Candles were just one of the many finishing touches Vinay needed before it opens to the public next week. Specifically, what Ia Van calls “bougie candles,” battery-powered, flameless candles that can be set on a timer to create instant ambiance with no hassle. Van, the chef and owner of the highly anticipated Minneapolis restaurant, thought buying the candles would be easy.
But when he got into Restoration Hardware in Edina, he realized it wasn't his forte.
“This place feels like a mansion,” Vang said. “The salespeople look up at you and down as if to say, 'Get out of here,' and you know you don't belong here.”
Vann has been hitting up home decor and furniture stores more than he would like to, as he's finally opening the door to his dream restaurant, a project he's been planning since raising nearly $100,000 on Kickstarter in February 2020.
He went to IKEA to buy a basket for his hand towels, and finally found a “bougie candle” at Pottery Barn, thanks to a very helpful salesperson named Judy, who made up for the cold reception he got at the first store. For now, that part is done and he's happy.
“Put me in a kitchen in the middle of nowhere, like a forest or a jungle, and I'm fine. Show me through an IKEA? I panicked. I had no idea what I was doing. This is…” he gestured to the open kitchen, where a state-of-the-art wood-fired grill looks like stainless steel inside stainless steel.this That's what it means to me.”
The kitchen may be Van's most comfortable environment, but with Vinai, he's more than just a chef. He's a storyteller, a family historian, a “curator,” Van says. He's collecting and preserving his and his parents' memories, all before, during, and after the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand, where he spent the first four years of his life.
Vang, 40, comes from a large Hmong family. His father, Nhat Lo, was a soldier in America's secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War, making Vang both a hero and a target. His mother, Phan, was a mother of three at the time, but lost her husband in the war. Nhat Lo and Phan met and married in a refugee camp, where Vang was born. His childhood was not easy, growing up in a place with a one-third infant mortality rate. But he and his siblings escaped, along with his parents, and made their way to the United States. Their survival, Vang said, was “a statistical exception.”
Though his family first moved to St. Paul, Vang grew up in rural Amish Pennsylvania and then in Wisconsin, graduating from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2011. He returned to the Twin Cities in 2011, and his parents followed him to be closer to relatives.
Van went from washing dishes at a country club to working as a fishmonger and pie maker around the Twin Cities before eventually opening his first food trailer outside Sociable Cider Werks in northeast Minneapolis. His Minnesota-inspired Hmong cuisine became the basis of Union Hmong Kitchen, a counter-service brick-and-mortar food hall in the North Loop and a restaurant in Lynn Lake. He was nominated for a James Beard Award for telling his family's story through his recipes for Hmong sausage and hot sauce. In the meantime, he rose to become a TV star with standout episodes of “Iron Chef” and as host of TPT's “Relish” and the Outdoor Channel's “Feral.”
His career is now at a climax at Vinai, where every detail is meaningful, from the gray, zigzag-tiled walls that mimic the corrugated metal walls of the refugee camp where his family lives to the strips of brightly embroidered Hmong fabric, paji ntaube, that run across the tops of the chefs' aprons. Huge wooden triangles hang from the ceiling, forming a sloping roof atop the house. Cinderblock room dividers recall the makeshift barbecue Vang's father built in the backyard when he first came to St. Paul, and they line up neatly with a $31,000 Cadillac Kitchen Grill from Grillworks. Guests' checks come with flashcards of their Hmong English “first words.” And hidden under the center table, which seats 10, is a notebook where Vang's closest friends can write their names when they dine here.
Minneapolis-based Christian Dean Architecture renovated the space in the historic Northeast Bank Building in the city's Sheridan neighborhood, which most recently housed the Dangerous Man Brewing Company taproom.
Naturally, the food and drinks (Steady Pour cocktails are on offer) are just as meaningful as the design. Van has conceived the menu as a hearty, build-your-own feast for two or more people; snacks, rice, noodles, grilled and braised meats, vegetables and sauces are all interchangeable, interchangeable elements. (The head chef is Timmy Truong, former chef-owner of Chelas and SoulFu.)
But Van suggests starting his Hmong culinary journey with a MAC snack: skewers of unripe green mango, green apple, and cucumber served on ice with two dipping bowls: one with chili lime salt, the other with fish sauce caramel. As Van says, the fruit plate's refreshing mix of cool, crisp textures and sweet, salty, funky flavors is indescribable. It's a platter of Hmong and Midwestern cuisine.
Other dishes have different stories, and Vang has many. Take the ultra-luxurious blue crab fried rice, topped with bright orange crab fat from the crustacean's innards and ovaries, a fried duck egg, and served with fried oysters as a garnish. Enjoying this takeout staple for the super rich under the symbolic roof of a refugee camp is a deliberate contrast; Vang makes it this way “because he can,” he says.
Vann knows people want him to share everything he knows about the Hmong community and the Hmong-American experience. All he can offer is his life and everything his parents have taught him. He hopes that will be enough to bridge the gap from his childhood in Binay to those who went through difficult times before making it to the other side, both for his ancestors and for himself.
“Refugee camps are not something that has happened exclusively to Hmong people in history. It's the human condition,” Vang said. “You don't have to be Hmong to understand me and understand my hopes.”
If there's one thing Van wants to convey at dinner at Vinay, it's that no matter how difficult things may be outside, the dinner table can save the soul.
“What is it that the human heart is always longing for? It's recovery,” he said. “Think about how many books have been written about recovery, about soul recovery, about rest, about self-care. What we're trying to do at Vinay is what my mother and father taught me. We're creating a space where we can help our community recover, even if just for a little while.”
Van's eyes welled up with tears as he stared at the smooth wooden table that seated ten, where the meal was finally ready.
Dinner table — it is Restoration Hardware.
Vinay
where: 1300 NE. 2nd St., Minneapolis, 612-749-6051, vinaimn.com
time: Tuesday-Thursday 5pm-10pm, Friday-Saturday 5pm-11pm
reservation: Vinai opens on Tuesday, July 30th and is currently taking reservations on Resy.
