• 2 days ago
Head over to Vinai in Minneapolis for some of the best Hmong food in the U.S. Chef-owner Yia Vang opened the restaurant in July, and was recently recognized as one of Eater's Best New Restaurants of 2024. Named after the refugee camp Yang was born in, Vinai is an ode to his parents' story of tenacity and courage while living there for 10 years after escaping Laos in the aftermath of the Secret War. On the menu, you'll find traditional Hmong cuisine cooked on an open fire, including shrimp and pork toast, Hmong sausage, Hilltribe grilled chicken, charred cabbage, grilled sea bream, and double-cut pork chop.
Transcript
00:00So our menu is broken into a few different sections.
00:02First section is called con nong,
00:03which in Hmong literature translates as small bites or treats.
00:06Think of that as your little snacks.
00:07Walking in!
00:08Mac salad!
00:09Next part is called ya pay,
00:11which literally translates to just us.
00:13It's made for two, you know, think of it as appetizers.
00:16Hey, hey, let's get this out of here.
00:17Let's go, let's go, let's go.
00:18Next section is zhao, which zhao is vegetables.
00:22Next section is ngai di and ngai hao.
00:25Ngai di is grilled meats,
00:27everything that's grilled off the grill.
00:28Man, like that fat is just dripping down.
00:30Oh, yeah.
00:31The next one is ngai hao,
00:33which literally translates to braised meats.
00:35The next section is kuat saw,
00:37which is hot sauce or pepper sauce.
00:39And then section after that is maw.
00:41And so we just say it's choose your own adventure.
00:44More cabbage.
00:45The whole point of this restaurant
00:47is if you come here once a week,
00:48every week you come here,
00:49you're gonna have a different adventure.
00:51More, more, more, more, more.
00:59Okay, chefs, here we go.
01:09First thing we do in the morning, 8 a.m.,
01:11we unload the peppers from my truck.
01:13This morning, I went out to my mom and dad's farm.
01:15They harvest everything.
01:17They don't ask for a dime,
01:18and that's their way of saying,
01:19we'd love to contribute into what you're doing.
01:22All these banana peppers will go in our happy tiger sauce.
01:25We'll roast them off, and then we blitz it up
01:27with some charred pineapples and some jalapenos.
01:33So we're gonna get this lit up.
01:35All those peppers, we gotta get them roasting.
01:37The start of our day here.
01:38Cooking over fire is Hmong cooking
01:40because it's the most primitive, primal thing
01:43that our people have done for thousands and thousands
01:45of years in the mountains.
01:46And we're able to do it right here.
01:48The ability to burn wood down to this perfect ember
01:52where you're using that heat and that smoke
01:55to add the flavors into your ingredients,
01:57like that is Hmong cooking at its core.
01:59Once this gets going, we have to get it rolling.
02:03So I have my.
02:06We used to just have a little fan,
02:07but then our arms got tired, and then now we got a big fan.
02:12This is definitely from the old country,
02:14you know, the mountains of Laos.
02:17The happy tiger is a play off of, you know,
02:20the crying tiger sauce.
02:21It's a, you know, it's a Thai sauce.
02:23Everyone uses it.
02:24We decided to do it this way
02:25because we're like, why are you crying?
02:26We should be happy.
02:28And then once we get that roasted,
02:29what we do is then we get the pineapples,
02:32we break them down, we season them with turmeric,
02:34salt and pepper, and then we roast that up too.
02:36And you want to get it to the point
02:38where it's kind of, you feel like, am I overcooking this?
02:41Because you want all that beautiful,
02:42sweet sugar to come out.
02:44So with this happy tiger sauce,
02:45we recommend it with the pork chop.
02:47It's kind of like this idea of like pineapple pork chop,
02:49you know, and then like always get sticky rice.
02:52And then you take the fatty part of that pork chop,
02:54get it into the happy tiger,
02:55put it on the sticky rice that you take a bite on it.
02:57And that's like the perfect bite for me anyways.
03:00This will go for about 15-ish minutes.
03:02You want to get that nice char and then you flip it.
03:04You want to make sure that all that sugar is cooked out.
03:06And then when you blitz it up,
03:07you can get that sweetness,
03:09which balances well with that heat.
03:12Then we, you know, get all our herbs in,
03:14which is the cilantro and then lime juice.
03:16And then we kind of put it in a big bucket
03:19and we just, you know, blitz it all up.
03:21And what you're looking for is this beautiful,
03:24delicious sauce that has a smokiness to it.
03:28It has depth, but then it also has the sweetness
03:31of a pineapple.
03:35So now we're going to get ready to prep the pork chops.
03:38They're the whole racks.
03:39We're going to French them and double cut them.
03:41So it comes with the whole loin component and everything.
03:43So if we do everything right,
03:44we should get five portions out of this.
