days. That’s enough, then you can put it in the cooler for one year.”
Not that it would ever last that long in my presence. And that’s the biggest compliment someone can pay Bang, as he continues to operate Korean BBQ Town with his wife Eve, serving kimchee, KFC and beer to go, through great uncertainty.
“I’ve been 11 years in my restaurant. Sometimes I have lots of profit. Sometimes, I don’t,” he said. “In the restaurant business, sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down, but the money doesn’t matter. When customers like my kimchee and come to me, that is my happiness.”