Sushi Jimmi is moving again.
But this time it’s out of town.
Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh plans to move to Orlando, Florida in May. His last day as head chef at Saito 2 restaurant in Cordova is May 15th, he says.
“It’s a better opportunity for me, the wife, and kids,” Sinh says. “We’ve been living here so long. This is our next move as the family. The whole family is moving.”
That’s his wife and six children, including a baby girl on the way, Sinh says. They currently are living in Atoka, Tennessee.
Why Orlando? “It’s a tourist city. More than four million tourists a year. Things are opening back up and I just want to expand my career to a bigger city. It’s a better opportunity for me. I don’t know what my plans are. I don’t want to speak too soon.”
But, he says, “I’m always going to be cooking.”
Sinh moved to Memphis from a suburb in Orlando in 1995. “I was only down in Florida a year and we moved here.”
Since that time, he made his mark and gained a legion of fans.
He closed his restaurant, Sushi Jimmi, which he owned for three years on Poplar, on May 23, 2019. He closed his food truck the next day.
Shortly after, he reopened the restaurant with his brother as owner and Sinh as chef. It closed for good soon after.
Sinh then went to work at Saltwater Crab, La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant and, finally, at Saito 2.
Will he return to Memphis some day? “I told myself if I ever become really successful I’ll come back to Memphis and invest my money,” Sinh says. “I wouldn’t mind being an investor here. Do business in Memphis.”
Something in the food industry, he says. “Or just have another restaurant again here.”
Memphis, he says, is “home to me. I don’t want to leave, but it’s good for my future and my kids’ future. That’s more important than anything else. I made a pretty good impression here. I want to see how far it will take me. To me, the sky’s the limit. I don’t have a limit. Anything I do, I want more and more and more. It just doesn’t stop.”