If anyone can be credited with the recognition of Hmong cuisine, it’s James Beard Award finalist Yia Vang. The Hmong (pronounced with a silent h) are a nomadic, stateless people that mostly live in southern China, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, where their cuisine blends the rich, spicy flavors of their adopted countries. The largest urban diaspora of Hmong people living outside of Asia is in the Twin Cities, where they were offered refuge after being recruited to fight for the U.S. in the Vietnam War, then abandoned in Thai refugee camps during a failed repatriation attempt. Chef Vang operates Union Hmong Kitchen and the fine dining restaurant Vinai, which opened in July. Named for the refugee camp in Thailand where he was born, Vinai is an homage to his parents, and Hmong culture and history. “We are here to illuminate Hmong food,” says Vang. “If you want to know our people, get to know our food because our cultural DNA is intimately woven into the foods that we eat and how we eat it.” Some of Vang’s recipes are uniquely his own; others, like Mama Vang’s hot sauce, were handed down through the family. The menu is fun and shareable; the MAC Snack appetizer, for example, comes with cut-up mango, apple, and cucumber that diners dip into chili lime salt and fish sauce caramel—a nod to an after-school snack Vang ate as a kid. Some dishes, like grilled lamb heart with nam prik, will push the envelope for offal-wary diners, but there are more familiar options too (his Hilltribe grilled chicken is a staple). The crabby fried rice—or purple sticky rice if you’re vegetarian—is not to be missed.
Born of a Kickstarter campaign launched at the beginning of the pandemic, Vinai was a long time in the making and it’s part of a growing Hmong gastronomy scene in the Twin Cities. In 2024, LeCordon Bleu-trained Hmong executive pastry chef Diane Moua also opened her first brick-and-mortar, Diane’s Place, just a few blocks from Vinai. The French-born Hmong chef Marc Heu, a James Beard Semi-Finalist, also recently opened Marc Heu Patisserie Paris, further cementing the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as the country’s epicenter of Hmong culture and cuisine.