At Miss Kim, Midwestern Bounty Meets Korean Joy

Founders Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig grew from a single deli to a community of businesses, often mentoring young entrepreneurs within the Zingerman’s family to incubate new food businesses through their path to partnership program. The family has become as close as Michigan has to food royalty.

And it was under those auspices of the Zingermans’ mentorship that, a few years later, Kim would open a pan-Asian food cart called San Street, serving dumplings and spicy noodles. This combo would resonate — not just in a college town like Ann Arbor, but nationally.

Before long, Kim garnered major media attention, and a semifinalist nod from the James Beard Foundation. And it all was built around that perfect combination of Korean flavors and Midwestern comfort food, the sort of hybrid that has now taken root everywhere around the country — and in dishes like sweet chile baby back ribs that evoke both heartland barbecue and the succulence of galbi, or kimchi rice balls that manage to evoke both arancini and mozzarella sticks, but with fermented flavors like gochujang. Or even something as beautifully simple as a soy butter rice, made using butter from the locally cherished Calder Dairy in Carleton, Mich., about 40 minutes south of Detroit. (The last, in particular, feels like an especially Zingerman’s touch.)

“I’m from Korea, but Michigan is home,” Kim says. “At Miss Kim, every dish tells the story of my Korean American journey — a blend of cultures, experiences, and community.”

We caught up with Kim to discuss her path to a very distinctive form of Korean cooking, her fondness for local products, and why plant-based food is a part of her plans.

RESY: When you made the leap from hospital administration to the food industry, you took a huge pay cut to work at Zingerman’s. Was that scary?

Ji Hye Kim: I knew that hospital administration was not the industry I wanted to stay in, and I was commuting from Ann Arbor to New Jersey every other week, which wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t like I walked into the [Zingerman’s] deli and had an epiphany. I never intended to open my own restaurant. It was more like I wanted to give myself some time to f— around and find out. I was a server [paid] under the table when I was going to school at University of Michigan. My great-aunt and aunt both had restaurants in upstate New York and New Jersey, and I knew it was hell.

It all started because I needed to buy a piece of cheese for a party I was hosting. I’m usually not a chatty shopper but I realized that I’d been talking to the cheesemonger for half an hour. He was making recommendations for things that the deli didn’t even sell, like fresh slices of apple and dried apricots. It was so genuine and unlike any other shopping experience I’d had. I walked away thinking maybe I’d work for this company.

I was 27 then and at that time, age 30 really seemed like when you had to become an adult. Now I’m 46 and I still feel like I’m barely adulting. I figured, by 30 I need to behave like an adult, so that gives me three years to just do what feels good and not worry about it, and try different things and figure out what I want to do with my life. I was giving myself a little break from the everyday grind to really explore what it was I’d be passionate about. Up until then, I was working so hard on survival, what I was supposed to be doing instead of what I wanted to be doing. It was the first time I gave myself the privilege of not making too much money, but exploring my interests.

Before opening Miss Kim, you worked in several other restaurants, including an apprenticeship at Hanjan, one of New York’s formative modern Korean spots. What do you think of the Korean food scene in New York?

I think the Korean food scene in New York is fantastic. I chose to stage at Hanjan because chef Hooni Kim was doing something really interesting. He was taking Korean food and — I hate to say the word elevate, because ethnic food at a lower price is good just as is — but he was doing something more chef-driven and that’s what I really wanted to see. I specifically wanted to see how he was working with his equipment. With Asian food, you may need different equipment, like a wok, than you typically find in western kitchens, and I wanted to see how he was working with different ingredients. I was there nearly 10 years ago, but now I look at the New York food scene, and it has the most vibrant chef-driven Korean American restaurants out there.

At what point in your time with Zingerman’s did you realize you wanted to open your own restaurant?

