Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh is ready to roll.
And not just his sushi rolls. He’s ready to get the wheels rolling on his brand new food truck.
Sinh picked up his 16-foot-truck October 11th in Arkansas. He’s planning to open it for business at his first pop-up event the weekend of October 16th, but he hasn’t decided where. He does know he’s not going to just be selling sushi.
Why pop ups? “Because we want to get a feel of the crowd,” Sinh says. “I have a really good following.”
But, he says, “We have a lot of new customers, too.”
People moving into the city search the internet looking for “the best sushi in Memphis,” he says. “‘Sushi Jimmi’ pops up.”
That was the name of his first restaurant and food truck, which he closed in 2018.
The pop ups will help him see how he wants to create his menu, Sinh says. “I think that’s the smarter move. Before we make anything official, let’s test it out first so we’ll know what will sell and what won’t. That will eliminate failure.”
Sinh, who has worked at other restaurants since he closed his restaurant, was going to move to Florida with his family early last summer, but he changed his mind and decided to stay in Memphis and start another business. “I’ve always invested in the city. Even if I wasn’t here, I was going to come back and invest in the city again. That’s always been my plan.”
His mother came up with the food truck idea. “My mom reminded me how much I love doing that. And she told me, ‘Why don’t you go back to food trucking again?’ She knew I was very happy when I was food trucking. She knew I was one of those people who loves a journey. Every day I’m in a food truck I’m on a different route every day. Sometimes I’m in a different state. The whole thing about a food truck is every day you’re somewhere new. You don’t stay in one spot. It doesn’t burn you out.
“I bought an actual food box truck and I was working on it, but I changed my mind. Because the one question I asked myself when I thought about doing another food truck was, ‘What can you do better than you did on your last journey with a food truck?’ I told myself I don’t want to do another ‘hot side,’ which is is a deep fryer, flat top, and char grilling.”
He didn’t want to “worry about my second person or third person in line. Depending on staffing.”
This time out, Sinh decided to go “all refrigeration and warmers,” which means “mainly just refrigeration and air fryers. I’m cooking a lot of things in a different way.”
He wants no more ventilation, propane, or deep fryer problems. “We just want to take that headache and chunk it out the window.”
Sinh researched and found a company in Arkansas, where he bought his new food truck. “I designed it and I told them what I wanted in there.”
The truck is in Sinh’s red-and-black signature colors. “Same color as Sushi Jimmi food truck in 2015.”
He learned a lot from his last food trucking experience. “Being a food trucker is not just cooking food. There are a lot of things you have to learn. You’ve got to maintain your truck. Give yourself a pretty good blueprint of your truck and trailer to make things easier for you.”
That means putting everything in a convenient spot. “Where you can twist and turn and reach for things no further than three-feet away.”
Sinh now has a building, which will be his headquarters and houses his commercial kitchen. “Where I can park my food truck, do food prepping, and store equipment. ‘Cause I do private cheffing and catering.”
He will be able to cook everything at the headquarters and then load up his truck. “I roll the majority of my sushi and have all my other food ready, which means when my customers come up to order, it’s right there. They let us know what they want, we bag it up, and hand it to them.”
His pop ups will feature “a small menu” that will appeal to everybody, but it also will let him know “which items stay on the menu and which don’t.”
Of course, they will feature sushi. “We will always have sushi. And then we’re going to bring in a little bit of ‘poke’ — fish and soy sauce pretty much. It’s a special type of soy sauce.”
They also will do kimchi fries, “which everybody tells me they miss. Crawfish nachos. We’re going to have some sashimi, nigiri. It’s going to be a very good selection. We’re also going to give customers a combination family meal where you can kind of pick and choose. You come up to the food truck, ‘Hey, I want the nigiri combo, the sashimi combo, the three-roll combo.’”
And, he says, “Tell us what you want and it’s right there.”
His goal is to “keep it very simple.”
Sinh hopes to take the truck on the road and “go to different food truck fests, go out of town to different cities, and collaborate with other people. I’m down for everything and anything. Private dinners. I can fly out or drive the food truck.”
Asked how he feels about his new venture, Sinh says, “I’m actually really stoked.”
He’s surprised he’s going to be back with his own business this soon. “I guess great things happen to those who wait. I learned that a lot after I shut down the business. Second chance. I’m just ready to start over. And we all learn how to do things better the second time around. I just want to tell everybody that’s been supporting me for the past year, ‘thank you.’”
Sinh will hold pop ups until January. “That will be our debut date. Our first day out officially ready to roll.”
And, he says, “That’s when we have our schedule out and we’re ready to hit locations.”
That’s also when he will reveal the name of his new business, which will not be “Sushi Jimmi,” Sinh says. “Sushi Jimmi is me. It’s a person. It’s a brand, but it’s a person. Sushi Jimmi is what I’ve been called for years. But this time when we come out with a brand, I don’t want to name it after me. I want an actual brand. Something we can use for the long term.
“I don’t want anything to be named after me anymore. I’ve been out there for years and everybody knows who I am. I’m Sushi Jimmi. I want them to know more about the product this time.”
To find out where Sinh’s food truck pop ups will be, follow him on his “Sushi Jimmi” Facebook and Instagram pages.
