Photo by Caitlin Abrams
Ann Kim at Young Joni
What’s behind those construction barriers in front of the historic Lucia’s spot in Uptown? Brace yourselves, Minneapolis: Ann Kim, our homegrown hero, our James Beard award winning chef and former Children’s Theater actress, Ann Kim has finally settled on a concept for the long-rumored taco-shop. And it is not a taco-shop! Sooki & Mimi will be a 4,000 square foot, 130 or so seat restaurant built out of the multiple restaurant-spaces on the street level. Downstairs will see an also large, separate Adam Gorski bar, not unlike the backbar at Young Joni, but not much like it either. Food-wise, the restaurant will be based around the concept of fresh-ground, just-nixtamalized, heirloom-flour corn for hand-made tortillas. And that’s all we may know right now because I pushed and pushed Kim after the lovely profile in the New York Times by Brett “Son of Former Governor Wendell Anderson” Anderson in the New York Times and she was not ready to spill any more.
“Everyone tells me don’t say anything, because you don’t know how it will change, and you don’t want to create expectations that lead to disappointment,” Kim told me on the phone just now, moments after wrapping up a meeting with contractors for the new restaurant, now slated for a winter or possibly spring 2020 open. “There are so little good surprises left today, I want people to be surprised. Anticipation is good. I’m really not hiding anything. If I told you my thought process right now it would be more confusing than enlightening. All we’re doing is trying our damndest to make the best tortillas possible—and the rest is up for grabs.”
Will there be Korean food? “Some,” Kim told me. There may be Oaxacan tlayudas, those mega-tortillas that live somewhere in the universe of food known as stuff-on-dough where dwell both tostadas and pizzas.
There will be an executive chef, Ian Heieie, currently of Young Joni. “Ian’s a great leader, a great listener, and has the number one quality I look for in any chef—curiosity. To me chef means leader, teacher, mentor. He’s someone who wants to learn, and wants to learn from me. He’s not an expert on Mexican cuisine, he’s not even familiar with it, but I’m going to take him with me to Mexico and show him what I’m interested in. I think anyone can make decent food, but not anyone can resolve conflict, manage their mental health in a healthy way, and run a kitchen. I’m the corporate culinary director, an owner, a chef, I’m very active in these restaurants and with these visions. The concepts as I see them through are 100% mine, but I can’t be at them 100% of the time. People expect it’s going to be a taqueria, it’s nothing like that.”
What she can say for sure so far, besides the tortillas, is that this new spot will continue to draw inspiration from key figures in her past. While Young Joni was a tribute to her and her husband and business partner Conrad Leifur’s mothers (the “Young” being her mother and “Joni” being his) Sooki & Mimi will be tribute to Kim’s grandmothers. “Sooki” was the nickname of Sook Young Kim, Ann Kim’s maternal grandmother. Mimi was the nickname of Thelma Lange, the mother of the white Minnesotan who married her aunt, and sponsored young Ann when she moved to Minnesota in 1977. Mimi was a Carleton Lit major, with a scotch-and-soda-at-four-o’clock lifestyle and season Children’s Theater tickets to which she took young Ann.
“She was awesome,” Kim told me. “I still make her pink salad every Thanksgiving, she was soft-spoken, elegant, the epitome of class. When I was little she gave us Dr. Seuss books, I still have them, inscribed. I have all her cookbooks.” I asked if Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was one of Mimi’s books, and of course it was. “She had a big influence on me. Every four o’clock like clockwork she’d have a scotch on the rocks. If I smell scotch on the rocks and pickled herring to this day I think of my grandmother Mimi. I think I wanted to be her, in some ways. I think the reason I became an actor was watching Cinderella by her side, thinking: That will be me some day.” And then it was. Now Kim is opening something this winter where Mimi could come and get a scotch at four o'clock, a tortilla later, and indulge in the one thing no day can have too many of—happy surprises.
1432 West 31st Street, Uptown. Winter 2020