03:46Task here is you find this little notch
03:50where it's two, and then you just go right in the middle.
03:53And then we just, you know, cut it right down.
03:55What I love about this pork chop is you get
03:56that three cuts of meat, right?
03:58If you have three different kinds of people
04:00that's on your table here, you have that center cut,
04:02which is the lean cut.
04:03You got that belly right here, which is a fatty cut.
04:06And then you got the two baby back ribs in there.
04:09And the way we cut it and the way we present it,
04:11you know, whatever cut you want, you can take it.
04:13And these things are about two pounds.
04:14So it's a thick boy, we call it.
04:17Thick boy with three Cs, thick boy.
04:20The reason why we do a double cut is because
04:22it's just going to be able to hold that smoke flavor better.
04:26All of that juice, because it's so thick,
04:28it just stays right inside of it, you know?
04:31And especially with the brining too,
04:33the brining process really helps.
04:34After this, we're just going to put the brine on
04:36and then we let it sit for 24 hours.
04:38So with the brine, what we're doing is that
04:40we're just getting all that flavor into the meat, right?
04:43Because it's such a thick cut
04:45that if we just salt the outside,
04:46it's not going to go right into it.
04:49Basically, it's a five spice brine.
04:50Cinnamon, star anise, you know, allspice.
04:53So this is done.
04:54We'll put it in here for 24 hours.
04:56And after that, when we take it out,
04:57we just put it in vacuum seal bags
04:59just so that we can kind of store them a little easier.
05:04So one of the big tasks for the day
05:06is deboning the chicken.
05:11So this is the chicken.
05:12It's coming from the Ngai Ti,
05:13where the grilled meats section of the menu.
05:15And this is probably one of the biggest tasks we do here.
05:18Ramiro will go through, what, three, four boxes of these.
05:22And there's about 10 to 12 in a box.
05:25So that's how many he does a night,
05:26just to break them down.
05:27And to break them down,
05:28you literally have to get all the bones out.
05:32And our boy here does it really fast.
05:34The chicken is from Bell & Evans.
05:36Bell & Evans, they're out of Pennsylvania.
05:38And it's an Amish chicken.
05:40So none of the chicken's ever frozen
05:42or it's never injected with any water
05:44to give it a bump.
05:45They harvest the chicken,
05:47they hang it, they air dry it.
05:48And it's just the best quality.
05:50We've tried other chicken,
05:51it just doesn't work like this.
05:52And that's why it works so well
05:54in the way that we do the cooking process for it.
05:56As you can see, like he's working so close
05:59right to the bone in the meat right there.
06:01And he does these little cuts right in the breast parts,
06:03which I love,
06:03because when we marinate it,
06:04it goes right into those little sections.
06:06I like to say that, you know,
06:08like all of our chefs, we all are interchangeable.
06:10Like not one person does one job.
06:13It's very hard to find another Romero.
06:16I have a long time in the kitchen,
06:18so I have a lot of experience with these knives.
06:21This will probably go on the grill
06:22like in the next 24 to 48 hours.
06:25So this is just the beginning process of it.
06:28So when Romero's done with all 50 chickens,
06:32what we'll do is then he'll put the marinade
06:34right in between with the meat,
06:34throw a little salt on top,
06:35rack it up, let it sit and rest.
06:37You know, sometimes we'll let it sit and rest
06:39for like a whole nother day
06:40to make sure that that salt gets all that moisture out.
06:42And again, working on that skin.
06:44So next part here is we're going to actually
06:46do the sofrito marinade.
06:47The sofrito is made out of lemongrass,
06:50ginger, garlic, shallots, Thai chilies,
06:53and a little fish sauce.
06:54And then what we do is,
06:56then we just cook it until it all comes together.
06:58You want to really get into those crevices.
07:00That's why he was cutting those cuts like that.
07:02It opens it up.
07:03We don't want to hit the skin side
07:05because what happens is,
07:06and when we grill it,
07:07it will actually burn and be bitter.
07:09So we're trying our best not to do it.
07:11And that's why, you know,
07:12when we get ready and we sheet it up,
07:14they actually wipe it
07:15and make sure that it gets all that sofrito off of it.
07:18Then this will go on the walk-in for 24 hours.
07:20We let it rest.
07:22And then, yeah, this will be tomorrow's.
07:24So now we're going to start the sea bream or dorad.
07:27It's an open butterfly.
07:28It's a unique cut.
07:29It cuts from the top
07:31and we basically fillet it from the back spine bone
07:35and then get it ready to serve.
07:36So now what we're going to do is,
07:38we're going to basically butterfly
07:39from the back end, from the spine bone.
07:42We're going to open up all the way up to the neck
07:44and then we're going to cut it out.
