DIANE'S PLACE

Blending traditional Hmong cooking with pastry expertise, this Minneapolis restaurant feels just like home.

- Raphael Brion,AMELIA SCHWARTZ,CEDRIC ANGELES

The dinner menu at Diane's Place includes tender cabbage and bamboo shoots with a coconut curry broth.

FOR OVER 20 YEARS, Diane Moua worked as a pastry chef at top restaurants across the Twin Cities. But when she wasn’t working, she preferred to cook savory food—the dishes that reminded her of her upbringing. “To me, going home and cooking Hmong food is my happy place,” she says.

OPPOSITE: Diane Moua with her parents. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Castella cake with coconut sorbet and pineapple; the exterior of Diane's Place; a spread of (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) green scallion Danishes, coconut-pandan croissant, sesame balls, Hmong pulled pork, Thai tea French toast, Diane's Hmong sausage, and the She-Eye 2.0 cocktail

Moua grew up in central Wisconsin in a Hmong community. Her parents, like many in the Indigenous group from East and Southeast Asia, fled their country following the Vietnam War and the Refugee Act of 1980, settling in the Midwest. Moua spent her childhood on her family’s 120-acre farm, growing a wide range of crops, like beets, carrots, green onions, and flowers.