Dishes to Try in Hmong Food Halls
The crispiest, juiciest, spiciest, biggest bite to take out of these culinary treasure troves.
A Fusion of Culinary Traditions
Saint Paul is home to two incredible Hmong halls packed with dozens of amazing vendors to shop and a myriad of food stalls to dine from featuring special recipes peppered with regional specialties from Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Hmongtown Marketplace
Hmong Village Shopping Center
Essential Hmong Delicacies to Try
Boba Tea
It’s not all spice and savory inside these markets. Sip a sweet beverage filled with tapioca balls, like the nab vam, a tri-colored drink with a sweet coconut milk base.
Green Papaya Salad
This dish is absolutely built for a sweltering, steamy day in the depths of summer. Some days it’s better to sweat from the inside out. Green papaya is shaved into strips and tossed into a giant, wooden mortar with lime juice, fish sauce, huge handfuls of herbs, tomatoes, and a generous amount of chilis. The entire mixture is pounded into a cacophony of fresh, hot, and funky flavors with a slurpable juice.
Purple Rice
This your mouth’s savior when the spice of the chili peppers in other dishes builds to a searing crescendo. The tacky tender texture coats and collapses in your mouth with each chew. It’s a reprieve from all the big flavors, but also its own, very special and filling thing. Hmong kitchens have long been masters of making the most with available ingredients and the rice is a shining example of the beauty and specialness of simplicity mastered.
Stuffed Wings
A wonder of culinary engineering, these thunderously crunchy wings are carefully stuffed, reassembled and fried into a full meal in and of themselves. Inside is a mixture of ground meat, simply seasoned and mixed with bean thread noodles into an unctuous mouthful.
Sausage
Long, thick sausages are stuffed until the casing stretches with coarse ground pork meat mixed with tangy galangal, zippy ginger, floral Thai basil, snappy-hot Thai chilis and a generous amount of pork fat. Cooked up crisp and sliced, the juices smoosh out into your mouth and light up all those pleasure receptors like a winning pinball machine.
Celebrate Saint Paul's Hmong Community
Hmong History and Saint Paul
Celebrate Saint Paul’s AAPI Community & Culture
Guide to the Annual Minnesota Hmong New Year
Guide to the Hmong International Freedom Festival
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