07:45So that way they both open completely, butterflied,
07:48but you also have to cut it from the bottom
07:50so that they're not sticking up,
07:52but they lay down flat.
07:53So that when they hit the grill,
07:54it all gets cooked evenly.
07:55The grilled fish dish coming from the section of the menu,
07:58the laiki, you know, grilled meats,
08:00was inspired when I had a very blessed opportunity
08:04to be on Iron Chef.
08:05The Iron Chef I battled was Gabrielle Camara
08:08and she's an incredible chef.
08:10And I saw how she would do her fish,
08:13where they cut it and they butterflied it out
08:15and they took that center bone out
08:17and just exposes the flesh.
08:19And then she had two different sauces
08:20and she threw it over the grill.
08:22And it kind of represented this kind of fish
08:25that my dad would do,
08:26where we would get these lake fish
08:28and he would just kind of split them open
08:30and put them on a little rack
08:31and he put it over the fire.
08:33And it was kind of like,
08:34oh my gosh, that's such a great way to do fish.
08:36The presentation is everything.
08:38A lot of people get weird about seeing this mouth,
08:41this whole fish, the eyes and everything.
08:43But for me, it shows that we're using a whole product.
08:47We're not, you know, we're not hiding behind anything.
08:51This is the whole fish.
08:53The reason why we butterfly it is in order to,
08:55well, one, we have the two signature sauces,
08:57the Green Empress and the Red Dragon.
08:59So we want to highlight both those sauces.
09:01So now we're going to take the fish
09:02and then we're going to dress each side of the fish
09:04with a sauce.
09:05And then we are going to line it in a grill basket.
09:08It's called the fish basket,
09:09two metal racks that basically fold down
09:12and it goes straight into the fire of the grill upstairs.
09:17So Vinay is actually the name of the refugee camp
09:20that I was born in.
09:21My parents met there in 77,
09:23they got married in 78
09:24and they were there for 10 years.
09:26And the story I want to talk about
09:28is my mom and dad's story.
09:29If I could explain their story and their love
09:34and their courage and tenacity
09:35into bringing us here, fighting a war,
09:37my father fought a war, brought us here,
09:39brought us to freedom, gave us a new future,
09:41how would I do it?
09:43And I'm a cook.
09:44And so the only way that I can do it
09:46is in the food that my father taught me
09:48and the food that my mother taught me.
09:50All right, this is the first step
09:51of our shrimp toast process.
09:53This is the filling that goes on top of the toast.
09:55What we have here, cilantro, green onion,
09:58shrimp, ground pork, salt, MSG, chicken powder,
10:01Thai chili, fish sauce, a little bit of sesame oil
10:03and black pepper.
10:04What's most important is the process of how you put it in.
10:07Lemongrass needs to go first
10:08because it needs to be broken down all the way.
10:10Otherwise it's going to taste kind of stringy.
10:12The shrimp is kind of, I feel like it's kind of the glue.
10:14It's kind of everything goes together.
10:16I'm just mixing it with the ground pork now.
10:18We're going to incorporate it into one giant meatball.
10:21So after this is all mixed up
10:22and then we go grab our Texas toast
10:25and we basically ball it up to like two, three ounce balls.
10:28And then we put it on the toast and spread it out.
10:31And then we basically let it rest for about an hour.
10:34So it kind of molds with the toast
10:36and then that's about ready for service.
10:38And then from service, just drop it in the fryer.
10:49So we got a boar leg here.
10:52So we, Broken Arrow,
10:54they harvest boar in Central Texas for us.
10:58They ship it up.
10:59So the reason why we're using boar for Hmong sausage
11:02is this is probably the closest we'll get
11:04to being able to replicate the first kind of Hmong sausage
11:08made in the mountains of Laos like 40, 50, 60 years ago.
11:11So what we're really doing is we're testing it out right now
11:14because it's going to be on our secret menu,
11:16which is, you know,
11:17going to be hidden under the big family table.
11:21And so we've never done it with boar before.
11:23And so this is kind of our first, first try at it.
11:26On the bottom of the family table,
11:27kind of there's a little section,
11:29there's a little secret in there
11:30where there's a menu that's stuck in there, you know,
11:32and that's the secret menu to the family table.
11:35And one of the things that we're dorking out with
11:36is making the wild boar Hmong sausage.
11:38What Romero will do is he'll break it down.
11:41After he breaks it down,
11:42what we'll do is then,
11:44we'll add a little bit of belly into it too.
11:46It's just giving fat content
11:48because sometimes boar is super lean.
11:51As you can tell, look how lean it is.
11:53It's almost, it almost looks like venison.
11:54We'll take all that meat and just cut it, chunk it up.
11:57We'll put it in the grinder, grind it,
11:59and then mix it with the sofrito,
12:00and some fish sauce, chili peppers.
