Award-winning Minneapolis restaurant Young Joni will close this fall

Just a week after the owner of the building that houses Young Joni sued the restaurateur after lease negotiations allegedly stalled, Ann Kim announced Monday she will close the award-winning Minneapolis restaurant this fall.

Vestalia Hospitality, the company that owns Young Joni, said the restaurant will close Sept. 14 after they failed to come to terms on a lease renewal with Lander Group.

Opened in 2016 in northeast Minneapolis, Young Joni won national acclaim for its wood-fired pizzas and globally inspired dishes. It was the Star Tribune’s restaurant of the year in 2017, when it was called “brilliant” and an “experience that feels wholly, unabashedly forward-thinking, in every way.”

“Young Joni has been delivering exceptional food and hospitality for nearly a decade and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve created,” Kim said in a statement. “It’s my hope that the contributions we’ve made will continue to have a positive and lasting impact on the vibrancy and life of the neighborhood.”

When Vestalia, the company Kim and husband/business partner Conrad Leifur owns, opened Young Joni, it was a major departure from their other restaurants, Pizzeria Lola and Hello Pizza. While those two eateries were neighborhood pizza places, Young Joni, named to honor of their mothers, was bold in ambition from the start.

There are custom design touches throughout, and an open-fire grill station serves dishes beyond pizza, drawing on global inspiration to create plates that became instant classics, like the roasted Japanese sweet potato with bonito flakes.

Kim delved deeper into her culinary inspiration and was rewarded with larger national accolades, culminating in a 2019 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest. It was there she delivered a barn-burner of an acceptance speech that became a rallying cry around her determination to take big risks in the face of fear.

Building off that success, Kim and Leifur expanded into Uptown, a move that also provided Kim’s biggest challenge. What had been expected to be a Mexican restaurant faltered in the 2020 global pandemic. She would eventually open that space as Sooki & Mimi, but it never found its audience. There were several iterations, including Kim’s, before it closed last year amid labor disputes.

Despite those setbacks, recent visits to Young Joni have found a lively dining room, and reservations are still in high demand. In the years since Yong Joni opened, the area has become a hotbed of hospitality activity with Oro by Nixta, Yia Vang’s Vinai, Minari and Stargazer by Travail opening nearby.

“It’s incredible to see how much that area has grown; she started the trend,” said Kate Romero, co-owner of Oro by Nixta with her husband Gustavo. “I don’t think if she didn’t have a very successful restaurant in that part of Northeast, that we would all be willing to think we could do this. So we are very grateful for everything Ann did for Northeast and saddened that we’ll be losing an incredible chef in the neighborhood and an incredible restaurant.”

The Star Tribune has reached out to Kim for additional comment.

The announcement of Young Joni’s closure comes after Minneapolis-based Lander Group filed a lawsuit June 9 in Hennepin County District court, asking for $143,169 — plus late charges, accrued interest and other expenses — from Kim and Leifur.

In a statement to the Star Tribune, Lander Group said it had hired a third-party commercial real-estate appraiser to assess current market rent, but ”an agreement could not be reached.”

According to Lander’s suit, Kim and Leifur signed a 10-year lease for the property that lease expired on July 31 last year but contained an option to renew for five years, provided the tenant was not “in material default” of the lease. If extended, the landlord and tenant would have to agree on the new rent total, based on the current market rate.

The lease, according to the suit, established a 2019 rate of $8,568 a month. That would increase 2% each year after that, to about $9,461 a month, at its 2024 expiration.

According to the suit, Lander and the Young Joni owners met last March to discuss the renewal and rate. Lander said comparable rents were in a range that could have nearly doubled the rent.

Kim and Leifur confirmed their interest in renewing, but countered with a rate of $18 per square foot, where Lander suggested a market rate of $30 to $36 per square foot. Lander said in the suit it argued that the counter offer didn’t represent the market rate and proposed the two parties consider arbitration.

At the time, the landlord was “hopeful the parties can resolve this matter.”

Young Joni, 165 13th Av. NE., Mpls., youngjoni.com. Any unused Young Joni gift cards can be used at Pizzeria Lola.