Miss Kim Is the Zingerman's Business That Didn't Need the Name
The tenth stop in our Zingerman's Universe series. Ji Hye Kim's Korean restaurant on Fifth Avenue rewrites what a ZCoB business can be.
Nine entries into this series and every business has followed the same pattern. Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig came up with the idea, found a managing partner, funded the launch, and watched the new operation grow inside the ZCoB framework. The Bakehouse. The Creamery. The Coffee Company. ZingTrain. Each one started from the same playbook.
Miss Kim didn't. Ji Hye Kim brought her own restaurant to the Community of Businesses, and the relationship works differently than any other entry in this series. She is not running someone else's concept inside the Zingerman's system. She is running her own concept, with her own name on the door, and the ZCoB affiliation is a partnership rather than an origin story.
The Restaurant
Miss Kim is at 415 North Fifth Avenue, in the Kerrytown neighborhood. It opened in 2016, and Ji Hye Kim has been cooking Korean food with Michigan ingredients since day one. The menu reads like a Korean restaurant until you look at the sourcing: Michigan farms, Michigan seasons, Michigan produce. Bibimbap with gochujang soy butter rice, house-made napa kimchi, and a soft egg in a hot stone bowl. Korean fried chicken. Tteokbokki. Banchan that changes with whatever the local farms are growing.
The hot stone bibimbap is the dish that defines the restaurant. The rice crisps against the bowl, the gochujang butter melts into the grain, and the egg breaks over the top. It is a Korean dish built from Michigan ingredients, and neither tradition compromises for the other.
The menu shifts with the seasons, which is standard for Zingerman's businesses but rare for Korean restaurants. Most Korean restaurants in America serve the same banchan year-round. Kim adjusts hers based on what's available from local growers. In spring, that means asparagus and ramps in the banchan spread. In summer, it's local tomatoes and corn. The change is subtle if you only eat here once. If you eat here across seasons, it's transformative.
How It Fits the ZCoB
Every other Zingerman's business in this series feeds products into the network. The Bakehouse supplies bread. The Coffee Company supplies beans. Mail Order ships everything. Miss Kim doesn't feed products into anything. It is a standalone restaurant that shares the Zingerman's name, sourcing philosophy, and management principles, but makes Korean food that has no equivalent elsewhere in the Community.
That's what makes this entry interesting. The ZCoB model, as I've described it across nine previous articles, is about a shared supply chain and shared standards. Miss Kim proves the model can also absorb a genuinely independent restaurant with a genuinely independent vision. Kim's food is hers. The standards are Zingerman's. Both benefit.
The practical connections are real but quieter than in other ZCoB businesses. Miss Kim uses Zingerman's suppliers where they overlap. The management training comes from ZingTrain. The open-book finance system runs the same way it does at the Deli or the Bakehouse. But the kitchen and the menu are entirely Kim's domain, and the result is a Zingerman's business that tastes nothing like any other Zingerman's business.
Ji Hye Kim
I wrote a profile of Kim that covers her background: Seoul-born, obsessed with ancient Korean culinary texts, James Beard nominated, deeply committed to fermentation as both technique and philosophy. I won't repeat that piece here. What matters for the series is how her approach intersects with the ZCoB model.
Kim ferments. Seriously and extensively. The kimchi, the doenjang, the gochujang, the vinegars. These are products that take weeks or months to develop, and Kim makes them in-house with the same patience that the Bakehouse applies to bread and the Coffee Company applies to roasting. The Zingerman's insistence on doing things the slow, specific, correct way aligns with Kim's own instincts. She was going to ferment her own gochujang whether or not she joined the ZCoB. The fact that Zingerman's values that approach is why the partnership works.
Little Kim
Kim has since opened Little Kim at 207 North Fifth Avenue, a fast-casual, all-vegetarian Korean cafe and mini-mart. We published a full profile earlier this month. Little Kim is listed as a ZCoB business on the community website, and together the two restaurants form a Korean food corridor in Kerrytown that has no equivalent in Michigan.
Miss Kim is the sit-down experience. Little Kim is the quick lunch and the take-home pantry. The expansion mirrors the ZCoB model at the micro level: one person's vision, multiple formats, shared values, connected supply chain.
Series Entry Ten
Ten businesses in. Miss Kim is the one that challenged my assumptions about what the Zingerman's Universe is. Every other entry has been about a business that grew from the Deli's DNA: bread, cheese, candy, coffee, training, events, mail order. Miss Kim grew from Ji Hye Kim's DNA and joined the family later.
The result is the most distinctive restaurant in the ZCoB. It is Korean. It is seasonal. It is built around fermentation and Michigan agriculture. It shares a name and a set of principles with the Deli on Detroit Street, and it could not be more different.
One more entry to go.
Miss Kim is at 415 N Fifth Ave, Ann Arbor. Mon, Wed--Thu 11:30 a.m.--9 p.m., Fri 11:30 a.m.--9:30 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.--9:30 p.m., Sun 11:30 a.m.--9 p.m. Closed Tuesday. Reservations on OpenTable.