Did Ann Kim really bring slice shops to Minneapolis? tl;dr: no
Doing the NYTs fact checker’s job for them
Yesterday, the New York Times featured Ann Kim’s pizza again in their newspaper.
It’s become a common theme. She’s been featured three times in the last 12 months, twice after she busted her union (with no mention from the Times, even with an open labor complaint against her).
Once, Minneapolis was doomed to receive no national headlines for our food. Now, it seems that the New York Times has found a few local chefs to hold onto that they think define our whole scene. And honestly Ann Kim did—for a time. I used to send people who left home but were from here olive oil and fleur de sel for their ice cream, a staple at Kim’s restauarnts.
Her restaurants were a part of my youth. I loved her. I defended her to others. I even, once, defended her to someone who spoke ill of her management, saying it must be his sexism that made him think that (I have since apologized to him, because I take pride in admitting when I am wrong).
Then, I wrote a piece about Kim’s opening. I loved it. It was gorgeous when it opened, though later it was plagued by multiple menu changes that progressively made each version of Kim’s worse.
But before those changes, I was fully ready to fly with my piece. Then I did what I do with every piece: I check in with rank and file back and front of house to see what the vibe is. Anonymously, I received text messages long before the union was announced detailing the union drive, because contrary to the propaganda, unions are hard and long roads undertaken by people who want to stay. They sometimes take years.
Those texts ended with, “Kill the piece.” I did, because restaurants are made of workers—and because local workers know they can trust me to not publish that before they are ready (I am off the record unless you tell me we are on the record).
Quietly, I became a regular at the Kim’s bar, ordering hotteok and tea or a mocktail often early in the night. Then when the union was announced, I came more, trying to be a friendly face for front of house staffers on tough shifts. I went on the last day, though none of us knew it at the time. Ann Kim moved up the closure from August 30th to August 26th with no notice, meaning many workers expecting wages from that last fews days to make rent struggled to pay it on time and local Minneapolis residents gave to a GoFundMe to fill in the gaps she left in wages.
Minneapolis once championed Chef Ann Kim—she was one of our own. But… Minneapolis is a union city and we’ll stand with the union every. single. time.
Normally, the features of her focus on her pizza.
But this time? This time, The New York Times piece partially focused on us—residents of Minneapolis.
This is a quote from Ann Kim, and the New York Times, implying that pizza by the slice was “foreign” to us, like Minnesotans are so uncultured, we don’t know how to eat pizza.
If pizza by the slice was a foreign concept to us, that’s another story—and I’m sure we’d all be thanking her for bringing to us. But it wasn’t.
Can I see an Edina mom or two asking her why she was giving them an old slice? Yeah. Of course. But the idea that it was foreign to all of us is just not true.
Minnesotans, including supporters of Ann Kim who would not talk to me while I was working on writing about her notorious union busting efforts answered a question I posted on my Instagram in droves:
Do you remember slice shops before Hello Pizza moved in?
Everyone did. From memories like classics like Cossetta and Sbarro in the early 90s to Mesa opening in 2006 to many of our (long lost) pizza shops in the skyway to random spots in the suburbs to Green Mill, people sent me message after message outlining the pizza they enjoyed long before Hello Pizza opened in 2013.
My choice was Slice of New York, where I have memories of driving my very first car at the age of 16, sitting in a booth with my high school boyfriend, drinking Diet Coke, and skipping class.
But then there’s also the written record, where local writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl lists other slice shops before Ann Kim’s restaurant opened and ranks them (I believe the publication date on this piece is incorrect, as it lists a publication date of December 2013 but mentions an opening date of January 2013 and the date of opening was March 23, 2013, though many publications mis-print this as 2012).
Every chef has a myth or legend of their restaurant—or menu items—and these myths are often beautiful (and true!). But this myth? It’s neither.
Here are some (true) myths: Hometown chef moves home after years in New York to take care of ailing parents and opens a shop. Mothers or grandmothers inspired desserts. A chef, who dreams of her long dead restaurant, brings it back to life. A small team who worked together at one place once upon a time starts a new spot as a ragtag tiny team in the same location. Here’s a myth that is truly Minnesotan: “We wanted to open a spot in our own neighborhood. No frills. Just good food.” And then the food goes hard.
There are other legends and myths that turn into battles. Who invented the Juicy Lucy? Who was the first cheesesteak in Philadelphia? But the who brought slice shops to Minneapolis war doesn’t include Ann Kim.
Because sometimes chefs have a myth that isn’t true—or short memories. And this myth of Hello Pizza being our first slice shop is that kind of myth.
Some people might be like, okay, why does it matter? And it matters because it’s about what Ann Kim (and some of our other chefs in general) think about us.
Chefs in the Twin Cities are vying for national headlines, regularly trying to tell national audiences that we are not flyover country, that beautiful food happens here. It’s true. Beautiful food does happen here.
At the same time, chefs are saying that local diners are not adventurous. To me adventurous eaters are compromised of two parts: eating food from around the world and eating ingredients that are challenging.
They’re saying this in the same year that two Hmong restaurants opened, someone served heart on a tasting menu, we had venison tartar go kind of viral, and sales of chicken feet went up so much that I couldn’t get it at my butcher the last three times I tried. Owamni is at the center of Minneapolis cuisine and people regularly eat ingredients they never have had before, with deep trust in that restaurant. When I send locals there to eat crickets, no one bats an eye—but people from other cities? They often do.
We are a city with some of the best Ethiopian food in the country, a rural love of hunting and therefore love of eating offal, and where some of our longstanding best restaurants include Vietnamese and Cuban spots. Lots of similarly sized cities don’t have Laotian food or the breadth of taco spots we have or as many punk spots serving us wild fare. Those places are still here because Minneapolis residents go there.
And look—a non adventurous food city wouldn’t eat kimchi or pickles on pizza.
As a woman who travels across the country to eat, Twin Cities residents eat more globally than most places I travel to—and we eat ingredients you couldn’t serve in those places, either, like walleye mousse. Sure, Minnesotans can’t handle spicy food a lot of the time but that’s because spice tolerance is built with time. But when chefs trust us, we do show up.
I recommend eating your way through the Minneapolis slice shops of yore, good or bad, because pizza is about more than high dollar branding and celebrity chefs.
Mid slice shop pizza is as Minnesotan as lutefisk—a food that is as adventurous to eat as it is our tradition.
This is why it matters: as long as local chefs keep perpetuating the idea that Minnesotans are not adventurous eaters (that things as basic as pizza are foreign to us) even as restaurant after restaurant proves them wrong, their dreams of being seen as a national food city will always be squandered.