I went from working 70-plus hours a week in hospitals to working maybe 32 hours a week at the deli, and I had so much time on my hands. I had never had time to have a hobby before. I was thinking of what I could do to turn into a side hustle, so I started making dumplings. My friend had a Korean restaurant in town, so I thought maybe I could sell my dumplings there. I didn’t have the imagination to think that a Jewish deli would support a Korean restaurant. I started talking to another colleague at Zingerman’s, and we decided to open an Asian food cart under Zingerman’s umbrella. Their entrepreneurial department gives you financial and leadership support. It’s like going to restaurant business school without having to pay for tuition. We did a couple of events, and then opened the food cart together, but my partner left after a year. I operated the food cart for four years, running it during the summer and staging during the winter. When I felt ready to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant, I wanted it to be Korean food rather than just Asian food.

Tell me about your menu. How has it evolved since you first opened in 2016?

Our menu is about one-half staples, like Korean fried chicken, fried tofu, bibimbop, and tteokbokki,  while the other half is more seasonal specials. We might have four or five vegetable-heavy cold salads in the summer but maybe only one or two salads in the winter, and fried sweet potatoes in the winter versus tomatoes in the summer. Coming out of the pandemic was really rough, going from a takeout restaurant back to a sit-down restaurant. Our seasonal specialties suffered in that first year out of the pandemic in 2022. But now we are back. With some dishes like bibimbop or tteokbokki, it’s easy to change up the vegetable component of the dish to match the season.

Is it easy to find Michigan-grown Asian produce like lotus roots? What sort of relationships have you developed with local farmers?

Oftentimes I feel like I cobble things together. We have a few different farms we work with. One farm produces regular bell peppers, cucumbers, onion, and corn, and I have another Hmong American farmer who only comes every once in a while but he will have some of the same vegetables that Koreans use, like six different Asian varieties of eggplant. There’s a Korean American hobby farmer I work with, and she likes to forage for nettles, wild chives, and lamb’s quarters. Another farmer gets her seeds from L.A. and she grows heirloom Korean peppers and herbs for me. But sometimes if there’s nothing available, we are buying commercially available Korean produce from a distributor in Chicago. We don’t have a farm and we don’t claim to have everything all from local vendors because it’s just not possible for us. We try to do as honest Korean American food as we can do in Michigan, and we make compromises as needed. When I think of Korean food, I don’t think of it as a list of ingredients, I try to think about the story it’s telling and how the dish evolved and adapted to different regions, even expat regions. I try to imagine, if a Korean grandmother suddenly finds herself in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a farmers market, what would she buy and what would she make?

Are there any favorites on the menu that first-time visitors need to try?

Two dishes made it on the menu because we were playing around and making snacks for the staff. Korean fried mozzarella sticks is one. We use the same technique and ingredients as Korean fried chicken and Korean fried tofu. The other is cacio e pepe tteokbokki. This is kind of interesting because we have the gochujang-based street style tteokbokki, which is most familiar to modern day Korea, and then the royale tteokbokki which is more historically inspired. If you look at Korean cuisine now in Korea, there’s a growing love of cheese and young Korean chefs that are treating tteobokki like a rice gnocchi rather than an ingredient that is tied to a specific dish. It’s like a snapshot of the dish going from past to present, and maybe where it’s going in the near future, and we offer all three variations.

You serve a lot of local Michigan beer and cider to pair with your food — what types of drinks do you think pair best with your food?

Especially with fried or spicy Korean food, effervescence really works well. And we don’t only look for local, but if there are two options and one’s from Germany and one’s from Michigan and they are comparably good, then we always choose local. A lighter, drier beer tends to go better with our food.

You pay all of your staff above minimum wage and offer full benefits, through Zingerman’s. You’ve studied food policy and labor through professional programs. What sort of changes need to be made to bring more equity to the industry?

We’ve had our own challenges with that. We started with not taking tips, then not taking tip credit because we are paying above minimum wage and sharing tips. Now the restaurant is doing well enough, if we exceed our profit margin goal, 35% of all profits exceeding our financial plan gets shared with the staff in a quarterly bonus payment. We’ve tried many different things but the lesson is that restaurant work is not easy work. It requires a lot of specialty skills, but for some reason, if you’re working at a major corporation it seems to be taken more seriously than if you say you work at a restaurant.

