Young Joni’s Owners Take Over Old Lucia’s Space and It Won’t Serve Pizza

The owners of Young Joni, Pizzeria Lola and Hello Pizza will open a new Mexican restaurant at 1432 West 31st Street in Minneapolis, the longtime home of Lucia’s. The queen of pizza, Ann Kim will dive into tortillas as her next doughy obsession. The chef was inspired by a visit to Valle de Guadalupe and the revelation of fresh tortillas found there.

Lucia’s was a three separate spaces: a bakery, wine bar and restaurant. That restaurant closed last fall after a remarkable 32 year run. The entire space will be remade by the same LA based design firm, Studio MAI, that did Kim’s award winning Young Joni. Construction will begin this fall.

The menu will go beyond a taco shop and delve into other latin ingredients and likely still have a hint or two of Kim’s signature Korean ingredients, too.

The new, as yet to be named, restaurant will open in 2019.

Kim and Leifur first opened Pizzeria Lola in 2010. The restaurant’s wood-fired pizza soon became a city-wide obsession. The second restaurant Hello uses deck ovens and fast became a popular stop for by-the-slice pizza. Young Joni evolved the pizza vision further when it opened in 2016, quickly topping national best lists with its combination of wood-fire pizza and inspired small plates that draw on global flavors, like a Thai sausage lettuce wrap and Japanese sweet potatoes. Young Joni remains one of the hardest reservations to snag in the Twin Cities.

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