Sim Wimbush mixes kimchi.
Sim Wimbush, owner of Seoul 2 Soul food truck, stands inside Hatch Kitchen, her back straight, hair pulled tight in a bun, wearing a blue chef's shirt. She grabs a towering pile of napa cabbage, its leaves glittering with water, before moving it to the cutting board, bringing the knife to the middle and slicing in a smooth, powerful motion.
She’s making what she calls “mock kimchi.” Unlike traditional kimchi, Wimbush chops the cabbage into small pieces.
“My mom taught me two ways: the way you let it ferment, and the quick way,” she says. While you can eat kimchi the day it’s made, she prefers to wait.
After bathing the cabbage again and layering sea salt in the fresh, green crevices, she picks up a piece, demonstrating how the the leaf snaps. After the cabbage sits overnight and the salt expels the remaining water, the snap will disappear, but the crunch will remain.
The first time Wimbush, 34, made kimchi was at Grinnell College in Iowa. It was a way for her to stay connected to her family.
“Also because of my college buddies,” she adds with a laugh. Wimbush joined an Asian-American group on campus in an attempt to get closer to a crush, but it also brought her closer to her calling. “When they found out I was half Korean, they were like, ‘Oh, do you know how to make kimchi?’”
It felt like a test.
“I thought, OK, they’re trying to pull my Asian card,” Wimbush says. She reached for the phone, and from 1,000 miles away, her mother guided her through the process of making kimchi.
When the club members and her friends eventually came over, Wimbush displayed a proud Korean feast of bulgogi, japchae with sweet potato vermicelli noodles, and kimchi — everyone’s favorite was the kimchi.
“It was the first time that, outside of my family, I felt validated in being able to express myself equally as an Asian as much as African American, and viewed just as being Asian — an incredibly validating experience, culturally and personally,” she says.
Wimbush shows Richmond magazine Food Editor Eileen Mellon how to make kimchi.
Wimbush aims to highlight both cultures through her food truck venture, where kimchi mac and cheese is a crowd favorite.
Growing up in Dinwiddie, her house was an amalgam of cuisine and culture. Her father, Morgan Wimbush, a veteran and food service professional for more than 20 years in the Army, and her mother, Yong Wimbush, met while her father was stationed in Korea. Dinner often meant collards accented with “Korean goodness” — aka ginger and garlic — or Cream of Wheat spiked with kimchi for breakfast.
But, she says, “Being in a multiracial family and living in a rural environment, I missed out on being able to interact with more [Korean] families.”
Trips to small, mom-and-pop Asian markets with her mother offered glimpses of Korean culture, snapshots of people making rice cakes, always accompanied by the same familiar aroma.
Her youth is marked with that ubiquitous scent, the fridge a pungent collection of various-sized jars filled with mashed garlic and kimchi made with sweet potato vines, a Korean watercress, minari and perilla leaves.
“If you go into a Korean’s home, there will be at least six different types of kimchi, [if] not more,” she says.
Wimbush recalls her mother bottling fish her father caught, leaving them to ferment for fish sauce, the “eeekk” sound the jar expelled when tiny air bubbles escaped.
“Traumatizing,” she says, then laughs, shaking her head. It’s the reason she doesn’t use fish sauce in her kimchi, instead gaining the umami flavor from soy sauce and sea kelp.
Every time Wimbush makes kimchi, typically once a week, images of her mother’s small frame crouching over a large mixing bowl in what her family calls the “kimchi squat,” return.
While soaking garlic in warm water, a trick that frees the cloves from their skins, she is transported to her childhood living room. Along with her older brother and sister, she would sit for hours peeling cloves.
The insistent “mmm” sound that would escape her mother while shoving a piece of cabbage rolled into a cylinder toward her daughter's mouth, inviting feedback, is still audible. “That is a comforting memory, and now I kind of unconsciously do it to anyone around [when I make it],” she says.
Mixing the salt-soaked cabbage, sesame seeds, Kadoya sesame oil, Korean chile powder and scallions, organic sugar, garlic, and ginger together, a rainbow of colors blend in the bowl. After a taste, she adds a second round of each ingredient.
No two batches of kimchi are the same, each ferment has a unique imprint. With kimchi, Wimbush says, salt is a friend, and air is the enemy. She uses vacuum-sealed, BPA-free containers resembling makeup cases to ferment the kimchi, a process that may take anywhere from weeks to months.
With no professional cooking experience, launching her food truck was a leap of faith, one rooted in tradition and family ties, with her sister and niece often by her side on the truck.
She rolls a piece of cabbage into a cylinder, handing me a piece. “Here, try this,” she says, smiling.
