Saffron reopening in former Young Joni space in northeast Minneapolis

After a nearly two-year search for the right location to revive his influential Minneapolis restaurant Saffron, chef Sameh Wadi was on the verge of signing a lease. Then, another option threw him off course. The former home of Young Joni in northeast Minneapolis, one of the city’s most recognizable restaurant spaces, had come up for sale.

“I was absolutely torn,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do: ‘How do I do this? God, give me signs.’”

Faced with a decision that could send the long-anticipated revival in a totally different direction, Wadi did something he’d never done before. He consulted a medium.

The experience was emotional. “I was sobbing like a little child the entire time,” he said. But it also gave him the clarity he needed. At the end of 2025, Wadi and his brother and business partner, Saed Wadi, bought the building at 165 13th Av. NE.

“Everything just kind of fell in the right place,” he said.

Saffron, which originally opened in 2007 in downtown Minneapolis and closed after a decade-long run, is now confirmed to return in 2026, ideally before the end of the year. Replacing Young Joni, the restaurant joins one of Minneapolis’ most dynamic dining districts, with neighbors such as Oro by Nixta, Vinai, Diane’s Place and Minari.

This will not be the Saffron diners remember, Wadi said, but a new chapter featuring live-fire cooking from a chef who is 20 years older, now firmly grounded in the cuisine of his heritage.

When Saffron first opened, Wadi was 23, an ambitious cook who had worked his way up through Minneapolis kitchens steeped in white-tablecloth, Eurocentric fine dining. “I literally had nothing to lose back then,” he said, chuckling as he remembered an apartment furnished with a TV propped on bricks and a life consumed by work.

At 42, his relationship with hospitality looks different. He hosts dinner parties, cooks for friends and family, and returns to the flavors of his childhood. “I’m not cooking for accolades,” Wadi said. “I’m cooking for heart. I want this restaurant to be like the ultimate dinner party that you want to be invited to.”

The new Saffron will dive deeper into Palestinian food than ever before. “As I’m getting older, I yearn for those memories of childhood dishes,” said Wadi, who grew up in Kuwait in a Palestinian family. “I’m super proud to be able to replicate some of these dishes in a way that I would not be ashamed of.”

For all the possibilities of the former Young Joni space, there are also limitations. The kitchen has no traditional stove or fryer, forcing Wadi to rethink the menu for an open fire. He knows there will be disappointment that the fried cauliflower and his mom’s kubbeh beef will be impossible to replicate now, though he says he did figure out a way to make his grandmother’s slow-cooked green beans.

“We’ve had to re-imagine what does this restaurant mean, what does this menu look like,” Wadi said. “It’s going to be a completely different thing, but the soul, the heart, is still the same.”

Whatever shape the new space takes, Wadi is clear that this Saffron is an evolution — just as he is.