After losing their jobs in 2020, sisters Celene and Tara Carrara opened a pop-up restaurant from their home in Glendale. What started out as an excuse to recreate the Balinese street food of their youth blossomed into a full-fledged business well on its way to a brick-and-mortar reality. The Carrara sisters shared their story with "LA Times Today."
Celena Carrara talked about the origins of Bungkus Bagus and what they make.
"We prepare traditional Balinese food. I think we kind of discovered later on that it's a very hyper-regional kind of meal and is representative of the little mountain town where we grew up. Our main meal that we serve is a bungkus. It's kind of like a rice combo meal. You've got rice at the center, but it's not just white rice. It's like white rice with lemongrass and coconut milk and going on and on. And in my opinion, if you don't nail the rice, why bother?" Celene said.
The bungkus meal also includes meat, a mother-in-law egg and long beans. Tara Carrara shared how the sisters grew in Bali, enjoying the local cuisine. But, she said, they never saw themselves recreating those meals for a living.
"When Celene and I started Bungkus, we had no intention of being in the restaurant industry. Celene was a doula, and I was a makeup artist. So, we came from seemingly different backgrounds. We were jobless due to COVID and there was no end in sight. And I decided to just sort of take a chance and try out cooking and add a pop-up. And then 100 people came and then slowly it snowballed into a very loyal, amazing customer base," Tara said.
Tara and Celene say they want to open a brick-and-mortar location someday.
"This work is incredibly hard, and it takes a physical toll. There's an emotional toll. It's long hours. Having this experience alongside my sister is probably the only way that I could imagine loving it and surviving it," Celene said.
You can catch Bungkus Bagus every Sunday at Smorgasburg LA.
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