MinnPost’s journalists are out in the community to report on the things that are happening in Minnesota. Your support right now will help fund their work AND keep our news paywall-free. There aren’t ...

Chef Yia Vang was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and moved with his family to the U.S. when he was 5. They eventually settled in Minnesota, where his family was part of the large Hmong community ...

Despite the fact that Minnesota has more than 100,000 Hmong residents, finding examples of Hmong cooking is not easy. With a long tradition of oral history, cookbooks featuring Hmong food are rare and ...

For chef Yia Vang, live-fire cooking isn’t a trend. “This is actually a part of who I am,” he says. “This is how our people cooked hundreds of years ago. This is how our people cook today. If you go ...

“I believe that Hmong food isn’t a type of food, but it’s a philosophy of food,” says chef Yia Vang of Vinai in Minneapolis. “It’s a way of thinking about food. It tells the story of our people.” The ...

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email. Yia Vang never wanted to be a chef. His siblings received postgraduate degrees, while Vang just ...

It wasn’t always chef Yia Vang’s dream to open a restaurant. “I had to be dragged to this thing kicking and screaming,” Vang said, talking about Vinai, the Hmong-centric restaurant he is planning to ...

After his family fled Laos for America, Yia Vang was at first embarrassed by his family's home cooking. Then he learned to embrace it, and found... Yia Vang grew up in a family of storytellers. When ...

Yia Vang has a set of classic stories he loves to tell. He's just told me the one about the guy who comes up after a Hmong cooking demonstration, cups Vang's big right hand in both of his, looks up ...

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Nearly every day, you can find Chef Yia Vang cooking outside Sociable Cider Werks in northeast Minneapolis. Vang and his staff operate Union Hmong Kitchen from a trailer out ...

Yia is currently the owner/chef of the James Beard-nominated restaurant Union Hmong Kitchen located in Graze Food Hall in North Loop Minneapolis specializing in Hmong cuisine. The stateless, nomadic ...

This video documents the preparation of traditional Hmong food in a rural village in Laos The cooking takes place beside a decommissioned missile casing left from past conflict Ingredients include ...