Barimigol Korean Street Food Festival

Barimigol Korean Street Food Festival is an independent and free-entry, food festival using locally sourced ingredients and selling food from as little as £4.50. It will be based at Bridge Farm in Easton, Bristol and will have a bar, live music and DJ sets whilst you eat.

We aim to reinvigorate our communities, local businesses, health and love for food. We have done this food festival once already but we need your help to raise funds to do it monthly and sustainably!

Who We Are

We are a collective of friends, volunteers and chefs who are part of the Barimigol Community Interest Company (14920829) run by Chef Wizzy Chung. Chef Wizzy has been running the restaurant Sky Kong Kong for 10 years; it is one of the few small, locally-owned restaurants still operating in Bristol City Centre. She grew up in South Korea, where an essential part of life was cooking, eating and sharing a love for food, especially street food you could find around every corner. The UK is severely lacking this culture to say the least; cheap and nutritious food is nearly impossible to find, and believe us, we’ve tried. Our project is to create a food festival that can help regenerate communities that are quickly disappearing and create new ones available to everyone.

What We Will Do

Our project aims to create a monthly Korean street food festival based at Bridge Farm in Easton. Food will be prepared by Chef Wizzy and other local chefs and will primarily focus on Korean and Asian street food. We hope to create a sense of comfort but also provide the opportunity to go out of your comfort zone with some unique flavours. We will serve dishes such as Korean fried chicken and BBQ, ssam and Wizzy’s famous kimchi available to buy in jars. It will be nourishing and high-quality food, with pricing starting from £4.50 so it can be financially accessible to everyone; this in contrast to other food festivals and markets that charge around £10 for a meal. 

Entrance will be free for the food festival. We will have a bar serving drinks, with relaxing, indoor warm areas for the cold months where you can chill out, eat as much as you can, get a few drinks in and dance to live music and DJ sets by local musicians. All ingredients and drinks will be sourced from Bristol-based butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, breweries and more. The food we serve will be extremely nourishing due to the use of a wide range of ingredients containing vitamins and minerals essential to healthy functioning. Wizzy’s rice contains over 50 ingredients, her kimchi over 40 and pancakes 55. We will be holding it at Bridge Farm, a farm collective with a 17th century stone house,  2 canteens, kitchen and courtyard with indoor and outdoor space surrounded by old trees and gardens.

Why this is important

Our main value is the belief in the power of community and food to support those who are suffering. Mental health issues like depression are linked to isolation and malnutrition. Without eating nutritious food that brings us joy, it stops the body and the mind from being able to generate and support healthy routines, motivation and fulfilment. It is easy to become isolated and spend time indoors, not getting out to see friends and exercise but being stuck on your phone for hours and eating unhealthy but dopamine-inducing food. 

Because quality food is usually expensive and inaccessible it is normally those who are struggling financially who are affected by these issues. As well as young people like students and public sector workers who have little time and community that will support them. Our food festival hopes to help to break this cycle, by creating a space to meet people, share the experience of eating good food and listening to music together. We want it to be the start of a community who have a shared love of food and can support each other.

Other communities that are suffering in Bristol are the local businesses. The rising cost of living and energy has been detrimental to many local businesses and they have been forced to shut down. Murray’s Butcher Shop was forced to close last year when its energy bills went from £7’000 to £22’000, there has been a butcher on the site since the 1800s. Bristol is losing the heritage that is vital for the survival of its communities and our food festival will work to support these businesses and the people who rely on them.

What We Have Done So Far

At the start of November, we did our first food festival at Bridge Farm. It was an amazing day with over 250 people attending. It has given us the confidence that our future ones will be even more successful and we have taken extensive notes on what we can improve. We received no funding or support from local organisations or council funds, this brought some limitations but with over 10 volunteers and a lot of hard work, we made it happen.

We have also been selling Wizzy’s self-published cookbook and homemade kimchi to raise money for the food festivals. As well as other projects that fulfil our values like £1 lunch and a 24 hour restaurant.

What Donations Will Be Spent On

Though we were able to pull it off self-funded last time, to do this regularly will require initial investments that make it cheaper in the future, the capital to hire people and to subsidise Wizzy who will be unable to run Sky Kong Kong during the weeks of the festival. This fundraiser is 'Keep What You Raise', meaning that we will keep all the money that is donated. Any donations will aid us in being able to put on a food festival but the more we get, the quicker, more frequently and better we will be able to do them.

We are asking for £20’000 that will be spent on three events this year in February, March and April. It will be divided as so:

• Food: £9k
• Drinks: £5k
• Wages £3.6k
• Venue hire, takeaway boxes and cutlery, toilet hire, equipment, bins and more: £2.4k

All the revenue we have left over at the end of the three events will go to doing more food festivals as we work out ways to become more efficient, cost effective and gain regulars. We hope that this money will allow us to be in a position where after three months, we can do it every month indefinitely without losing money.

Thank you!!

We can't make this project happen without you so any donation no matter how small will go towards creating something we think is sorely missed in Bristol. We hope that you enjoy our pledge rewards if you donate, each of them guarantees a different and unique food experience that we hope you enjoy. We will get in touch with you on how you can redeem them.

Some other ways you can help is by spreading the word about our crowdfunder on social media and with friends. If you have any questions please email [email protected].

We are extremely excited to make this happen and thank you for your support :)

From Wizzy Chung and Team x