Stir Fried: Vinai is Hmong American chef Yia Vang’s love letter to his parents

Nearly 50 years ago, in the Thai refugee camp of Ban Vinai, a Hmong war hero who had survived helping the United States through guerrilla warfare in the Vietnam War was introduced to a young woman fleeing the consequences of that war. Just seconds after meeting, someone happened to take their photograph—and now, their smiling, slightly bewildered faces hang on the wall of their son’s restaurant on the corner of 2nd and 13th streets in northeast Minneapolis.

Chef Yia Vang’s restaurant Vinai, named after the refugee camp where he was born, tells the story of a Hmong family who survived tremendous odds, settled in the Midwest, and grew roots. He’s racked up a long list of accolades, including being featured in prestigious publications like the New York Times and Bon Appetit, as well as in an episode on CNN’s United Shades of America, hosting multiple TV shows, and competing in Netflix’s Iron Chef. People queue for blocks just to try Vang’s food at the Minnesota State Fair. And his weekly podcast, Hmonglish, explores the intersection of Hmong and American culture.

The 43-year-old chef has been translating Hmong food for broader audiences since 2016, when he opened Union Hmong Kitchen as a pop-up after stints in Western-style Twin Cities kitchens like Spoon & Stable, Nighthawks Diner + Bar, and Borough, but it wasn’t until his father nearly died falling off a ladder in 2017 that he decided to devote his restaurant to telling this story. “I just left, thinking to myself, ‘If this man dies in this bed here, nobody will ever know his story.’ And it changed my trajectory,” Vang tells me.

Vinai is his ultimate storytelling device. Every aspect of the restaurant is personal. The cinder blocks partitioning the dining area are a callback to the cinder blocks Vang’s father found in the back of their first house in Wisconsin and used to build a firepit, over which he taught Vang how to grill. A memory wall filled with photos, brought over after the war by his family, greets diners as they walk in, flanked by small rubber trees referencing those his mother once chopped for firewood in Laos. “I’m reflecting what I know of the Hmong story and the Hmong narrative through my parents. That may be different than another Hmong person, and that’s okay,” Vang tells me over the big communal table in Vinai, under rafters echoing those in the eponymous refugee camp.

His upbringing is imprinted on Vinai’s menu. The crabby fried rice, for example, reflects how his family fell in love with blue crab when they passed through Baltimore. A can of “sardines” (carefully smoked mackerel arranged over chili confit in a sardine can) with purple sticky rice harkens to a common childhood snack. Vang’s parents produce herbs and chiles on their small farm in Scandia, Minnesota, just like they did back in Laos. The Fun Fun Egg Noodles are a sexier version of the meatless leftover dish many Asian mothers cook when they clear out the fridge. Their falling-off-the-bone tender braised beef rib suffused with lemongrass and served with sour bamboo, perfect over rice on a cold Minnesota day, was passed down from his mother. “I don’t mess with that recipe,” Vang says. “Some of the best dishes that we do here are actually those simple dishes that mom and dad taught me growing up.”

What is Hmong food?

The Hmong people originated in southwestern China, but were driven out by the Chinese government in the 19th Century and fled to the mountains of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. During the Vietnam War, the Hmong sided with the United States and were displaced once again when the Americans pulled out of the war in 1975. Those who managed to survive years of guerilla warfare and starvation, and make it to Thailand were placed in refugee camps. Ban Vinai, where Vang was born, was the second camp Hmong refugees were sent to, and where they stayed while awaiting a sponsorship to the United States. Many were sponsored by religious organizations who settled them in Minnesota.

When Vang opened Vinai in 2024, it was the most anticipated Hmong restaurant in the country. This is probably because it was the only fine-dining Hmong restaurant in the United States. Though the Twin Cities is home to 94,000 Hmong immigrants, the nation’s largest urban Hmong population, there used to be almost no Hmong restaurants. Instead, Hmong refugees opened Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese restaurants—more name recognition—which is why there are Vietnamese and Thai restaurants in every Twin Cities neighborhood, despite there being only about 34,000 Vietnamese and 2,700 Thai immigrants.

With the recognition drummed up by Vinai, the Twin Cities has now become the epicenter for sophisticated Hmong cuisine. Formidable pastry chef Diane Moua opened Diane’s Place right around the corner from Vinai in 2025; French-born Marc Heu’s been rolling out perfect croissants at Marc Heu Patisserie in St. Paul since 2019. It’s so recognized, Eater even devoted a whole listicle on where to find Hmong food.

So, what is Hmong food? The reason why it’s difficult to define is because the Hmong people have been essentially stateless for thousands of years, absorbing local flavors and ingredients, and confounding Western writers looking for easy labels. Hmong in Laos eat sticky rice, Hmong in Vietnam make pho Hmong (Vietnamese pho with more robust toppings), Hmong in Thailand make laab, sometimes with chicken feet.

“Wherever we have settled, we have gleaned from the cultures around us. We get a lot of crap from our own people. ‘You’re not making Hmong food, you’re making mika food.’ (Mika is Hmong for America),” Vang says. “So you're telling me, growing up here in the Midwest as a boy from Wisconsin and Minnesota, and living in Minnesota. Wouldn't the food we make here reflect the terrain, that when we use Kohlrabi turnips, that we're reflecting what is grown here? Because our parents, if they were here 150 years ago, they'd be doing the same thing.”

At Vinai, they use the same techniques for Hmong sausage Vang’s dad taught him, but with wild boar from Central Texas. They grill pork chops over white oak from Minnesota, setting the meat high over the fire and letting the fat drip.

The Hmong word for herb, chua, also means healing. Herbs are central to Hmong cuisine, probably because it provided a source of stability to a roving people. “Mom always says, if we take care of the earth, the earth will take care of us,” Vang says. “It's this ecosystem. That's why we are people of the earth, because we take care of the earth.”

A love story

Both of Vang’s parents are from small villages a few hours drive from Laos’ capital of Luang Prabang—so small you can’t find them on Google Maps. Before the war, they were farmers. His mother comes from an area called Bo Chi, literally translating to “sheep’s dung,” due to the mountain’s resemblance to said moniker from certain angles. His father joined the war efforts at just 12 years old—one of the thousands of Hmong given weapons by the CIA and left at the mercy of the Viet Cong after the Americans pulled out—then after the war was resettled in Vinai, where he met Vang’s mother. Both had lost spouses during the treacherous crossing from Laos to Thailand.

A photographer captured their very first time meeting. “I called it their Hinge photo…Mom said they’d met just seconds before,” Vang jokes. “Her girlfriend said to her, ‘This man is very dependable. And all the guys that follow him in war say he's a really good man, so you better marry him up real fast.’”