HERE’S WHAT CHEF YIA VANG THINKS YOU SHOULD ORDER AT HIS NEW RESTAURANT, VINAI

Chef Yia Vang’s new Hmong restaurant, Vinai, is set to finally open in Northeast Minneapolis July 30, almost four years after it was first announced. If you’ve been following along with Vang’s story, you know that much has led to this moment: a scrappy pop-up operation; a food hall stall and then a restaurant; 18,500 galabaos prepped and served at the State Fair; a nimble pivot to a summer residency; numerous construction delays and financial setbacks. Vinai has always been Vang’s “love letter” to his parents, who escaped persecution in Laos and forded the Mekong River to reach Thailand’s Ban Vinai refugee camp, where Vang was born, before the family resettled in Minnesota. In a way, then, this restaurant brings him back to exactly where he began.

Vang talked to Eater about a few of his favorite dishes on Vinai’s menu, which is organized into seven sections: Khoom Noj (snacks), Yog Peg Xwb (“It’s just us,” or smaller dishes), Zaub (vegetables), Nqaij Ci (grilled meat), Nqaij Hau (braised meat soups), Mov (rice dishes), and Kua Txob (hot sauces). Reservations are now live on Resy.

Tofu chicken soup from the Nqaij Hau (braised meat) section

This soup is made with a fragrant, crystalline chicken broth. Soft, rough-hewn hunks of tofu and shreds of chicken meat swirl alongside mustard greens, which ground the broth and balance the high acidic notes of lime. “Every Hmong kid knows that taste,” Vang says. “These soups, these braised meats, they’re very iconic Hmong food.” He’s dedicated a whole menu section, “Nqaij Hau,” to them. Vang says he got the “courage” to do so from chef Beverly Kim of Parachute in Chicago. A few years back, while visiting for the James Beard Awards, he ordered her braised Korean short rib dish, which came served in a big pot, he remembers. “That’s like a lot of Hmong food, but in my mind, I’m like, you can’t sell this — it works at home, but not at a restaurant,” he says. “I remember talking to Beverly about it and I said, ‘Chef, this inspires me. We can do this.’”

“Sardines” from the Khoom Noj (snacks) section

This dish takes its cues from Vang and his siblings’ favorite after-school snack: 30-cent sardine cans they’d pop open, doctor with herbs and chili, and eat over rice. Here, the “sardines” are in fact mackerel, confited with cherry tomatoes and herbs. The best move, Vang says, is to lash the fish with lime and chile salt, mix it all up, and dip morsels of warm purple sticky rice into it to absorb the fat. “When you get this bite in your hand, the first thing you think about is ‘Give me a lager beer, give me a highball, give me a cocktail,” Vang says. It’s one of six dishes on Vinai’s “Khoom Noj” snacks menu, intended as an appetizer or a happy hour bite at the bar.

Hilltribe whole chicken from the Nqaij Ci (grilled meat) section

This chicken is deboned except for the wings and the drummies — Vang’s team lays it flat in a basket and puts it over an open-flame grill, where, eventually, it begins to drip fat. “When the fat hits the embers, smoke comes up, and it just kisses the meat,” Vang says. “You do it far enough from the flame where you’re not actually burning it, and you create those bits where the flavor concentrates.” The chicken is served with an herb salad heap on top; beneath is a coconut and ginger vinaigrette. You can eat it as is, Vang says, or add on one of Vinai’s four hot sauces: the classic, spicy Mama Vang; the citrusy Kua Txob; the smoky Happy Tiger; or the especially funky fermented shrimp chile sauce.

2024-07-26T17:13:08Z dg43tfdfdgfd