Yia Vang finds home for new restaurant Vinai

CATHY WURZER: Here's some breaking restaurant news. This morning, award-winning Minneapolis chef Yia Vang announced plans to open a new restaurant in northeast Minneapolis. Vinai will open next spring in the Northeast Bank Building on Second Street Northeast in the Sheridan neighborhood. And that is the space that Dangerous Man Brewing announced it would soon vacate. It is a hot corner. Other popular restaurants around-- Young Joni, Oro-- they're also in the neighborhood. Yia Vang is on the line to talk more about this. Hey, congratulations.

YIA VANG: Hey, thank you so much. Yeah, we're super excited to announce this.

CATHY WURZER: Oh my gosh, how did this all come to pass?

YIA VANG: Actually, when you announce something, it's kind of like Christmas. You have the present ready. You want to give it to people. But being able to open something early, it's just like, oh, we've got to wait till Christmas. So that's how I felt. Last night I couldn't sleep at all. I knew that the article was dropping this morning. Actually, literally, this morning at 7 o'clock I knew the article was going to drop. I kept hitting refresh on my computer just to get the article up.

And so yeah, it's been in the works for the last almost year. And there's just a lot of moving parts to it and so being able to be brought in on this. And the building was being sold. And then Sarah and Rob, the owners of Dangerous Man, are really good friends and being able to approach them a while back and talk to them about it. And it's something that we've all gone through together with this whole process. So we're super, super excited.

CATHY WURZER: Of course, you're talking about refreshing the article in the Star Tribune website, I'm sure. And so many people were just kind of crushed when they heard that Dangerous Man was going to close. But what a great bit of news that you finally found your space for the restaurant.

YIA VANG: Yeah, that was one of the things where it's like on Friday, when everyone was like, man, this is sad. And again, you want to-- it's like you don't want to reveal it first, because we were going to wait till Monday. And then that whole idea for us was like, oh, but if you wait a few days, we got some other news coming.

CATHY WURZER: [LAUGHS]

YIA VANG: So I totally felt like that. I felt like, oh, no, no, no, no. Hold on. Monday things will change a little bit. But man, we just recognize that Dangerous Man has been an incredible, incredible part of that community-- this community. And one of the things I said to Sarah was, you guys are one of the OG breweries here. The reason why the brewery scene in Minneapolis-- in the Twin Cities-- is so strong is because of what Dangerous Man did 10 years ago and how they went and got the law changed. And they were part of that whole group.

CATHY WURZER: Right.

YIA VANG: And so yeah, we want to honor them.

CATHY WURZER: So when you and I have talked in the past, you've been concentrating on doing some pop-up restaurants. So you've got your own space now. And the restaurant's name is Vinai. That's got a story, I understand it, behind this that name, right?

YIA VANG: Yeah. So Vinai, if you ask any Hmong millennial, is we all kind of have that same story. Vinai, from '75 to '92 was a refugee camp 10 kilometers off the Laotian and Thai border right there along the Mekong River. And Vinai, in that time from '75 to '92, hosted 90,000 refugees after the war in Northern Laos. And out of those 90,000, about 90% of them are Hmong. And of those 90%, majority of them end up here in the Midwest.

And so for a lot of us, I've met a lot of friends, a lot of people that I know, where we would just look at each other and be like, hey, what camp were you guys in? And a lot of times, it's Vinai, Vinai, Vinai. And that's where my parents met in '77. They got married in '78. I was born in '84 in there. And a bunch of my siblings were born in there, too. And so we came to America. We left in '88. So my parents were there for 10 years.

CATHY WURZER: Wow.

YIA VANG: And so I just tell people that this restaurant is a love letter to Mom and Dad. And so know Union Hmong Kitchen is amazing. And we always say the Union Hmong Kitchen is kind of like this lead opener. If you're thinking of band concerts how it's the lead opener. And then we're really excited to introduce people to Vinai. We've been able to do some really cool pop-ups with the Vinai and some residencies, so people can kind of see where we're going with the food. But yeah, we're just really, really excited to showcase some of the really great, amazing things that we can just share from our family, our kitchen, our traditions to everybody.

CATHY WURZER: So glad you mentioned your mom because your steamed buns at the State Fair were hugely popular. And they were handmade by your mom and her church crew. So will Mom be involved with Vinai in this new space?

