Immigrants From South Korea Grow Market Stall Into Full-Scale Restaurant in Dieppe
DIEPPE – In 2008, a meeting with City of Moncton officials convinced Korean chef Mansu Kim to leave his restaurant in Seoul and move his family to Canada. They opened a market stall and nearly a decade later, they finally opened their own restaurant.
Kim and his wife Hyosook (Heidi) own Mansu BBQ on 279 Amirault Street with their son Mark. Seven years ago, they started selling Korean food at the Dieppe market and customers asked for more. But they were tight on money until now.
“A lot of our customers [at the market] wants to experience more Korean food and they wanted us to be open. So because of customers’ support, we finally decided to open a restaurant. We were still tight on budget, but we saved enough to start a restaurant and I had credit to borrow money from the banks so, we kind of worked it out,” Mark said.
Mark had worked for a few years after college, allowing him to help his parents save some money and build credit with the banks. As his sister Hillary moved away to Vancouver for school, Mark decided to quit his job to help his parents out.
“My parents are not good at English, reading documents and stuff like that, but they’re really good at cooking and decorating and carpentry. So they do that and I’m the guy who helps with documents, meetings with lawyers and accountants,” he said.
“It took a long time to get my mind set [on opening a restaurant] but I had thought about it. Since my parents did well in the food business, so I kind of got involved more to help them. So I explored more about food business because of them,” Mark explained.
Mansu and his wife had their own restaurant in Seoul for over 15 years. But they had always wanted to live elsewhere and fate seemed to have led them here.
“They were thinking a lot of times to live in another country. Then there was a couple of signs. There was a customer [in Seoul] from Fredericton and she told us about New Brunswick, but we weren’t sure because we didn’t know. Well, just hearing from her was not enough for us,” he said.
At the time, Moncton officials and mayor Lorne Mitton were working on a sister-city partnership with Yeosu in Korea. That’s when the Kims got closer to New Brunswick.
“We met them by fortune, I guess. We read articles in local newspapers that they were doing some kind of conference about Moncton. We participated there and we kind of got into it. That’s why we decided to move here two months after that,” Mark explained.
But in Canada, it took the family years of tightening its purse to finally build their own restaurant.
“We didn’t have much money at that time and we didn’t know what kind of restaurant would work. Would traditional work? Would fusion work? At that time there were no Korean restaurants here and we were kind of worried if it’s going to be successful or not,” Mark said.
The kiosk at the Dieppe market helps, but they were still short if they were to open a full-service restaurant. They looked into opening a food truck instead. After Mark worked at Atlantic Lottery for a few years, he was able to get enough credit to start a business. Mansu is now back to being the chef of his own restaurant.
Mansu BBQ serves barbecue and grilled dishes, sushi rolls, and traditional Korean food like the ox-bone soup called Seollongtang. Mark said the dish is popular because he doesn’t know anywhere else in the Maritimes that sells it.
“We boil the bone for, like, 24 hours. It’s a white soup and a lot of Koreans like it – local Koreans and from Fredericton, Saint John, Halifax, they all come here to get that,” he said.