Sincerity in a bowl of rice

The two chefs, both trained in art and design, took a long road before opening the Korean restaurant Bap Kitchen in Stockholm. It holds warm stories that feel fated, beyond efficiency and profit. They had little experience of running a business, but a pure passion for preserving the value of traditional Korean food, and the trust of people who reached out at unexpected moments. This is an honest conversation with the founders of Bap Kitchen.

It began as an artist-book project with me and eleven writers from the culture world. We prepared a book of essays and recipes for more than two years, but when covid-19 arrived neither publication nor a book launch was possible. We set the book aside and turned from writing to cooking. The idea drew on my mother's way of making jang (Korean fermented sauces) with the season and cooking what is in season. We first tried a hansang charim catering service, a full table of Korean dishes, through a website. That work led to an offer to collaborate with restaurant people, and we started serving lunch at Indigo, a popular bar at Slussen.

We had collaborated with Indigo on lunch for about three seasons, and around Södermalm word was spreading about "the odd place that cooks Korean food." Just as we had decided to stop, a well-known game developer who often came for lunch offered help. Naturally we wondered what he wanted from it, and we asked both a lawyer and an accountant. In the end we chose to start together on personal trust, not on a calculation of efficiency or profit. His conditions were surprisingly simple and romantic: keep the taste of buldak, the dish he likes most, and stay on Södermalm. I think Bap Kitchen's particular beginning followed meetings that felt fated, more like water finding a course than a business plan.

The hardest part is getting Korean ingredients. In the Nordic countries that is harder than in the rest of Europe, and ingredients that are easy to buy in Korea we have to make here. Making a single batch of ginger syrup can take three months in the autumn sun. But there is a stubbornness that does not step aside for that work. Buying local, unprocessed ingredients, onion or garlic with soil still on them, and trimming them by hand is part of it. The attitude comes from the careful Korean food our parents taught us, and from an idealistic attitude we took from studying art and design. We want to go against the trends and pass on the value of classic, fundamental Korean food. We always worry whether guests will notice the difference in what we made by hand. Regulars, and some guests who are doctors of traditional Korean medicine, praise it as a taste you feel in the body. The business has to meet supply and demand, but because guests recognize the care we cannot easily drop the stubbornness about ingredients we make ourselves.

Bap, the word for rice, is intense and primal. Bap itself is the meaning of food and the center of Korean food: the simplest dish, done the proper way. Bap is more than rice. It is the most basic ingredient, and the thing that most defines Bap Kitchen. Because ingredients are hard to get we cannot call ourselves authentic, but we strive for what is genuine. We describe ourselves as closer to a small restaurant that cooks with care than to Korean fine dining.

Bap Kitchen will keep creating new dishes and new stories, and Hansik.nu wants to share these honest stories with more people. The story of Bap Kitchen, sharing warmth through one careful bowl of rice in Stockholm, continues.