When Rika Wong was a child, her grandmother would often babysit her and her younger sibling. Wong’s fondest memories of those times, she says, always seemed to take place in the kitchen.
While Wong’s grandmother is no longer alive, her grandmother’s legacy of sharing love through food is embodied in Wong’s Bellingham-based business, “Buu Chan.” The name means “Little Piggy” in Japanese, and was her grandmother’s childhood nickname, Wong explains. The company logo features a grandmotherly pig wearing a chef’s hat.
Bellingham’s Buu Chan produces Asian-based sauces, oils and kimchi that pay tribute to Wong’s half-Chinese, half-Japanese heritage in addition to beloved Korean and Vietnamese cuisines. Wong, 32, started the company as a side hustle in 2020, while working full-time as the manager of a ramen restaurant.
“I like to call this my ‘COVID baby,’” she says.
The impetus for Buu Chan came in part from Wong’s homesickness after moving to Bellingham from Seattle to attend Western Washington University.
“I felt like there was a lack of foods that reminded me of my culture and of home,” she says.
Halfway through obtaining her Bachelor of Arts in public relations, Wong also realized she wanted to work in the culinary field.
Six months into operation, Wong quit her primary job to focus solely on Buu Chan, supplementing her income with delivery driving. She began selling her homemade kimchi and chili oil on Facebook, then up-scaled production to a commercial kitchen once her business was fully permitted.
Buu Chan Products and Places
Buu Chan offers up to five kinds of kimchi, along with fermented hot sauces, homemade miso, hot honey and several chili oils.
Many of these offerings are gluten-free and vegan. Wong also sources her produce locally, seasonally, and organically whenever possible, with farm partners as far south as Snohomish and as far north as Everson. Putting money back into the local agricultural community, she says, is a point of pride.
Products can be found each Saturday at the Bellingham Farmers Market, each Thursday at the summertime Barkley Market in Barkley Village, and at occasional pop-up markets. Buu Chan also provides online ordering and offers delivery.
Roughly half of its product line is Korean, which ironically isn’t part of Wong’s ethnic background. But she and her customers still love kimchi. While her favorite is the radish variety, the most popular is the napa cabbage kimchi. Making it is time-consuming, she shares. The same goes for a Yuzu Kosho sauce, which requires hours of zesting Yuzu, a Japanese citrus fruit.
Wong is also fond of the Umami Rayu – a Japanese-style chili oil made with fried shallots, mushroom powder, sesame, miso and fried garlic, among other ingredients. It’s also not very spicy, which she appreciates as Wong has never tolerated culinary heat very well, she admits.
Buu Chan’s chili garlic crisp is a little hotter and very popular, and Wong says it makes an excellent topping for hummus, pizza or even macaroni and cheese. It can also be used as the oil component of homemade salad vinaigrettes.
Buu Chan: Family and Future
Although Buu Chan is technically a one-woman business, Wong still gets help from friends, her partner of seven years, and her father, who drives up from Seattle most weekends to aid with the Saturday market effort.
“My dad is probably my business’s biggest fan,” Wong says. “Maybe five or six days out of the week, he’s wearing some kind of Buu Chan merch. He keeps a stash of products in his desk at work and hands them out to customers. I’ve been very, very lucky that my parents have been so supportive of me and my business, and the people in this community are also equally as kind.”
When Wong began Buu Chan, she saw her end goal as operating a food truck. It’s still something she would like to realize, but for now, she finds herself working at various downtown eateries in order to make ends meet.
She doesn’t pay for any advertising, so Buu Chan’s current successes have been achieved mainly through word of mouth. But that, says Wong, makes every positive review and compliment that much more genuine.
And while her grandmother is not around to see her hard work, Wong says she is proud to have fulfilled a promise to name a food-related business after her.
“I do wish she were here to see this,” Wong says. “I don’t know that she could eat much of this, because she really didn’t eat spicy food at all. But I think that she would have liked to see what we’re doing.”
