Family roots, customer connections fuel Kim’s Kitchen & Noodle Bar expansion

ALBANY — Timothy Lee Kim grew up in restaurants the way some children grow up around a second language. He was surrounded by it, and he absorbed it before he ever chose it.

Kim’s father spent his working life behind a hibachi grill. He trained under the original owners of Shogun before the family built its own chain of Japanese steakhouses, the much-loved Mikata. They ran it for more than 36 years.

“One turned into two, two turned into three, three turned into four,” Kim said.

At its peak, the family had about seven locations, including restaurants in Atlanta, Dothan, Ala., and Enterprise, Ala. His father sold the Dothan location a couple of years ago. A Columbus restaurant still carries the family name, and Kim’s brother has worked as a hibachi chef for 15 years after training in the family business.

For Kim, firsthand experience removed the romantic notions that often accompany aspirations of restaurant ownership.

“I always knew the restaurant industry was really tough, seeing my dad do it for so many years and seeing him hustle every single day,” Kim said. “This is not for the weak.”

Now, however, Kim is writing his own recipe for success using the same ingredients his parents fostered in his own character development.

Several Albany food businesses have shut their doors this year. Harold’s Chicken closed in March after less than a year in business, and Milkster Nitrogen Creamery closed on North Westover Boulevard. Kim, 41, is going the other way. His Kim’s Kitchen & Noodle Bar, at 717 N. Westover Blvd., is expanding into the space Milkster left empty next door, and Kim is aiming to open it Oct. 10.

Gathering the ingredients

Kim did not go straight into the family trade, but he never really left it behind, either. The years in between became a gathering of skills, ideas and connections that he would later bring to his own table.

He worked retail, selling jewelry and fitting women’s shoes in New York City. He lived in California, South Carolina and Texas and traveled abroad, taking note, often without realizing it, of dishes and dining experiences that small-town Georgia did not have.

Then he spent nine years in law enforcement, most recently as a lieutenant with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. He always figured he would find his way back to restaurants eventually, just not yet.

“I always pictured my life like, ‘OK, I’m probably going to get into the restaurant industry, but I don’t want to do that right now,'” Kim said. “I want to kick in doors, chase people, pull over cars. That interested me.”

The relationships he built as an officer also played a pivotal role in his journey. Kim said he was a regular at a small Vietnamese pho restaurant on Westover Boulevard and became friends with its owners. He used to joke that he would buy the place someday. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the owners called to ask if he had meant it.

Kim had just been promoted but recognized he would not have an opportunity to rise past lieutenant for a while. He spent a couple of months thinking it over before making his decision. He left the department and bought the restaurant.

His bet was shaped partly by what he had seen on patrol. During the lockdowns, he said, domestic violence calls climbed as stress levels at home increased.

He figured that once Albany re-opened, people would be eager to get out of the house and socialize again.

“I saw that, when Albany opened back up, everybody was flocking to restaurants because they were so tired of being at home,” he said. “When we opened our doors, man, we killed it.”

Almost throwing in the towel

But the early wave of success did not last.

Undeterred, Kim added marketing and focused on building a following, and sales rose about 10%. Then they leveled off. The menu was the problem. Pho sold well, but many of the other traditional Vietnamese dishes cost a lot to make and did not sell.

“People were afraid of what they got in those bowls that they’d never heard of,” Kim said. “The moment you say, ‘You get a cup of fish sauce,’ people start getting scared.”

After about 2 1/2 years under the original name, he was ready to throw in the towel.

“I was ready to say, ‘This ain’t working out for me,’ and go back in uniform,” he said.

But Kim could not quite let go of the idea that there might still be a solution.

“I thought we just needed to try something different as a last resort and see what happens,'” he said.

He took his family’s name for the restaurant and widened the menu. Pho stayed. He added hot pot, Korean-style fried noodles and other dishes that drew on the growing popularity of Korean culture.

“I knew if you put the word ‘Korean’ with a Korean dish that even if people might not know what the dish is, they’ll come in and try it,” he said.

It worked. Kim said he made as much in the first year as Kim’s Kitchen as he had failed to make in the two years before it.

Built around a bowl

Kim spent about six months designing the restaurant’s logo. It is a clean, bold design with a circular frame, black-and-white lettering and a distinct red border highlighting the core of the concept — a simple bowl.

“The bowl is the foundation,” he said. “What we sell and who we are is going to revolve around a bowl. That’s very common in Asian culture — not even just noodles, but the bowl itself.”

Hot pot brought its own story, and its own trouble. Kim tells customers the dish goes back to soldiers who turned their helmets upside down over open fires and cooked whatever they could find. He wanted to keep that tradition by putting burners in the middle of the tables. The fire department briefly shut the tables down, but Kim’s persistence paid off when a letter to the mayor got them up and running again.

Room to grow

Kim’s growth has been steady, and while many local businesses are feeling the squeeze, Kim says his restaurant has felt the pressure increasing in other ways that are both good and bad. His kitchen is small, and on weekends the dining room fills up.

The new space will add seating and more kitchen room. It will also let Kim add a new category he calls Korean-style craft bowls, which customers can build to order.

“I want us to be looked at as a place where you can get anything,” Kim said. “With our custom bowls, you can come in and order what you want instead of being told you can’t do that.”

The bar will grow as well, but it will stay beer only. Kim found a distributor that can supply beers he says are hard to find in the area, and Sapporo will be on draft.

“We’re able to sell beer from Laos, Vietnam, Korea, China, Japan and Okinawa,” he said. “We can do things others can’t, and I’m excited about that.”

People buy from people

Kim says along the road back to his roots he’s brought pieces of every stop along the way with him to a growing footprint on Westover Boulevard. Gathering diverse ideas into one cohesive brand came naturally to him, and it carries a cohesive vibe that extends beyond the menu.

“I can pretty much do anything I want under the name Kim’s Kitchen & Noodle Bar where other restaurants can’t,” he said.

Ask him for his secret, though, and he does not start with the recipes.

“Quality food and customer service. Building a connection with your customer behind your product, to me, are the two most important things,” Kim said. “I actually, I think the relationship  with your customer is more important, because nobody likes to buy stuff from someone they don’t have a connection with.”

His father’s business grew one grill at a time and was held together by family. Kim’s version keeps that foundation but makes room around the family table for a wider definition of belonging. 

What began as a Vietnamese restaurant is now a place where Korean noodles share the menu with pho and a beer from Laos, enjoyed by folks who have spent their whole lives in Albany. Kim’s family includes the staff he chooses with care and the regulars who make themselves at home.

Tradition taught him the business. Relationships keep people coming back.