B4 MN's Yia Vang & Union Kitchen, this Hmong Vang Chef cooked for Clint Eastwood

[theking]

..I met her in Detroit  :

[theking]

Her on site menu:






Or one can go online to see it too:

[theking]

A couple of stories about her:

A Hmong Chef Highlights Her Native Cuisine

Most popular Thai restaurants in metro-Detroit are owned by Hmong people. Now, one Thai restaurant owner and chef is embracing her Hmong heritage.


In Metro Detroit, there is no shortage of Thai restaurants. But what many people don’t know is that some of the most popular restaurants such as the Sy Thai chain are owned by Hmong people. One of these restaurants is Bangkok 96 in Dearborn Heights, which Genevieve Vang and her husband, Guy, opened more than 20 years ago. A refugee from Laos who fled her home country after the Vietnam War, Vang has garnered accolades and recognition for her Thai cooking, but only recently that she learned to embrace her Hmong heritage.

At Bangkok 96 Street Food in the Detroit Shipping Company food hall in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood, Vang cooks dishes like candied beef, one of her most popular dishes, spicy Hmong salsas, and flavorful pizzas that pay homage to her heritage. While she is showcasing her cuisine at Bangkok 96 Street Food, at age 51, she wants the next generation of Hmong chefs to take it a step further and do what she never did: “We don’t have anything, but I think it’s good to create something that belongs to Hmong people. It is a perfect time. A perfect time to open a Hmong restaurant.” Fi2W fellow Dorothy Hernandez, in partnership with WDET, sheds a light on new flavors happening in familiar places.

The World According to Genevieve Vang




Whether she’s expanding her restaurant or marketing healthy “ready” refrigerated meals people can cook in no time or even stretching the proverbial 15 minutes of fame, the owner of Bangkok 96 in Dearborn is always on the go considering the next step in her journey.

That journey began far from Telegraph Road. Of Hmong origin, Vang spent her childhood in Laos before becoming a refugee first in Thailand and then in France, all by age 12. Life in France still wasn’t what it was for the family that had thrived before her dad lost his military job, and later, in France, his life. She remembers how cold the poorly heated home was and how the family existed with hardly any food, even though they lived close to the region’s prestigious cooking schools. She longed to work in a commercial kitchen, even if only to clean it.

“It was hard. It was always an upside-down struggle,” recalls Vang of her youth. “Sometimes struggle makes people stronger. I still remember who I was, who I am.”

Vang finally did work in a kitchen in 1989 after she and her husband, Guy, and their two children moved to metro-Detroit to be near family. That hard work eventually propelled the Vangs to open their own Thai restaurant, Bangkok 96, in 1996.

“To work in a kitchen was a dream for me,” says Vang, who praises Guy as a chef and partner who oversees the business. “In order to grow, you need a team with good management. There’s so much going on when you’re entrepreneurs— customer service, safety, sanitation, marketing—you have to create a foundation.” V

ang’s passion for food is endless. Even with a successful restaurant, she didn’t rest on her laurels. Instead, Vang set her sights on an even wider reach, hoping to get her Thai meals into markets for people to cook at home. Those efforts improved after she met George Vutetakis, former chef of Inn Season in Royal Oak and past director of research and development for Ferndale-based Garden Fresh Gourmet. Vutetakis introduced Vang to Garden Fresh owner Jack Aronson, who was in the process of selling his business to Campbell Soup. Both food entrepreneurs quickly became inspirations to Vang. The admiration was mutual.

“I reached out to her because there’s nobody better,” says Aronson, alluding to Yang’s clean-label commercial products that are all-natural, gluten-free and low-sodium. “She’s done some really interesting cutting-edge stuff that impresses me.”

Aronson is currently working to have Clean Planet Cuisine Chicken Pad Thai and Vegetarian Pad Thai on the market by the end of summer, using High Pressure Processing (HPP) at his newly opened Great Lakes HPP in Taylor. He started Clean Planet in Clinton Township in 2016.




“Homemade Pad Thai, fresh, never frozen,” Vang explains. “It’s  exciting. I never thought my journey was going to get to this level. All the hard work paid off.”

“Because of Jack I’m able to bring a different idea for the future. We’re changing the way we do business,” Vang says.

In a separate venture, Vang also sells Thai Feast, a powdered sauce and broth line that is vegan, gluten-free, low in sugar and salt and free of MSG. She carries it in the restaurant and sells it on Amazon.

And look for Vang pretty soon at Bangkok 96 Street Food, which dubs itself as food someone might expect on a backpacking trip near the Mekong River or the streets of Bangkok, part of Detroit Shipping Co., a six-restaurant collective opening in Detroit in early summer. She is excited to be part of the Detroit food revolution and to introduce herself to new customers.

“I call it looking for opportunity. If you keep doing what you’re doing, do a good job. For the new entrepreneur, you have to do your homework,” Vang says.

Opportunity certainly does knock for Vang. In the summer of 2008, she was grocery shopping when her phone rang. It was Clint Eastwood. “I almost froze. The first thing I thought: ‘This is God.

