Young Joni, one of the Twin Cities’ most prominent restaurants, is set to close this fall.
The last day for the creative pizza-focused spot in Northeast Minneapolis will be Sept. 14. The closure comes following a lease-renewal dispute with the building’s landlord that culminated in a lawsuit filed against the restaurant this month over nearly $150,000 in allegedly unpaid rent, per Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journals.
Ann Kim of Young Joni Restaurant in Minneapolis. (Eliesa Johnson of The Restaurant Project)
Owner Ann Kim opened Young Joni in 2016, and subsequently won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2019 and was featured on an episode of the Netflix series “Chef’s Table: Pizza” in 2022. Kim had previously opened Pizzeria Lola and Hello Pizza, both of which remain open.
Kim could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
Following the success of Young Joni, Kim opened Mexican-inspired Sooki & Mimi in Uptown in 2021. In late 2023, she replaced the restaurant with Korean-American concept Kim’s, which lasted less than a year before closing last summer.
A couple of months before that namesake restaurant ultimately shuttered, a majority of staff there voted to unionize. The chef’s company, Vestalia Restaurant Group, declined to recognize the union and Kim herself spoke out against the effort. In a statement at the time, Kim cited “ongoing financial losses” as the reason for the restaurant’s closure.
Unlike at Young Joni, Kim owned the building that housed Sooki & Mimi and later Kim’s.
The area around Young Joni in Northeast Minneapolis has become a food and drink destination in recent years: Within a block or so of Kim’s restaurant, Gustavo Romero opened Oro by Nixta in 2023, and in 2024, Yia Vang opened the much-lauded Vinai and the folks behind Travail Kitchen and Meteor partnered to open Stargazer Bar.
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