It’s happening! Sameh Wadi first told me he was going to re-launch the restaurant he opened when he was a 23-year-old in 2024. He and his brother Saed closed out 2026 by buying the former Young Joni building in Northeast Minneapolis, and now they’re confirming that Saffron will rise again on 13th Avenue NE.
Photo by Roy Son
“Some stories are meant to continue,” said Sameh Wadi in a statement. “The new Saffron honors the soul of the original while looking forward—more intentional, more refined, and deeply grounded in our Palestinian roots.”
Saffron closed in 2016 in the Warehouse District, the Wadi brothers had been growing their former fast-casual World Street Kitchen concept, and their ice cream shop Milkjam Creamery. But the Wadi’s never lost the fire to reboot a fine dining spot, as he told me for Minnesota Monthly in May 2024.
(Incidentally searching through our archives is like a walk down culinary memory lane. Here I’m writing about Saffron’s Happy Hour in 2011, Cook Like Sameh Wadi with James Norton in 2015.)
This isn’t going to be a carbon copy of the original Saffron. The former Young Joni space has a giant copper pizza oven and a live fire cooking area, and Wadi has spent the past several years on Instagram testing new recipes over live fire. In a 2024 podcast, Wadi told me that he really wanted a space that felt special, not just a generic lower level new space in an apartment building. Now he ends up on one of the most electric stretches of small independent restaurants in the state.
“We couldn’t have landed in a better place, with many of our friends around the corner. To be able to bring modern Middle Eastern food to a neighborhood where you can also find Hmong cuisine at Vinai and Diane’s Place, heirloom Mexican from Oro by Nixta, and contemporary Korean dishes at Minari, just proves that it’s time to bring Saffron back,” he said.
Shea Design will help Wadi refashion the extremely cool dining room, and they’ll work together to figure out what will happen with the back bar space as well. When will it open? No word—but follow along on Instagram at @saffronmpls.