He just sent Clint Eastwood to me,’” Vang recalls.

Eastwood asked her to cater the set of his movie Gran Torino, filmed on location in metro Detroit. Vang cooked through the night for 170 people. She was told to keep it fairly simple, but she wanted to represent the Hmong culture better than that.

“Number one, it’s not going to look good for my people. It’s too boring,” she says. “Number two, this is my opportunity.” Her outof-the-box thinking worked, and for two weeks she brought food to the set, always changing it up. She also brought a daily order of spicy larb—a Thai beef salad—for Eastwood, because it was his favorite.

“Cooking for Hollywood: It’s a beautiful page in my journey. Now nothing stops me,” she says. “I always remember who I was. I had nothing: no money, no food. Whenever I see someone on the street I have to make sure I give them something because they’re hungry.”

In 2016, Food Network approached Vang to be on “Clash of the Grandmas.” Confident about her cooking, Vang was less sure about baking, so she practiced for three months. Nervous, she kept her eyes on the prize—$10,000 and a trophy—by telling herself to have fun.

“Do the best you can, but remember it’s a chance of a lifetime,” she recalls. “Maybe I lost the show, but I know I learned something.

I know how to bake,” she says with a laugh.

She is putting that knowledge to work today by creating recipes for cupcakes and other desserts. That might not seem like a challenge until you consider that these versions are sugar-free with organic ingredients.

“It’s just a cake, but it’s got a lot of good things in there. I think we’re going to carry that,” she says and then adds with a smile, “maybe we’ll try to bring this to ‘Shark Tank.’”

[theking]

White folks had a hard time deciding how spicy they want their food to be while ordering it from Chef Vang...  :

[Hung_Low]

'A Hmong Chef Highlight her Native Cuisine

Is that a joke? These writers need to be educated. She's Hmong and serving Thai food... it's like a White chef serving Mexican food and calling it his native cuisine.

I'm not knocking on her at all... just be more accurate.

[theking]

Lots of Black folks in Detroit so not surprised to see Vang employs Black staff in her shop  :

[theking]

Besides having Black employees, her immediate family members help out too like these guys:

[JonniJacko]

Not sure how big the Chinese community is or was in Michigan back then in the 90's, but there wasn't a whole lot of Chinese/Asian restaurants back then...so the business minded Hmong Michiganions back then capitalize on the opportunity and open up alot of the chinese/asian restaurants around I suppose Lansing, Detroit. And yup, a lot of Black customers..but I think it died down now. Since Black folks up there probably knows good and bad chinese food now..lols Not taking away anything from anyone...but there use to be a Hmong run chinese place in my town..and the only thing worth its price was the firecracker fried rice they call it I think, and the intestines...w hich was popular among a lot of Black folks..the other dishes they had similar to what Panda express, like kung pao, orange chicken, was like wtf, this is just regular stir fry chicken, pork or beef with sweet and sour sauce or Kung Pao sauce over it...lols they didn't velvet any of the meat like Chinese folks do..haha

[theking]

Sounds like those Hmong folks capitalized on the "Chinese food" opportunity at the right time then  ..

[theking]

Not sure if "Steven Vang" is Chef Vang's son or not but they made it through the COVID shut down:

We're Open Detroit: Dearborn's Bangkok 96 offers catering style carry-out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50eFhhusw_8

[theking]

Chef Vang has also given back to her community:

Food fighter: Detroit chef who fled Laos knows the pain of hunger


Genevieve Vang knows hunger all too well.

As a 9-year-old girl fleeing death in her native Laos during the height of the Vietnam War, Vang experienced incredible hardship, at times drinking water just to fill her stomach to ease the pain of scarcity.

“We were always hungry and there wasn’t any hope,” she recalls. “But you have to fight to survive and it teach you to have a job. It very hard. I came from nothing. I never forget where I came from.”

So when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Michigan and effectively shuttered her two Thai restaurants in Dearborn and Detroit, Vang — one of this year's Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Food Fighters — was the first to call her publicist to ask where she could donate the food wasting away in her coolers.

That call became the catalyst for Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen for Good.

“I have to give back to my community,” Vang says, noting that she has run a business in Dearborn for more than 32 years. “I have to invest my time and make sure they have anything they need and more. It’s very important as an entrepreneur to give back to your community because that’s how you grow your business.”

In 2018, Vang entered the Detroit market with the opening of her Bangkok 96 Street Food stall inside the Detroit Shipping Co. food hall in Midtown.

As her community has grown, so have her efforts to give back.

At Thanksgiving, Vang was one of the vendors who donated three days' time and food to prepare 400 turkey meals for the hall's hungry neighbors.

It was her second year doing it, and Vang says it’s an important tradition because it allows her to celebrate what Thanksgiving means to her.

“I just want to be thankful for what I have here and am able to do here and the freedom,” she says. “Everybody fights to come here because it’s the best country in the world. And I’m lucky and proud to be here and do the best I can and work very hard."

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/dining/2021/03/11/genevieve-vang-bangkok-96-street-food-fighter/4449915001/