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Photos by Erin Nelson.
Kookie and Young Kim, owners of The Standard, stand in the dining room of the restaurant in the Vestavia Hills City Center.
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Photos by Erin Nelson.
Guests place their orders at The Standard.
What Kookie Kim loves most about her family’s work at The Standard is the honesty and simplicity of the food.
Their main fare? The Standard cheeseburger with Standard Sauce. You can get a double bacon version if you want, and there are a handful of other options, including a black bean burger, a hot dog or a grilled cheese. Some add-ons can make them fancier, like a fried egg, grilled onions or a smashed avocado.
Guests can now visit The Standard’s newest location in Vestavia City Center at 700 Montgomery Hwy, Suite 164.
Kim and her husband, Young Shin, had been running The Standard at The Pizitz Food Hall downtown for a couple of years when they got a call asking if they might be interested in opening a second location in Vestavia.
She said they were sold on the vision — an entertainment district where kids could run around and play and families could have options like hamburgers alongside Taco Mama and Davenport’s Pizza Palace.
“That was our intention — we wanted to be in a family-safe environment,” Kim said.
And they, along with their 7-year-old daughter, Esther, have been enjoying that spot since their grand opening in March.
“We want to bring our food to the city of Vestavia,” Kim said. “We are proud of what we make and how we present our food.”
Serving others has been a part of the couple’s story for a long time, even before they knew each other. Kim attended college in the U.S., but after graduation she spent four years in her home country of South Korea, working at a company that broadcast a radio show into nearby countries where people lived very restricted lives.
“I was running a children’s program in English and Korean but also counseled people who would call in to talk about the problems in their life,” said Kim, who had studied psychology and counseling. “Everybody has a story, and they need someone to share it with.”
She came back to the U.S. to get her master’s degree at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, and planned to return to South Korea afterward, but on a trip to Birmingham she was introduced to Shin at a picnic at Briarwood Korean Church. Her plan then became the restaurant life.
“Young started a restaurant called Pho Pho at Five Points South — he wanted to open it near UAB, where he graduated from,” Kim said. “We were there for five years, then Pizitz reached out for us to open a location there.”
At Pizitz, they became good friends with their next-door neighbor, Chef Matt Ralph, who owned The Standard. In 2020, Ralph decided to move to Nashville and offered Shin and Kim the opportunity to buy the restaurant from him.
“The beef is made fresh every morning from scratch, and we wanted to be genuine with our food and continue doing that,” Kim said. “We were happy to take over. We’re honest with the food — we want to choose the meat and all the ingredients well and serve them fresh.”
She said she still supports the mission work that she was a part of in South Korea, but God has placed her family here now and “brought together a good team” in her and her husband — she runs the business side of The Standard, and he runs the food side.
“We want people to know that we’re here and that we want to make good food for this city,” Kim said, noting that her family is moving to Vestavia in August. “People love Vestavia. They want the city to grow, and we want to be a part of that. We’re glad to be here.”
The Standard in Vestavia is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. For more information, visit thestandardbhm.com and or follow them on Instagram @the_standardbhm.
