Yia Vang is the Executive Chef and Owner at Vinai, a restaurant in Minneapolis, MN that honors the past, present, and future of Hmong cooking. Vang is a trained chef with extensive experience at top restaurants across the Twin Cities. In 2016, Vang started nationally acclaimed Union Hmong Kitchen, a restaurant that features Hmong culture, stories, rituals, foods and flavors that quickly became a community staple in Minneapolis. In July 2024, Vang opened Vinai to serve as a love letter to his parents. Vang spearheads the kitchen at the restaurant and crafts a menu that features classic Hmong dishes that entice people to grab a seat at the table and open their minds to new experiences. Vang has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, and Bon Appétit, as well as showcased on PBS, CNN, among others. Vinai was featured on The New York Times’s 2024 50 Best Restaurant List, Eater’s 2024 Best New Restaurants in America, and Esquire’s 2024 Best New Restaurant’s in America, with Vang being recognized as Chef of the Year. Most recently, Vinai was named one of TIME’s 2025 World’s Greatest Places, the TPT series he hosts, “Relish,” received the 2025 James Beard Award for Lifestyle Visual Media, and Vinai was named to Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants of 2025.
