MINNEAPOLIS — The pork belly and shoulder had broken almost all the way down to their wispy, elemental threads, held in a sweet emulsification of rendered fat and broth that clung to the rice on my spoon.
I’d never seen this dish of long-braised pork with ginger on a menu until I saw it at Diane’s Place in Minneapolis, where it arrived heaped with scallions and pickled bamboo. That’s because it’s not exactly a restaurant dish.
The chef, Diane Moua, knew this pulled pork as something her elders would have made from scrappier cuts — snouts, ears, trotters — when the weather was cold and meat was scarce in the mountains of Laos. Now it was the leftovers that Hmong parents might pack for their grown children to take home, because for a generation who lived through war and hunger, it didn’t matter how much time had passed. They would always worry: Are you getting enough to eat?
Moua was raised in Wisconsin, and her menu exalts the Hmong home cooking of her family gatherings with technical precision and a sense of cascading abundance — the pan-fried bean thread noodles her aunties and grandmas used to cook, the sheer-skinned steamed pork rolls just flickering with pepper.
The kitchen makes its own thick and tender tapioca noodles, which fill a bowl of chicken soup with boiled eggs and bamboo, anchored by a focused, reassuring broth. And while a mellow, garlicky stewed duck and eggplant with a crisp-skinned leg on the bone might typically be made with beer-soaked wild squirrel, or other game brought home by the hunters of the family, Diane’s Place isn’t a rigid archive.
Moua worked for years in fine dining, as a pastry chef, and her habit-forming pastries take up a portion of the brunch menu. Plain croissants, yes, but also properly browned danishes filled with sweet pork and scallions, and weightless coconut-pandan croissants with crisp edges. Croissant sandwiches are filled with a mix of Spam and city ham.
Desserts lean from not-too-sweet to pleasingly bitter, like the excellent Thai tea ice cream layered with a squiggle of pistachio cream, drenched with hot espresso at the table. The fun-size sesame balls with thin, crackling shells are remarkably airy and light, served hot with red bean caramel.
For years, you could taste a slice of Hmong cuisine out and about in the Twin Cities at the stalls in Hmong Marketplace and other community hubs — eggroll-stuffed chicken wings, chewy sesame balls, thick slabs of crispy pork — but until recently, many of its delights were hidden in home kitchens.
Last year, two Hmong American chefs opened restaurants in Northeast Minneapolis, and through the coincidence of their timing and geography, drew a spotlight to the Twin Cities, where the Hmong community has grown to about 100,000 in the last 50 years.
Diane’s Place and Vinai are vastly different in their approaches, though they share a few elements — warm and inviting service, and serious bar programs that harmonize with the food. Both kitchens also work with produce from the chefs’ family farms.
In the late summer, that means meals full of eggplant, chiles, Hmong cucumbers, flowering mustard greens, rhubarb and garlic scapes. Moua buys fresh bamboo from her extended family, who grow it in Georgia.
Hmong food traditions are built around farming vegetables and rice, and hunting game — the resourceful approach of an Indigenous group that goes back thousands of years into what is now China. Cooks adapted as they migrated south into Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, and when they landed as refugees in the United States.
Chef Yia Vang named his restaurant for the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand where his parents met, and where he was born. Categories on the menu appear in Hmong with a pronunciation guide and translation, but many of the dishes within them are unconstrained, leaning into the jumble of culinary influences that define Hmong cooking.
An opulent chicken coconut curry, full of fine rice noodles and tender-yolked quail eggs, comes with a tray of herbs and cabbage slaw — an adaptation of the Lao dish khao poon, known in Hmong as khaub poob. Thai nam prik accompanies slivers of grilled lamb heart with rice noodles and plenty of herbs.
That wood-burning grill is at the center of Vinai’s open kitchen, where cooks with excellent timing sear pork chops, whole fish and chickens, and roast chiles for the various hot sauces — each one distinct and worth ordering.