12:02And that's basically what, you know, Hmong sausage is.
12:05So he's gonna come in smaller pieces
12:06and then we're gonna just throw a little bit of the sofrito
12:08in to get that flavor.
12:10And then we don't actually don't case it.
12:11We make it into like little patties
12:12and we'll just throw it right over the grill.
12:14That's the way my dad told me
12:16that that's how they did it in the mountains.
12:17You get a little sticky rice, you can just eat it with it.
12:20And so we're just gonna keep it real simple like that.
12:22So Hmong food is meat and potatoes.
12:24That's Midwest food, right?
12:26But we just have meat and rice, right?
12:28So the four things you come here
12:31and you find on the menu is there's a protein,
12:33there's a rice, there's a vegetable, and there's a sauce.
12:36That is Midwest food at its core.
12:40We are back on all our wines.
12:43We got the dry Riesling back in.
12:45Chef, do you know anything about the kitchen by chance?
12:48Well, we should be good to go and everything.
12:49We got all our meat delivery today and everything.
12:51So we're rocking on everything.
12:54One, two.
12:55Yay!
12:57Now we're gonna do the boar sausage.
12:59This is actually very exciting.
13:00We just started this.
13:01It's not even on the menu yet.
13:03Traditional way of doing sausage without casing.
13:05Just ball it up.
13:06A lot of Thai chili, a lot of lemongrass, garlic, ginger,
13:09fish sauce, of course.
13:11And this is just like, it just tastes like my childhood.
13:14So it's really exciting.
13:15Here we go.
13:16I think one of the things that's super cool
13:18is watching my dad make this at home.
13:21And then I asked him about it and he said,
13:24yeah, that's what we did.
13:24If we were out hunting,
13:26you quickly just make a little fire
13:28and then you would have like a little rack like this
13:30with you and you just kind of have the minced meat
13:32and put it all together and this is what you do.
13:34People think sausage, they think in a casing,
13:36in a tubular form.
13:37But sausage is actually the meat inside
13:40because it's what's on the inside that counts,
13:42not about the outside.
13:46We're an hour out from service right now
13:48and now we're gonna start marking off
13:50and searing off all our proteins that we need to do.
13:53So these are the pork chops that were brined for 24 hours.
13:57Now we're just gonna put it out on our sheet tray
13:59and then we're gonna salt and pepper it up
14:01and then throw it on.
14:02And this is my favorite part,
14:04is that sound of like the first time the meat
14:07hits the hot iron.
14:09Oh yeah, that's the stuff papa likes.
14:13This probably take like five, six minutes.
14:16We're not cooking all the way through.
14:17It's so thick that to cook it all the way through,
14:20you're gonna end up burning everything.
14:23We'll actually put it in the oven for a little bit,
14:26just so that we can get that internal temp perfectly
14:28where we want it.
14:29And then we'll leave them up on top here.
14:31As it drips down, the smoke is gonna hit it.
14:34That smoke kisses that pork.
14:37And then all you wanna do is you wanna back up
14:40and let them have the room, if you know what I mean.
14:42Because that is actually where the flavor comes from.
14:44It's because of that fat, drips, hits the ember,
14:47the kiss comes up, kisses the meat.
14:49And then that is that flavor
14:51where it's like you can't emulate that.
14:53There's no seasoning for that.
14:54There's no sauce for that.
14:56And that's why we keep our pork chop very simple
14:59and it's so delicious.
15:02Chefs, doors.
15:04Okay chefs, here we go.
15:05Chefs walking in.
15:07Curry rice ball, melon, shrimp toast.
15:10Walking in, steak, crabby fried rice with duck egg.
15:14Get more on there, okay?
15:17Bro, bro, we got a lot of steak coming in, man.
15:21Yep, this is table six right now.
15:22I'm putting up.
15:23802, walking in, solo.
15:25We're halfway through service.
15:26Everything looks great.
15:28Everyone's getting their food.
15:29Everyone's happy out there.
15:30You're hearing all the noise out there.
15:36So when the guest comes in,
15:37we always say Vinai is a place of restoration.
15:41So we want you to come in and rest.
15:43If it's 45 minutes you're spending with us
15:45and saying, hey, our sitter only can do 45 minutes,
15:49we gotta roll back.
15:50For that 45 minutes, we want you to be restored.
15:57Send this out.
15:58Walking in, 802.
16:02We firmly believe that every dish has a story
16:05and if you follow that story, you get to this table
16:08and when you're at this table,
16:10it's actually not about food, it's about people.
16:14Let's go, chefs.
16:15When we think among food, if you wanna know our people,
16:18you have to know our food.
16:21And by knowing our food, what you see is our cultural DNA
16:23is intricately woven into the foods that we eat.
16:25It tells our story of where we've been,
16:28where we are and where we're going.

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