Yia Vang’s dream restaurant Vinai is finally a reality

Candles were just one of the many finishing touches needed at Vinai before it could open to the public next week. Specifically, “bougie candles,” as Yia Vang calls them: the battery-operated, flameless kind that could be set on a timer for instant ambience with the least fuss. Vang, the chef and owner of this long-awaited Minneapolis restaurant, thought buying them would be a breeze.

But walking into Restoration Hardware in Edina, he realized he was out of his element.

“The place looks like a mansion,” Vang said. “You know you don’t belong somewhere when the sales lady looks up at you and looks down like, ‘You guys can find your way out of here.’ ”

Vang has found himself in home décor and furniture stores a lot more than he would like. It comes with the territory of finally opening his dream restaurant, which has been in the works since Vang launched a Kickstarter in February 2020 that raised almost $100,000.

He went shopping for baskets for hand towels at Ikea. He finally found the “bougie candles” at Pottery Barn, thanks to an especially helpful salesperson named Judy who made up for the cold reception he got at the first store. He’s glad to be done with that part, for now.

“Put me in any kitchen situation in the middle of nowhere, like woods, jungle, and I can do it no problem. Walk me through Ikea? I was having a panic attack. This is the stuff where I have no idea what I’m doing. This —,” he gestured toward the open kitchen, with a state-of-the-art woodfire grill so new it puts the stainless in stainless steel. “This is what makes sense for me.”

Though the kitchen might be the environment in which he feels most comfortable, Vang is more than a chef when it comes to Vinai. He is a storyteller, a family historian, a “curator,” he said, collecting and preserving his and his parents’ memories of the namesake Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand, where he spent the first four years of his life and everything that came before and after.

Vang, 40, was born into a large Hmong family. His father, Nhia Lor, was a soldier in the United States’ Secret War in Laos during the Vietnam War, which made him both a hero and a target. His mother, Pang, then a mother of three, lost her husband in the war. Nhia Lor and Pang met and married in the refugee camp, and Vang was born there. His early life, spent in a place where a third of all births resulted in infant mortality, wasn’t easy. But he and his siblings — along with their parents — made it out and onward to the U.S., their survival “a statistical anomaly,” Vang said.

The family landed at first in St. Paul, but Vang grew up in part in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, and in part in Wisconsin, graduating from college at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He moved back to the Twin Cities in 2011; his parents followed to be closer to extended family.

Vang worked his way up from washing dishes in a country club to jobs around the Twin Cities as a fishmonger and a pie maker, eventually opening his first food trailer outside Sociable Cider Werks in northeast Minneapolis. His Hmong-with-a-Minnesota-twist cuisine laid the groundwork for Union Hmong Kitchen, the counter-service brick-and-mortar food hall stand in the North Loop and restaurant in Lyn-Lake. Sharing his family’s story through their recipes for Hmong sausage and hot sauce garnered him a James Beard Award nomination. In the meantime, he found a niche as a burgeoning television star, with a standout episode of “Iron Chef” and hosting gigs on TPT’s “Relish” and the Outdoor Channel’s “Feral.”

His career now culminates at Vinai, where every detail means something, from the centerpiece wall tiled with gray zigzagging lines that emulate the corrugated metal walls of the family’s refugee camp home, to the strips of brightly embroidered Hmong cloth, paj ntaub, that run across the tops of the chefs’ aprons. Huge wooden triangles dangle from the ceiling, shaped like the pitched roof that crowned their house. A cinder block room divider calls up the makeshift barbecue Vang’s father built in their St. Paul backyard when they first arrived, and it aligns directly with that Cadillac kitchen grill, a $31,000 piece by Grillworks. Guest checks will be presented with Hmong-English “First Words” flashcards. And a central table that seats 10 has a hidden notebook clipped underneath, where Vang’s close friends can sign their names when they dine here.

Christian Dean Architecture of Minneapolis transformed the space inside the historic Northeast Bank Building in the city’s Sheridan neighborhood, which most recently housed the Dangerous Man Brewing Co. taproom.

The food and the drink (with cocktails by Steady Pour) are, naturally, as meaningful as the design. Vang planned the menu as a build-your-own feast, with large portions that can feed two or more. Snacks, rice, noodles, grilled meats, stewed meats, vegetables and sauces are all compatible, interchangeable components. (Timmy Truong, formerly chef/owner of Chelas and SoulFu, is the chef de cuisine.)

But Vang suggests starting every journey through his version of Hmong cuisine with the MAC Snack. Spears of unripe green mango, green apple and cucumber come over ice with two bowls for dipping, one with chili-lime salt and the other with fish sauce caramel. A fruit plate, as he called it, doesn’t begin to describe the refreshing rush that comes from the meeting of ice-cold and crunchy sensations with sweet, salty and funky flavors. It’s a Hmong-Midwestern relish tray.

Other dishes tell other stories, and Vang has lots of them. Take the ultra-luxurious blue crab fried rice. It’s topped with the bright orange fluff of crab fat, which comes from the guts and roe of the crustacean, and a sunny-side-up duck egg, with fried oysters as an optional garnish. Savoring this high-roller’s version of a takeout classic under the symbolic roof of a refugee camp home is a purposeful contrast. Vang is making the dish this way “because we can,” he said.

Vang knows people are looking to him to represent everything they might know about the Hmong community and the Hmong American experience. Vang can only offer the specificity of his life and everything his parents taught him. He hopes that’s enough to bridge the gap from his early childhood in Vinai to anyone whose ancestors, or themselves, went through trying times to get to the other side.

“The refugee camp is not something that happened in history just to the Hmong people; it’s a human condition,” Vang said. “You don’t have to be Hmong to understand me, to understand hope.”

If there’s only one thing Vang hopes will come across during a dinner at Vinai, it is that no matter the hardship outside one’s doors, the dinner table can save your soul.

“What is the human heart always searching for? Restoration,” he said. “Think about all the books we have that are all about restoration, restoring of our soul, resting, self-care. All we’re trying to do with Vinai is what mom and dad taught us. We’re creating a space where, for a small moment, we can help restore our community.”

Vang tears up, and looks over at the smooth wooden table for 10, which is finally set for service, ready to nourish.

The dinner table — that’s the restoration hardware.

Where: 1300 NE. 2nd St., Mpls., 612-749-6051, vinaimn.com

Hours: 5-10 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 5-11 p.m. Fri.-Sat.

Reservations: Vinai opens Tue., July 30. Reservations are now available on Resy.