“My name is Solgi. I’m the manager here at Kimbap in Centretown on Bank Street. We’re a family-owned business. My parents own the business, but my mom is really the true owner here. She is the head chef. She’s here every single day, and these are all of her recipes.
I am an Ottawa local native born and raised, but I just came back to Ottawa this May after living in Montreal for the past seven years for school. And so it’s really fun to be back in Ottawa and especially my old stomping grounds of Centretown. I used to work down the street at the YMCA and at the after-school program on Elgin Street in high school. I went to school not so far away in the Glebe, and so it’s really good to be back in this community. My sister lives down the street.
I feel like even though my parents have moved from Centretown for a few years, we’re really familiar with the area, which is why we decided to start here. I hope that this business flourishes. We just started here for the next year.
A lot of times when people come in, they think it’s sushi immediately. Kimbap rolls are really similar to sushi. They’re like rice seaweed rolls, but they’re not. The big thing with sushi is raw fish, right? There’s no raw fish in kimbap. It has an assortment of cooked and fresh veg and then different proteins. Everything’s cooked. Kimbap is a really, really popular street food and casual style food in Korea. I think there isn’t a place here in Ottawa that just does kimbap, which is such a nostalgic food for so many Korean people, I feel like. It’s the classic quintessential school box food for Korean kids.
That’s sort of what we wanted to bring here to downtown Ottawa because we noticed there isn’t a space for it.
We hope to get the word out more and to survive through this winter and hopefully flourish throughout the next year. next year.”
Solgi @kimbap.ottawa : Manager of Kimbap
