After cooking at acclaimed restaurants across the country, Nicole and Sean Kim recently opened their own restaurant, Kim’s Bop Shop. Currently operating as a ghost kitchen within The Hill Food Co. and accessible via third-party delivery apps and pickup, the concept is an homage to Sean’s Korean culinary heritage, Nicole’s passion for the cuisine, and the couple’s shared desire to show love for one another and their guests through cooking. “We hope people enjoy what we are doing as much as we love making it,” says Sean. Here’s what to know before you go.
The Concept
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After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 2016, the Kims worked in restaurants across the nation before landing in Chicago, where they planned to open a combination fast-casual and private speakeasy–style eatery. Just as they were preparing to sign the paperwork for their space, the pandemic brought life as everyone knew it to a screeching halt, upending their plans and forcing them to figure out what the next step might look like. The couple eventually landed in Nicole’s native St. Louis, where they pivoted to a customizable, fast-casual model; the Kims describe it as “Chipotle with Korean flavors and techniques.” They named the restaurant Kim’s Bop Shop as a nod to Sean’s mother.
Although the Kims have their hearts set on one day opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant, they decided to start Kim’s Bop Shop as a ghost kitchen because of the lower barriers to entry. Currently, the pair are operating out of the shared space in South City; guests can order for delivery through Uber Eats, DoorDash, or GrubHub, or they can choose to order pickup from the store’s South City shop and have their food brought out to them.
“This is Korean fast-casual with a chef’s take,” says Sean. “This concept is an incubator for what’s to come; it isn’t our full menu, but we are homing in on what we think will be our big sellers, like kim bop and rice and noodle bowls.”
The Menu
The inspiration for Kim’s Bop Shop centers around Sean’s Korean heritage and the food that he grew up eating, mostly made at the hands of his mom, whom the pair lovingly refer to as Mrs. Kim. After moving to the United States when he was 9 years old, the Kim family would go out of their way to try to re-create the dishes that they enjoyed in South Korea, even though it was a difficult undertaking.
“We immigrated to south Texas because my uncle was already established there, and this was about 20 years ago, so the Korean food scene was slim to nonexistent,” says Sean. “We got excited when we found Tabasco; there was no sriracha and certainly no gochujang. We had to go to major cities for that, and we had to make everything by hand. Seeing my mom go through all that—what she had to go through and how she had to source to achieve that flavor—and all of the passion and care she put into a dish really spoke to her love for us. It was our love language.”
Nicole and Sean take that notion to heart in everything they do. In this sense, Kim’s Bop Shop is as much a from-scratch kitchen as possible. They make many of the items in house, including marinades, sauces, pickled vegetables, kimchi, and butchering meats. The pair source as locally as possible, putting a chef’s touch on everything they do, all the while trying to make things accessible and comforting for their guests.
Part of that accessibility comes in Kim’s Bop Shop’s format. Similar to the Chipotle model, guests begin by choosing the base of their dish; options are steamed or fried rice, noodles, or salad bowls. Then come the topping choices, ranging from a variety of proteins, such as beef bulgogi, Korean fried chicken, or soy marinated shiitakes to vegetables and other accouterments including fried egg, kimchi, avocado, and pickled hot peppers. Bowls are finished off with an optional sauce, such as toasted sesame miso, citrus ginger vinaigrette, or sriracha ranch.
The idea is to mix and match and make it your own, though the Kims also have a handful of composed offerings, called Legendary Bowls, including the K-BBQ Bowl (which pairs sweet and savory beef bulgogi with pickled vegetables, jalapeño, stir-fried kimchi, fried egg, and honey gochujang sauce) or the District 7 Bowl (a marriage of Vietnamese and Korean culinary influences that is named after the location of Vietnam’s Koreatown). Grilled lemongrass pork belly is accented with pickled vegetables, cilantro, and sriracha ranch for a stunning fusion of flavors.
The Kims are also proud of the kimbop, a Korean seaweed-wrapped rice roll filled with an assortment of ingredients such as beef bulgogi, Spam or soy marinated shiitake, and accented with everything from omelet and stir-fried kimchi to American cheese. Sean is particularly excited to offer Momma Kim’s Kimbop, a mix of beef bulgogi, pickled vegetables, omelet, Thai basil, and honey gochujang.
“My mom would pack this in my lunchbox and make them anytime we’d go on a picnic; if I was feeling sick, it was my happy thing,” says Sean. “I found out it’s quite a hands-on process that is a lot of work, but she made it look easy. It’s simple but comforting, and it tastes sophisticated. It really fills you from the inside out.”
In addition to bowls and kimbop, Kim’s Bop Shop offers Korean fried chicken bites and what is sure to become one of the city’s hottest side dishes: honey butter tater tots. The pair is also excited about the signature cookie, a gochujang salted caramel confection that Nicole says draws upon her passion for Korean flavors and baking.
“I love making cookies,” says Nicole. “I learned this from my grandma; when I was little, we’d bake cookies together, and it was one of my favorite things. “Gochujang is a chili paste with a kick, but it’s not overpowering. I take a cookie base, combine it with gochujang and brown sugar, and, as it bakes, it turns into caramel inside the cookie. It’s kind of like hot honey but Korean.”
The Backstory
From a young age, Sean was interested in food and was always by his mother’s side in their home kitchen, where he’d watched her prepare Korean dishes for their family. He was always struck by this expression of love, and it sparked in him a passion for food. He didn’t think that would translate into a culinary career, however, and made plans to join the U.S. Marine Corps out of high school. There was a year-long waiting period before he was set to ship off, and he filled that time by working at his uncle’s Japanese restaurant. Quickly, he realized that cooking was his true calling, so he changed his plans to join the Marines, enrolled in a branch of the CIA in San Antonio, and eventually made his way to its Hyde Park flagship.
Nicole, too, fell in love with cooking at a young age thanks to her father’s passion for it. Side by side, they’d prepare the family’s meals, and she got so into it, she even called the CIA when she was in the sixth grade to ask if she could skip middle and high school and enroll in their program directly. Of course, that wasn’t an option, so she made her way through high school, honed her craft in restaurants in the St. Louis area, and landed at Hyde Park, where she and Sean met, fell in love, and began sketching out their shared vision for their life together.
Kim’s Bop Shop is the realization of that vision, one they are excited to share with St. Louis, which they believe is the perfect place to call home for themselves and their new business.
“There’s just this sense of community that you get here, and people are so supportive of small businesses,” says Nicole.
Sean echoes that sentiment: “We’re excited to call St. Louis home, start roots, and build a foundation in a city we love.”
