Korean family behind sushi chain seeks authenticity dishing up food from homeland at Bomb Bowl

This article was originally published on June 12, 2019. It has since been updated.

If you've ever eaten at a traditional Korean barbecue restaurant, you know that it takes time. You generally go in a group so that you can cook a large portion of marinated meat on a portable gas grill or a charcoal grill built right into the table. And you would also know that the end product is delicious.

The Bomb Bowl Tempura and Korean BBQ restaurant in Regina takes that marinated meat magic and serves it to you in a rice bowl. It's all cooked for you and ready to eat.

I recently tasted my first Bomb Bowl and I was impressed. The food is fresh and packed with all kinds of flavour: spicy, tangy, garlicky, salty and sweet. The burst of flavour from the grilled meat, and the sauces it's served with, gave the restaurant its name.

"The Korean meats are usually very flavourful," says DJ Park, who runs the restaurant with his family. "They're not just plain meats. They're marinated. It takes time to make our meats. And my dad wanted to create a rice bowl packed with Korean food: noodles, meat, dumplings almost like a bomb in a way a rice dish with an explosive flavourand a lot of things in it. Essentially that led us to thinking, 'Why don't we call it a bomb instead of a rice bowl?'"

The ballistic terminology doesn't end there. They also allow you to choose your level of spice: "dynamite" is mild, "bunker" is medium and "nuclear" is hot. There's also a "TNT" extra spicy chicken bowl on the menu.

"Most Korean people love it spicy," says DJ's father, Chris Park. "But I can't make it one level of spiciness because the Canadians are different. Some people like the spicy; some people don't like it. I wanted to give them multiple choice. That's why I made the different levels."

Opened in November 2016, Bomb Bowlhas steadily grown its Regina customer base out of its Rochdale Boulevard location.

Bomb Bowlisn't the Park family's first restaurant venture. They're the people behind the Wasabi sushi chain in the city as well.

The Parks arrived in Regina in 2000 and opened the first of four Wasabi restaurants in 2002. Sushi is Japanese, of course, but Chris, who had operated a Korean street food restaurant in his hometown of Seoul for three years prior to moving to Canada, saw an opportunity to offer fast food-style sushi to the Regina market shortly after they arrived. The business did well, and the Parks opened additional locations around the city over the years.

By 2016, the Parks felt Reginans were ready for authentic Korean street food, and Bomb Bowlwas born. Making food from his homeland is a point of pride for Chris. Wasabi customers would often ask him if he was Japanese. But when he'd explain to them that he was Korean, he got the sense that people found the food less authentic.

With Bomb Bowl, it feels different.

"People ask, 'Are you from Korea?' Yeah, I'm from Korea. I understand everything, right? So I'm more proud of my food, compared to when I was making sushi," says Chris.

"That was my point in creating Bomb Bowl. And my goal was to change my attitude about my food. My main thinking was I have to be honest about the food, then make it tasty."

Many of the sauces have natural ingredients, and no preservatives, so they don't have a long shelf life. The Korean barbecue meat, meanwhile, must marinate for a minimum of 24 hours.

As a result, Bomb Bowls only prepares enough meat and sauce to sell 200 bowls per day. Most days, they have enough to meet demand. DJ says they probably only sell out two days per week for now.