MPLS Spots: Asian Pacific-Owned Restaurants
In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re taking a look at businesses around the Twin Cities for you to explore. While there are many Asian businesses you can support, here’s a little list to get you started.
Eat: Union Kitchen
Union Hmong Kitchen is a is a pop-up restaurant experience that features Hmong culture, stories, rituals, foods and flavors. They marry local traditions with those from back home in South and Eastern Asia to bring Hmong flavors to American palates. Every dish has a narrative and they look forward to sharing ours with you, through our food.
Saint Anthony Park, Minneapolis
Eat: Lat 14
Chef Ann Ahmed’s love for cooking started at a very young age, working in the kitchen alongside her mother whenever she could.
Thirteen years after opening up her first restaurant, Lemon Grass, she opened her second, Lat14 Asian Eatery. Lat14 provides diners the opportunity to eat their way along the exciting, diverse 14th parallel – without the long airplane trip. Small, shareable plates are inspired by Chef Ann Ahmed’s connections to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, and their neighboring countries.
Golden Valley
Eat: Sooki & Mimi
Named after two grandmothers of decidedly different cultures and backgrounds, Sooki & Mimi is about both connection and contrast. James Beard award-winning Chef Ann Kim explores a new pathway, trading in her much-lauded pizza crust for springy, soft tortillas. Atop this delectable base sits a deeply personal menu filled with blended culinary cues spanning Korean, Midwestern, and Latin American ingredients, to name a few. All of this within an elegant-yet-comfortable neighborhood joint.
Uptown, Minneapolis
Drink: Moto-i
Moto-i is the first sake brew-pub outside of Japan and Minneapolis’ only craft sake brewery.
Located in the Lyn-Lake neighborhood, Moto-i is an Izakaya featuring house-made steamed buns, Tokyo straight-style noodles, and rotating seasonal specials.
Lyn-Lake, Minneapolis
Drink: Sencha Tea Bar
Sencha Tea Bar is the premier frontier of loose leaf tea in Minnesota. Sencha’s large and growing selection of loose leaf teas guarantees to satisfy the most demanding and eclectic tastes of traditional tea drinkers. They also specialize in bubble tea, a beverage originating from Taiwan that combines freshly brewed teas with a large variety of exotic natural fruit concentrates, served cold with delicious chewy tapioca pearls.
Various Locations throughout Twin Cities
Drink: Vendant Tea
Verdant Tea is founded on over a decade of relationship-building with farmers across China. The He Family, tea farmers in Laoshan, co-founded and co-own Verdant Tea China. They believe real partnerships, collaboration, and advocacy are the future of their industry, and are fighting for more transparency for consumers in the tea industry.
Online Shop Based in Minneapolis
Enjoy: Hmong Village
Hmong Village is a one-of-a-kind indoor market in the United States. They feature more than 250 vendors, and is a central place to come taste and experience the unique foods, farmers market, cultures, goods and services of the Hmong and other Southeast Asian communities. Enjoy a wide selection of eateries from 17 restaurants and delis. The market also offers professional services such as beauty care, insurance, real estate, business consulting, tax services, law firms, urgent care, pharmaceutical needs, and more.
Saint Paul