Critics’ choice: Celebrating rare Asian cuisines

Diane’s Place

Minneapolis

Our 2025 Restaurant of the Year served its first dinner several months after its 2024 opening, said Raphael Brion in Food & Wine, but it “has always seamlessly blended Diane Moua’s experience as a classically trained pastry chef with her roots in Hmong home cooking.” Moua was raised on a Wisconsin farm where her parents often fed other Hmong refugees, and after working for 20 years in top Twin Cities kitchens, she opened her own spot with a goal of creating a morning-to-night atmosphere just as welcoming as her parents’ place.

“As Wonder Woman is to golden lassos, so is Moua to sugar, butter, and flour,” said Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl in Mpls.St.Paul. “But now that she has all the restaurant domains to play with, we can see her soar.” Extreme attention to detail is evident everywhere in her 65-seat restaurant, from the warm surroundings to the graceful service. Start with the scallion croissants, the newest “knee weakener” in Moua’s pastry portfolio. Move on to the laab carpaccio—thin-sliced beef tenderloin under a tangle of herbs, lime, and roast-rice powder—and then the stewed Thai eggplant and duck, “harmony and elegance made edible.” Moua, “a once-in-a-generation talent,” has “freed herself to be her whole self,” and the results are “nothing short of thrilling.” 117 14th Ave. NE.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Vinai

Minneapolis

Moua isn’t the only chef in Minneapolis who’s “leaning into the jumble of culinary influences that define Hmong cooking,” said Tejal Rao in The New York Times. Yia Vang named his year-old restaurant for the refugee camp in Thailand where he was born, a common stop for Hmong who had fled Laos amid a communist takeover. Vinai is Vang’s tribute to his parents, and the dining room is “embroidered with memories,” including family photos and gray tiles that recall the camp’s corrugated metal rooftops.

At a wood-fired grill, “cooks with excellent timing sear pork chops, whole fish, and chickens, and roast chiles for the various hot sauces—each one distinct and worth ordering.” Vang transforms the grill bounty into “an opulent chicken curry, full of fine rice noodles and tender-yolked quail eggs.” A smoked, confit mackerel and tomato appetizer had me entranced, “and when all the fish was gone, I dipped warm purple sticky rice into the sweet oil that was left.” Be warned: The portions are Midwestern-generous. When servers say a dish should be shared, “they’re not messing around.” 1300 NE 2nd St.

Turan Uyghur Kitchen

Houston

I’ve learned two lessons when dining at Turan Uyghur Kitchen, said Bao Ong in the Houston Chronicle. First, order the “big plate chicken.” Second, “always bring companions.” The Asiatown restaurant, which specializes in the Chinese and Middle Eastern–mixing cuisine of north-west China’s Uighur minority, doesn’t tone things down for unfamiliar audiences. Rather, “it serves its dishes with conviction.”

Start with the thugur: thick-doughed dumplings “hand-pleated with the precision of a Savile Row tailor.” The crisp flat-bread goshnaan is “another crowd-pleaser” and is stuffed with “rich and fragrant” cumin-spiced lamb. And about that “big plate” chicken: The plate itself is “larger than an extra-large pizza,” and the chile-sauced noodles “rank among the best I’ve eaten.” The kitchen sometimes has pacing issues, but that allows you time to watch other families sharing plates and pulling on flatbreads. “This food is not just to be eaten but experienced.” 9330 Bellaire Blvd.