Tag: Little Kim
Perfect for a fall warm-up!
We’ve now finished our first couple of months at Little Kim, Miss Kim’s just-a-few-feet-across-the-walkway, vegetarian “little sister.” In a nutshell, it’s been going great. Restaurant startups are always challenging, but Chef Ji Hye and crew have been managing that challenge with grace, dignity, and some seriously in-depth deliciousness.
The latest dish to delight diners is this new Creamy Tomato Soup spiced with Korean gochujang chile. The recipe work was done by one of Miss Kim’s skilled cooks, Raunaq. It’s super delicious and wonderfully comforting. You can eat it hot right when you get it or take some home—it will keep in the fridge for four or five days (at least) just fine, and it freezes well, too.
The soup is made with the amazing Bianco DiNapoli organic tomatoes we’ve been writing about (and eating) for the last few years. They come from my friend Chris Bianco of the amazing Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be this enamored with a canned tomato, I would have probably squinted, looked at you strangely, and tried not to roll my eyes too excessively. Everything about the Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes is terrific. They’re the result of a long period of collaboration between Chris in Arizona and his friend Rob DiNapoli, a third-generation fruit farmer in northern California. Peeled and canned with nothing but three basil leaves, and the tomatoes are so good that I will happily eat them right out of the can. As the basis of this soup, they pretty much guarantee that what you get in the bowl will be remarkably flavorful.
The Little Kim crew spices the already terrifically tasty Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes with Korean gochujang and adds some Calder Dairy butter and cream. The soup gets garnished with a sherry vinegar sauce, which is made with Sanchez Romate Vinegar from Spain, and then it’s served topped with croutons crafted in the Little Kim kitchen from Bakehouse Farm Bread. The gochujang brings a little heat (though to spice-loving palates like mine and Ji Hye’s, it still seems pretty mild), a bit of butter, and cream to enhance the Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes’ natural sweetness. Ji Hye says:
I love this sherry vinegar; it goes so well with tomatoes and brings just enough acidity to make it balanced and more interesting. This sherry vinegar goes so well with Korean food that I wish I could use it for everything, but we are definitely using it where it counts and shines the most.
Tasty, terrific, creamy, comforting! Come by soon and buy a cup!
Check out the menu
P.S. If you come by Little Kim Tuesday to Thursday, there’s a special you can get: a cup of soup and a half-sandwich for just $17.
Little Kim Comes to Kerrytown
There’s exciting news on the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB) front! Little Kim, Miss Kim’s smaller, vegetarian sister, is now officially open! A new Zingerman’s space calls for space on the page, so I’ll pause and let that sink in for a sec.
Just across the walkway from Miss Kim, our newly opened spot offers up managing partner and chef Ji Hye Kim’s nationally renowned Korean cooking—this time in a more casual, counter service set up. All the dishes on the menu are either vegetarian or vegan. Little Kim offers folks a chance to enjoy some of Jy Hye’s great cooking in a quicker context. It’s cool, it’s casual! Come by and check it out. Little Kim is open every day but Monday, 11:30 am to 5 pm. (Miss Kim is closed on Tuesdays.)
While hope, like loading brush, will barely be noticed by most people, the opening of a new business tends to garner far greater attention. And yet, opening a new business is in itself a profoundly hopeful act. No one starts a new restaurant without having some positive beliefs about the future. By definition, they’ve made a plan for how to get wherever it is they want to go. If the new business has a sense of community, it will make clear that each person—customers and crew alike—counts. The work done in the early days matters. If the place is going to make it past the first month, it has to. Done well, a new business is a quiet acknowledgment that the little things make a big difference. As I said in an interview this past week, in a restaurant, that starts with smiles out front and salt levels in the back. It’s also a statement that we’re all, humbly, part of something far greater than ourselves.
Little Kim’s arrival in Ann Arbor has been lighting up the local press of late! Pretty much every major publication in southeastern Michigan has made complimentary mention of Ji Hye’s remarkable cooking and the new, as of last week, Little Kim.
Eater Detroit says of Ji Hye,
Kim’s origins are as humble as the small Midwest city she calls home. She trained not in culinary school but in the kitchens of local restaurants such as Zingerman’s Delicatessen and Zingerman’s Roadhouse (another top-ranked A2 restaurant). Her greatest culinary inspiration? Her mom, a talented home cook who made batches of kimchi every fall with seasonal vegetables, dumplings for New Year’s, and rice cakes for harvest festivals. Her personal favorite was seaweed soup.
“It’s known as birthday soup, because every Korean child gets it on their birthday. So American kids get cake; Korean kids get seaweed soup.”
The menu at Little Kim includes all kinds of great vegetarian and vegan options. Here at the height of the local produce season, it happens to be a near-perfect time to open Little Kim. Given Ji Hye’s passion for local produce, the abundance that early August always brings will be a blessing in even fuller flavor than usual!
Ji Hye’s Eggs in Gochujang Purgatory is at the top of my list. It’s got a great gochujang (Korean chile sauce) spiked tomato marinara, lots of tender chickpeas, all topped with a sunny-side-up egg. Toasted Bakehouse Farm bread is served on the side! This super tasty treat is inspired by the culinary internship Ji Hye did many years ago in Rome. And that is only the opening bid on the great meals you’ll be able to eat and enjoy from the Little Kim kitchen!