YIA VANG: I think my mom and dad, at the end of the day, they're parents. They're grandparents. They're retired. But they always want to be involved somehow. They have the no-quit attitude inside of their heart. And I think that, for them, I think that they're going to be involved because they want to be involved. You know what I'm saying? It was really interesting where a lot of people-- there are some people that were like, wait, why would you make your mom make all these baos for this? I'm like, I didn't make her make it. She wants to do this for them.

They always say this is their retirement plan just to take care of us. And so yeah, they definitely are. I mean, right away the first thing my mom was like, what kind of stuff are you guys going to be making? What kind of food are you guys going to be making? And so she's already interested in helping shape the menu of what we're going to be doing there. They're always going to be involved somehow.

CATHY WURZER: So are you going to be taking family recipes? And I'm wondering, if you do, do you feel any pressure to recreate the recipe exactly so that's that experience? Or can you kind of freelance on it or remix it with different elements?

YIA VANG: Yeah, one of the great things I love about Hmong food is-- the idea with Hmong food is, how do we progress forward? How do we keep telling our story about the next generation that layers onto it? Don't get me wrong. We've still got some old-school stuff that we'll be using and doing. Some of the techniques-- some of the flavors-- it's going to be there. But the thing that my mom and dad-- it's like getting a blessing from them is kind of like saying, no, you go and pave your own way, because one of the things my father always taught us is we got you here to America. We're going to sacrifice everything that we can so that you can pave your own way. So that you can pave your own way so that the next generation of Hmong kids can follow that, too.

And so it only makes sense that we get to put a little bit of our own structure and how we want to do things, but still honoring our past and our tradition-- still honoring everything that's a part of who we are. So it's going to be Hmong food. It's going to be part of the Hmong history. But do I use a Vitamix or a pestle and mortar? You know what I'm saying? It doesn't matter. The matter is the heart of it is still going to be there. And so that's what-- for example, if I use a rutabaga, does it make it less Hmong or more Hmong? Or does it make it more Minnesotan?

CATHY WURZER: Right.

YIA VANG: And I think that there's been a lot of that question that we've been thrown. The word "tradition"-- the word "authenticity"-- gets thrown out there. And I would just like to really challenge people and say, let's really talk about that. What do we mean by that? So the same thing with the baos that we made-- that my mom and them made. They came from Mom's hands. Am I going to try to recreate a different bao? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But if we could take the dough that my mom made from the bao, and we can use it for other implementations of different dishes. And it's completely OK.

CATHY WURZER: I understand exactly what were saying. Before you go, there are huge challenges behind taking a concept and then turning it into a physical restaurant. What have you run into so far?

YIA VANG: I think that the business side of it is tough. The business side is tough. I think that the logistics of it is like putting together a puzzle, where sometimes you don't have all the pieces. But I think the thing is this. The thing that threw everything-- and especially this project got pushed back three years-- almost four years-- through COVID, through funding, everything. But the one biggest thing that I learned from my parents and everything that they've taught me is this too shall pass.

The thing was in the midst of COVID, everything was so tough. I didn't know if we were going to make it through with Union Hmong Kitchen. I remember one day, my mom just looked at me and said, you know, your father and I have come through a lot. We've seen war. We've seen suffering. We've seen pain. We've seen sickness. We've lost family. But all of this has passed. And I hold on to that. I keep holding on to this. Sometimes, when I feel like there's no hope, Mom has so much hope that it trickles, and I get to grasp on to the hope that she has for me.

And so yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that are tough. And things get hard. But man, it's turning to the people that love and care about you that have been caring for me for almost 40 years. And being able to look them in the eyes, and they said, hey, this is going to pass. It's tough right now, but this is going to pass. And so right now we're in this really excited phase to announce and bring people along and talk to all our Kickstarter supporters and investors and say, hey, we got this new thing going on. We have this building now. We have this trajectory, this plan. But then the journey is just starting for us. And we recognize that.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, you just unwrapped that gift. All right, yeah, congratulations. What great fun to hear the excitement in your voice. We wish you all the best.

YIA VANG: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, take care of yourself. Award-winning Minneapolis chef Yia Vang's been with us announcing plans to open this brand new restaurant, Vinai, Northeast Bank Building, Second Street Northeast in the Sheridan neighborhood.