I wish American society would value food and food workers more, like, it’s not just high school dropouts or people who are not serious about their careers. And if we had better jobs with benefits, then we could have a more stable workforce, which is better for the restaurant bottom line and for the consumer as well.

How close is your relationship with Zingerman’s now?

We are a part of Zingerman’s community of businesses. I’m the only managing partner at the restaurant and [Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig] are investing partners. I make sure that everyday operations are going well and I consult with them if there are big decisions to make. One decision we made recently is to expand to the store across the alleyway. We are opening a sister restaurant called Little Kim, focusing on fast-casual vegetarian food at a lower price. I’m hoping to open in February.

One of the things I’ve noticed with Miss Kim is the price point is on the higher end and I want to be able to serve more people. I want to be able to buy more vegetables from different farmers and have it be more approachable. Our check average per person is about $40 at Miss Kim, if you share an entrée, appetizer, and have your own drink. For Little Kim we’re aiming for $18-$25 per person. I think that depending on your budget, Miss Kim can be a special occasion restaurant and I want Little Kim to be somewhere you can come to eat your lunch twice a week.

At Miss Kim, you have several vegan items, including locally made tempeh from The Brinery, on the menu. Is anyone in your family Buddhist? Did you eat this way growing up?

I grew up Christian, so definitely did not eat this way growing up, but I have learned more about Korean Buddhist food in recent years. Growing up with food is not enough — you have to be able to look beyond your own personal experience and really research and dig into a cuisine to understand it. Along with staging in different restaurants, I studied ancient Korean cookbooks and regional cooking. I had never been to a Buddhist temple until I decided to look into Buddhist cuisine a few years ago. Now I’ve been to Jeon Kwang’s temple four times for overnight stays and I really enjoy it. The food is always impeccably seasoned, delicious, and local.

I like the temple environment even though it’s not my religion. It’s very calming and focused on meditation. Temple cuisine, for me, is so much more than just vegan food. It’s not necessarily dogmatically vegan. It’s more about the preciousness of life. It’s about not killing unnecessarily just so that you can eat meat. There are other tenants of Buddhist cuisine that I really appreciate, including relying heavily on fermented Korean mother sauces: soy sauce, gochujang, and soy paste [doenjang]. These very traditionally made sauces provide a really great base for everything that they make.

How have your research food trips to Korea influenced your food?

I try to go to Korea twice a year these days. I always take a kimchi lesson from a kimchi master and go to the Buddhist temple to stay there. These past two times, I focused a lot on how to make fermented sauces from scratch. It’s not something that we can use at the restaurant because we aren’t HACCP certified. But I want to at least start making it personally. For something like soy sauce or soy paste, it takes a long time, but maybe I can start with different types of fermentation and preservation, and start with making gochujang, which has a shorter aging time before it’s delicious. Making those sauces is seasonal work. You let it go for an entire year and it needs to be in breathable pots and stay out in the sun and elements, and that would be a health department nightmare. We’re having a difficult time just storing all the kimchi that we make in house.

When I went back in July this year, we hit basically every region that’s not in North Korea. We spent two days in each region and I thought it was really exciting that we have distinct regional cuisine in a smaller country. People who are interested in food know that different regions have different delicacies and microclimates that influence their foodways. Everyone in Korea is very aware of sustainability because it’s impacting their everyday meals. I think Americans are, on average, less in touch with that. The conversation of sustainability and global warming was on everybody’s mind — farmers, caterers, chefs, home cooks.

The person that teaches me how to make kimchi is from Pyeongchang, a higher altitude region where the Winter Olympics were held, and the big temperature changes from morning to night make for better cabbage. Kimchi is made by every family in every region, but I happen to like hers because she uses the best ingredients and Pyeongchang is — in terms of flavors — close to what my mother makes, so it’s a personal preference coming into play. Kimchi made in a southern part of Korea would be spicier, saltier, and more pungent.

Amber Gibson is a journalist specializing in travel, food, and wine. Her work has appeared in Departures, Food & Wine, Saveur, Bon Appétit, and Travel + Leisure. Follow her here; follow Resy, too.