In The Show's Chef Talk series, we sit down with a chef each month — from fine dining rooms to nightclub kitchens — and find out what makes them tick.
Let’s head up Central Avenue into the heart of Sunnyslope and sit down at a table with Kevin Min, chef and owner of the new coolest spot in sushi in the Valley, Sushi Friend.
But, Min told me he’s not a “Chef chef.” Sushi is all he knows how to make. And he fell into it sort of by accident. It was about 20 years ago and he needed a job.
Sushi Friend started with just Min in the place. He designed the entire menu around it, in fact. He didn’t want to hire a cashier, so he put in ordering kiosks. He designed every item on the menu to only take a minute or two to assemble so he could do it quickly.
Well, a few years in, he doesn’t have that problem anymore. He’s got a team in the kitchen, rave reviews are racking up, and he’s considering expansion. It all changed for him when Instagram food influencer Diana Brandt, aka AZFoodie, stopped by. Then, Yelp put his restaurant at #11 on its list of the top 100 sushi spots this year.
All of the success comes after a long career in sushi kitchens across the Valley.
Full conversation
KEVIN MIN: We went to a friend's gathering and there was an executive chef there among mutual friends. And then he asked me what I was doing, and I was like nothing. And he's like, "OK, well, come do sushi tomorrow." So I started there.
GILGER: Come do sushi tomorrow. So you show up in the kitchen knowing nothing about it.
MIN: Yeah, I didn't know how to do anything. Like the first day I showed up and he just took me to the back and took me to the prep guy and he's like, well, here you go, I'll see you later.
I started with RA and then the chef from there went to open up Stingray and then he brought me along back in 2004. And then I've been there my whole career until it was done, yeah.
GILGER: So it closes, you kind of do your own thing for a while. What, what did that look like for you? And then of course, the pandemic was thrown in the middle of this.
MIN: Luckily, a chef from Roka gave me a call and I was able to work there under them for a while, which I, which was great. It was like a super cool learning experience. They were super fancy restaurant, fine dining and then after that, yeah, I floated around, try to open up like a, a poke shop with someone and it fell through and I was like running around trying to do catering and then COVID and trying to sell sushi platters out of my house. And you know, here I am at the store.
GILGER: Right? So let's talk about Sushi Friend and where this place came from and kind of how you got it started. It was just you at the beginning, right?
MIN: Yes, it was just me and it was pretty slow. I was watching like episodes of Netflix here for a while. And then AZFoodie came and she, she really picked us up and I was able to get a friend in full time and we were just chugging along and then we got the Yelp award and then that really set us off.
GILGER: It's interesting how it's those moments or like those kind of random encounters that seem to either make a restaurant or break a restaurant right?
MIN: It really is. I mean, like everything came as a surprise. I never called AZFoodie and I never knew that Yelp even had those awards. So, and they all came at such a pivotal time when we needed like a boost and then just right on time, it just, it comes and we're off.
GILGER: OK. So talk a little bit about finding this space. We're in Sunnyslope and kind of a worn down building that you've redone here. This must have been a project when you undertook it.
MIN: Yeah, there was like nothing here. New plumbing, new electrical, new roof, new, anything and everything that we're surrounded by is have to be put in.
GILGER: I mean, so that's a risk. Right, like a financial risk in a way to start a place like this and put a lot into it. Was it a little terrifying if it didn't take off?
MIN: Yeah, I mean, it was COVID. I had my second kid, there were babies and we had whatever savings we had. And luckily my lady kind of pushed me to throw it all in and to build the restaurant. And man, I don't know how we made it. We like barely made it to pay the rent and the mortgage by the time we opened and then I was able to make mortgage and I was able to make rent like a week later. So it was good.
GILGER: Tight though, man. So I mean, let's talk about the concept here. Like this, you said you kind of designed a lot of this because it was literally just you the only person in here when you started, how has that affected the concept to begin with?
MIN: I think initially it was all out of necessity. But after it was built, I noticed a lot of the industry, you know, friends coming in and just like really enjoying the concept and wanting it for themselves. So I knew I had something good then that might be able to expand eventually sometime in the future. And it's been going good so far.
GILGER: OK, I wanna ask about how it is that you approach making sushi and how it is that you make sushi. Well, sushi is really interesting because, well, it's not cooked right often and then, like, you're gonna have a big difference it seems to me between really bad sushi and really good sushi. Even when it seems like it's the same thing on the menu.
MIN: I think for me, it's, it starts with the chef. And even I feel like even if you do have mediocre ingredients, if you have a chef, I don't wanna say a chef that cares. But chef that kind of knows how to put it together. Don't make a good, don't make a good item. And for me, I had very limited amounts of ingredients that I could get in the beginning.
So I developed my menu around that and also the time it would take to make each item because I had to make it alone. So I just made the menu according to, hey, this can't take more than a minute and this can't more than three minutes.
GILGER: Yeah. So look literally down to the minute. Do you think that made it better in a way because you had to simplify and like often dishes get too fancy?
MIN: I think so because I, I usually don't call myself a chef. I just know how to put the ingredients that I have to, the best of my abilities. And I know that a lot of chef they can come and it's like the menu is so simple and it's only the basic items of fish that we carry. But we just try to put it together as best as we can with what we have and it's nothing too crazy.
GILGER: Is it about the cut of fish or how you cut the fish? I'm always curious about this in sushi.
MIN: I think it's, it's both. You gotta cut it the right way and you gotta have good product and then you gotta put it together, right? I'm gonna say, I mean, you can get a nigiri that looks great, but anybody can make a nigiri look great by molding the rice forever, right?
You want that nigiri very soft and the rice, very soft and airy. And I think it takes a little bit more skill to do that, but anybody can make a nigiri look great once you touch it for like 10 minutes.
GILGER: So it is, it sounds like it's really, it's about technique.
MIN: Yes, yes.
GILGER: So it seems as if this restaurant has really kind of reached a tipping point for you and you may be at the precipice of expanding. Am I right?
MIN: I mean, wishfully thinking I would love to because it's not just for me. Now, I have like six, seven, dudes here that's trying to progress and grow. So, in order for all of us to do that, I feel like they would need something that they can grow with instead of just me here thinking about them. I, I think we just need, need to expand eventually.
GILGER: Why Sunnyslope? I wonder that because it's such an interesting spot in Phoenix with such an interesting kind of vibe.
MIN: Well, I live here, I was like 30 seconds away from my store and I knew how much Sunnyslope support their joints in their neighborhood, even if it's like a mile radius. So I told my lady, I was like, even if I could get a quarter-mile radius of my shop, I feel like we can sustain. It ended up definitely being a little bit more. But that was the only reason I knew that if I get this spot, I would be OK. But if it was a location anywhere else I knew it wasn't something I wanted to take on. I would only take it on if it was this one.
GILGER: All right, Kevin Min. Thank you so much for having me out, I really appreciate it.
MIN: Oh, thank you so much, thank you so much, everybody.
