Kirkwood culinary grad introduces Korean staples to NewBo City Market

CEDAR RAPIDS — If Kwai Butler wanted a good kimbap at home while growing up, she often had to make it herself.

Today, the newly minted Kirkwood Community College culinary graduate has a little more experience making a variety of foods. But starting at age 3, the immersive experience of living in South Korea was one of the best instructors for learning how to make the quintessential rice rolls.

Now, she has opened up shop to share with Cedar Rapids the culture she grew up with — an accessible point to a new restaurant focus in Cedar Rapids for anyone who’s hungry.

What’s on the menu?

With a simple, straightforward menu of four options, it’s easy to get acquainted with Korean food through classics like kimbap. The sticky rice rolls, made with a rainbow of vegetables like pickled radishes, carrots, cucumbers and red cabbage, come in two varieties. Have yours as a tuna kimbap with a mildly kicked-up mayonnaise dressing, or as a pinwheel with bell peppers, spinach and fish cakes.

“The pinwheel, I thought, would be iconic because it’s a big kimbap and it has a swirl in it — it’s colorful,” Butler said. “I thought that would be an eye-catching dish, so I had to add that to the menu.”

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Bibimbap makes a full meal out of just the vegetables with a rice-based bowl topped by carrots, bean sprouts, zucchini, spinach, mushrooms and a hard-boiled egg — all tied together by gochujang, mild savory and sweet chili paste.

“It’s a representative dish in Korea. It’s delicious, and you can add and take away (toppings,)” said Leslie Brown, Butler’s mother who helps with the business. “It’s the perfect Korean dish.”

The bulgogi wrap, made with many of the same basic vegetables as the other dishes, wraps Korea’s signature barbecue beef with cheese and a special spicy sauce, for another easy access point to Korean food wrapped in the familiar tortilla.

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“We call that our gateway dish,” Brown said. “Most people like it because it’s flavorful.”

Over the course of its first year, the new restaurant hopes to add specials like pork belly and japchae, a traditional holiday dish of savory and sweet stir-fried glass noodles with vegetables.

What is Korean food, and how is it different?

While Korean food has some similarities to other Asian cuisines, like Japan’s, the Asian peninsula jetting off northeast China has a few things that distinguish it.

Kimbap, which has the appearance of a sushi roll, shares with its Japanese counterpart the nori (seaweed) wrap that neatly binds loose ingredients together. But that’s where the similarities ends.

Kimbap contains no raw fish and uses sesame oil instead of vinegar for seasoning.

“We try to explain to people what the difference is, because they think it’s sushi,” Brown said. “The taste is a bit sweeter and nuttier because of the sesame oil. You don’t have to dip it in wasabi or soy sauce, because it’s seasoned differently.”

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In addition to a healthy and unique taste, customers keep coming back because the dishes, which are mostly composed of vegetables, also are relatively healthy.

With a penchant for garlic, chili peppers, ginger and onions, Korean cuisine comes up with a multitude of different sauces and dishes using the same ingredients in different measures and preparations.

Korean food, unlike most Japanese food, tends to be universally spicier. Oja’s offerings have been moderated to account for local taste, although they’re glad to accommodate those with a higher tolerance for heat.

“In the southern part of the peninsula, they turn up the heat,” said Brown, who lived in South Korea for about 20 years. “You go to a buffet and everything is red — even for breakfast.”

How is started

In the 1990s, Leslie Brown moved to South Korea to each English at Inha University. As a graduate with a linguistics degree, she wanted to live abroad and soak in the culture of another part of the world.

Kwai Butler, then 3 years old, grew up and spent most of her life in South Korea. She returned to her family’s native Cedar Rapids in 2015 to pursue culinary school at Kirkwood Community College. Her mother returned to Cedar Rapids a few years later.

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With aspirations to open a restaurant in 2020, the pandemic held Butler back from offering her cuisine sooner.

In April, she was named Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year by NewBo City Market’s 2023 pitch competition, thanks to her Korean bap dishes, which beat out competition from Tee’s Liberian Dish, The Cheesecake Lady and other recognized brands.

Oja opened in June. Thanks to her win, Butler’s space will be rent-free for one year.

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