It’s More Than a Dish: A Conversation with Chef Yia Vang

Why do we love food so much? Obviously, it is necessary to our survival, and no one enjoys feeling hunger pains. But mere sustenance alone does not warrant hours of labor in a hot kitchen, or toiling in a field on a humid day, or treating generational family recipes like sacred treasures. Surely, our fascination and gravitation toward food goes much deeper.

If you are Hmong, most likely, you have eaten some kind of zuab hau (boiled mustard greens), nqaij npua hua (stewed pig), or nqaij qaib hau (simmered chiken), says Yia Vang, a chef in Saint Paul who has begun working with the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA). Yia is re-imaging Hmong cuisines with a modern and local flare. This past year, he debuted a hot dish at the Minnesota State Fair that wowed attendees. It was a riff on Hmong sausages and curry gravy topped with potatoes tatter tots, that even folks in Lake Wobegon would have considered as quintessential Minnesotan. “We care about these dishes beyond their nutritional and caloric values,” says Vang. “Foods like these continuously captivate our interests because each bite contains a story. Food tells us the story of who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed.”

Chef Vang’s dishes retell the nomadic history of the Hmong people. From their expulsion out of southern China, their migration throughout Southeast Asia, and their resettlement into countries all around the world including the United States, France and Argentina. According to Yia, Hmong dishes now reflect the many places Hmong people have called home. Along with Chef Eddie Wu, he runs Union Kitchen, a new kind of restaurant which focuses on the premise that “food is meant for more than survival. It tells us a story… poured from uncorked journeys and seasoned with aged strife.”

Yia’s own culinary journey started in Wisconsin where we was born and grew up. “When my family was looking to buy a new house, the first two things we looked at were the size of the kitchen and if there was room for a garden in the backyard,” he says. Yia describes his childhood as atypical, but he did not realize it until one afternoon at a roller rink in high school when he found himself confined to the bench as his friends whizzed by and skated circles around him. “What was I doing when all of my friends were learning to roller skate,” he thought. Then he realized all of the Saturdays he had spent with his dad learning to hold a knife, butchering whole pigs, and perfecting the spice combination for laab (a sesame and chili flavored dish). It dawn on him that he had been learning how to cook, all the while listening to his father’s stories and fond memories of life in Laos.

Yia is excited to work with HAFA because he believes that the story of each dish starts with the raw ingredients and the people who grow them. “When you harvest something like peppers that Hmong people have grown in so many places throughout the world, and for so many years, you are retracing the footsteps of giants who have grown before you!” he says. “All dishes have a story. That’s what draws us to food and I want to bring that story to life.”