I’ve been trying to nail down an interview with Ji Hye Kim about her upcoming restaurant — Little Kim — but she’s been plain busy. When we finally speak in late June, she’s just returned from South Korea, where she was a guide for her latest food tour with Zingerman’s.
On this past trip, she took a group of 30 tourists to participate in lessons on making kimchi, gochujang, and makgeolli — a traditional Korean rice wine. They even went diving on Jeju Island with haenyeo, a community of women who make their living harvesting seafood from the ocean floor and, astoundingly, do so without breathing equipment.
These days, Kim visits South Korea, where she was born and grew up, twice a year. And each time she visits, she tries to stay, at least once, at a Buddhist temple.
“I didn’t grow up Buddhist or vegetarian, but whenever I go to a Buddhist temple, they have such amazing food,” she says. “It’s well rounded and full flavored but not overseasoned. And you forget that it’s vegetarian because it’s so, so delicious.”
At these temples, much of the food is grown, harvested, and prepared on-site. It’s a sustainable tradition that’s been going on since long before “sustainability” became a buzzword — over a thousand years.
She cites this age-old approach to vegetarian cuisine — among others in India, China, and Japan — as influences on her restaurant Miss Kim, which leans about 50% vegetarian, as well as her new concept, Little Kim, which will be 100% vegetarian with vegan options and will offer a fast-casual experience inside Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown Market.
The menu at Little Kim will rotate with the seasonal availability of produce and seeks to avoid the traps that vegetarian dining can fall into — “sad salads” and the use of meat imitators developed in a lab — instead relying on natural proteins like tofu, yuba, beans, and tempeh.
“We’re not going to use anything fake,” Kim says. “We’re going to use stuff that human beings have used for centuries to create a really nice [vegetarian] meal.”
Diners can expect veggie sandwiches on Zingerman’s bread, a number of rice bowls, and fries with lots of dipping options. One dish she’s particularly excited about is jjajangbap, black bean sauce served over rice with brined tempeh. It’s a variation of the popular dish jjajangmyeon, which is served over noodles.
“It’s a dish that every Korean kid eats growing up; it’s what we eat on moving days or just celebrating being alone,” Kim says.
Little Kim is located at 407 N. Fifth Ave., the space that most recently housed Eat and before that The Lunch Room. Before that, its longtime tenant was a Japanese restaurant called Yamato. The restaurant is set to open on Thursday, July 31, and its hours of operation will be 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Follow @littlekimannarbor on Instagram for updates.
This story originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
|
|
|
|
|
|
