For my friend Christina, kimbap was the ultimate road-food snack when she was a kid. Kimbap is like Korean sushi, she says, but decidedly unfussy. Her mom would take carrots tossed in sesame oil, pickled daikon, egg and maybe some grilled bulgogi, layer it on rice and roll it all up in a sheet of dried seaweed before wrapping it whole into aluminum foil.
On car trips, the kimbap would be passed out and Christina would eat it like a burrito, slowly peeling away the foil as she ate. It’s simple food, and nostalgic. In Korea, it’s something Christina would get at the gas station and now, she never makes it. Instead she’ll pick some up from H Mart in a pinch, or get it from her mom.
One of the dishes the cute counter-serve space Bapmukja in Lynnwood specializes in is kimbap. However, it’s not like the homestyle versions Christina grew up eating. This kimbap is stuffed with luxe ingredients: pork belly with perilla leaf, asparagus and pickled radish; shrimp tempura with sweet honey and spicy mayo; steak and Swiss cheese with asparagus. It’s served sliced into rounds like sushi on colorful melamine plates from Korea.
There’s also tteokbokki, a traditionally spicy dish of stir-fried rice cakes, gyoza, fried spring rolls, shrimp tempura and Korean street toast.
Open since July, Bapmukja is owned by Thomas Hur, TJ Duffy and SJ Paik. Hur and Duffy’s dream was to open a restaurant that was reminiscent of Korean bunsik spots — “the style of restaurants in Korea where it’s snack foods, grab-and-go on your way home from school. It’s nostalgic,” says Duffy.
They had seen bunsik-style restaurants opening in L.A. and New York City and thought the Seattle area was overdue for a bunsik that offered all the street food of Korea with slightly elevated ingredients.
I met Christina there for lunch last week. We splurged and ordered the steak and cheese kimbap ($10.99), the pork belly kimbap with the rosé tteokbokki combo ($18.99) and the street toast ($8.99).
The street toast was a dream: lightly toasted thick-cut squishy bread sprinkled with sugar, and topped with a patty made of shredded carrot, scallion, cabbage and egg, thinly-sliced ham, melted American cheese and a salad of shredded cabbage tossed in ketchup and mayo. It has every texture and ranges from sweet and salty to tangy. It shouldn’t work, but boy does it. It’s almost funny how good this little sandwich is.
“The secret is the sugar and the ketchup mayo,” Duffy says with a laugh.
The rosé tteokbokki — named for the milk in the sauce that turns it creamy and pink — was rich and smoky, thanks to a generous handful of chopped bacon swirled through the thick sauce. Duffy says he thinks Bapmukja is the only spot in the Seattle area serving this take on traditional tteokbokki, which is usually in a spicy red sauce topped with a hard-boiled egg and scallions.
The pork belly kimbap is Duffy’s homage to “a Korean BBQ bite all in one.” The kimbap has a layer of perilla leaf plus sesame seeds, asparagus, carrot, egg and pickled radish. It’s quite good on its own, but I also love what they call BMJ sauce — a combo of spicy bibim sauce, honey mayo and spicy mayo — for an extra kick.
His favorite is the short rib kimbap, stuffed with a kalbi-style steak slathered in a marinade Duffy has been perfecting for over a decade. I’m looking forward to trying it on my next visit.
Equally delicious in Lynnwood is Sabai Sabai Lao & Thai Cuisine. I grabbed some takeout from there the other week and was in love with every dish I ordered, from the nam khao ($13.95) to the sai quoua ($11.95).
Sabai Sabai has a wide-ranging menu of Thai dishes and a small section titled “Authentic Lao Dishes,” which was where I focused my ordering. There’s smaller dishes like the sai quoua, a housemade pork sausage heavy on the lemon grass, and thum mak hoong, a Lao-style green papaya salad, and larger plates like kua mi lao ($13.95), a rice noodle stir-fry that’s very similar to pad thai but with pork.
My absolute favorite was the sam khao, a crispy rice salad that is served build-your-own-lettuce-wrap-style. The crisp, crunchy rice nuggets are mixed with tender ground pork, peanuts and slivers of red onion and tossed in this punchy sauce that combines lots of lime with fish sauce and spicy red curry paste. You’ll pile the rice onto a wide romaine leaf and wrap it all up. If you’ve ordered the sai quoua (you should), tuck a slice of the sausage in for extra oomph.
A close second — especially for the winter — was the khao piak sen ($11.95), a Lao chicken soup with a broth that felt downright restorative. There’s also slightly shredded poached chicken, thick-cut rice noodles, fried onions and a blistering chili oil served on the side that could cut through the meanest congestion. This soup is the one I want on heavy rotation for a winter remedy.
Bapmukja 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Saturday, noon-7 p.m. Sunday; 18623 Highway 99, Suite 110, Lynnwood; 425-480-1871; bapmukja.com
Sabai Sabai Lao & Thai Cuisine 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, noon-10 p.m. Saturday, noon-9 p.m. Sunday; 1120 164th St. S.W., Suite B, Lynnwood; 425-742-9155; sabaisabailaothai.com
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