Kim is a five-time James Beard award nominee, but “sometimes your dishwasher calls off, and you’re just washing dishes for eight hours,” she laughs. “So the work keeps me grounded.” | J. Adrian Wylie
Ji Hye Kim’s upscale Korean restaurant, Miss Kim, has become hard to patronize without making a reservation. The chef-owner wants Little Kim to be “more approachable in both flavor and price point. I just wanted to serve more people.”
Now in its ninth year at Kerrytown Market & Shops, Miss Kim survived the pandemic and is thriving, a credit to the chef’s tenacity and taste. The Seoul native and U-M grad is a five-time James Beard award nominee, but “sometimes your dishwasher calls off, and you’re just washing dishes for eight hours,” she laughs. “So the work keeps me grounded.”
Her “daydream of a vegetarian fast-service restaurant” took form following the departure of Eat from the space across the brick alleyway from Miss Kim. (Eat’s chef-owner, Blake Reetz, has moved on to Lake Forest Golf Club.) She expects Little Kim, another member of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, to debut in early August, now that the wait for its city occupancy permit is over.
“Logistically, it makes sense to have two restaurants next to each other,” Kim explains. It “will also satisfy my desire to build more relationships with local farmers and buy more veggies.”
While picnic tables will seat about twenty-five, the concept relies on takeout and grab-and-go options, starting with lunch and eventually expanding to dinner hours.
Little Kim’s menu of fixed and seasonally rotating features will be “completely different” from Miss Kim’s, she says. “Korean Buddhist cuisine, obviously, but we’re also drawing from other Asian vegetarian traditions, like some Japanese, some Chinese, some Indian. So we’re going to pull those inspirations together and create a menu that’s really for Michiganders.”
Kim has gravitated to a mostly vegetarian/pescatarian diet herself (her daily kimchi includes fish sauce) “not because I was necessarily sticking to anything rigid. It’s just that I felt better.”
While she doesn’t seek out vegetarian food except in Korea, “I did notice that [in the U.S.] there’s a lot of, like, fake chicken, fake cheese, fake burger,” she says. Instead, she’ll be offering dishes like one of her at-home favorites, a “crunchy, refreshing salad” of kidney beans, pomegranate seeds, cucumber, and other vegetables. “It has a good amount of lemon [for] the acidity, and herbs, but it also gives you some heft and protein,” Kim says.
She’s also adapting a black bean sauce rice dish. “Chinese expats in Korea sort of converted a Beijing-based dish into what suits a Korean palate,” she explains. Her version eschews the customary pork for local tempeh from the Brinery. A North African shakshuka with chick peas has a “secret ingredient”: in place of peperoncino, she’s using gochujang, the Korean fermented red chili paste.
She’s also excited about the french-fry bar, with three vegan dips to choose among. “I’m guessing, for me, I would probably eat the fries the most,” she admits.
Kim hopes the variety will appeal to even the most resolute carnivores. “If you’re coming and you have a skeptic, we recommend just bring them,” she says. “You don’t have to be vegetarian to come. This could be your one healthy meal per week.”
Little Kim, 403 N. Fifth Ave. (Kerrytown Market & Shops). (734) 239–7979. Tues.–Sun. 11:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Closed Mon. littlekimannarbor.com
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