In interviews, Vang often refers to Vinai as “a love letter” to his parents, and the dining room is embroidered with memories, decorated with family photos and cinder blocks, which Vang’s father used to build his own makeshift grills.
Before opening Vinai, Vang championed Hmong food and culture with his pop-up Union Hmong Kitchen, and in 2022 he served the first Hmong food to appear at the Minnesota State Fair. The restaurant is in many ways an extension of that work, broadening the story, complicating it.
Recently, I lingered over a little appetizer of smoked, confit mackerel and tomatoes, and when all the fish was gone, I dipped warm purple sticky rice into the sweet oil that was left, streaked with fish sauce and lime juice, until all of that rice was gone, too.
Vang learned to make a more basic version as a child, to feed himself when his parents were still at work, mixing up cheap tinned sardines with a few seasonings. It wasn’t a dish passed down by elders, but the kind of practical adaptation familiar to so many immigrant families. Now it was building on the canon.
When a server tells you a dish is “made to be shared” it often doesn’t tell you anything about how much food it is. But if servers remind you of this at Vinai, they’re not messing around.
Midwestern and Hmong hospitality happily collide here, in the portions. This is an extravagance, not a problem, though it does make it impossible to get to everything you might want to try if you’re in a small group, or out on a date.
You could go easy, but better to live a little and anticipate some leftovers. The next day, it can feel as if the restaurant is still taking care of you, like a parent who insisted on feeding you, then sent you home with even more food.
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DIANE’S PLACE
(Two stars)
117 14th Ave. NE, Minneapolis; 612-489-8012; dianesplacemn.com
Atmosphere: A casual neighborhood restaurant with a serious pastry case, an ambitious all-day menu and warm servers who know their way around it, and enjoy sharing their notes.
Sound Level: The main dining room is loud and energetic; you can also request a seat in the smaller, quieter back room, or have brunch outside.
Recommended: Pastries including the sweet pork danish, green-scallion danish and coconut-pandan croissant; chicken noodle soup; Hmong sausage and sticky rice; beef laab carpaccio; eggroll stuffed chicken.
Drinks and Wine: Excellent coffee and tea drinks during the day, along with a compact wine list and clever, unabashedly fun cocktails like the Sunny D that expand on the restaurant’s story of Hmong food.
Price: Pastries, $5 to $8; brunch dishes, $16 to $25; dinner dishes, $15 to $33; desserts $5 to $14.
Open: Thursday to Sunday, brunch and dinner; Monday and Tuesday for brunch.
Reservations: Accepted
Wheelchair Access: Entrance has no stairs and is wheelchair accessible and there is an accessible bathroom on the same level as the dining room.
VINAI
(Two stars)
1300 NE 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-749-6051; vinaimn.com
Atmosphere: A large, airy dining room surrounds the busy open kitchen and bar, which seats walk-ins and serves the whole menu.
Sound Level: The space can get convivial and loud when the dining room is full, but tables aren’t packed tightly.
Recommended: Smoked mackerel with sticky rice; grilled whole fish; grilled lamb heart with rice noodles; chicken coconut curry; crabby fried rice; all of the hot sauces
Drinks and Wine: Sake, beer and wines are all available (with plenty of bottles priced well under $100) along with cocktails and thoughtful nonalcoholic cocktails.
Price: Snacks, $5- to $18; grilled meats, $29 to $61; vegetable dishes, $17 to $19.
Open: Tuesday to Saturday for dinner.
Reservations: Accepted.
Wheelchair Access: Accessible entrance at street level and an accessible bathroom on the same level as the bar and main dining room.
— What the stars mean: Ratings range from zero to four stars. Zero is poor, fair or satisfactory. One star, good. Two stars, very good. Three stars, excellent. Four stars, extraordinary.
Tejal Rao wrote this article that originally appeared in The New York Times. Photos courtesy of the New York Times and Ben Brewer.
