- We do have a good-sized Vietnamese community here,
so a lot of these flavors are familiar.
But we're just trying to add some depth to the offerings.
The food at HAI HAI is just highlighting
some of the regional cuisine
that doesn't necessarily make it on the menus.
I just knew I needed to bring back some of those flavors
to Minnesota.
Well, I've always loved cooking at home,
but the first professional cooking that I ever did
was at our food truck, Rick and I,
my husband and business partner.
We had opened brick-and-mortar restaurant.
And then we had the itch to open another restaurant.
I was raised Vietnamese-French,
so I ate a lot of Vietnamese food growing up my whole life.
And it's something that's just near and dear to my heart.
And I was like, "I really wanna open a Southeast Asian spot,"
and also kind of highlight some of the food
that we tried during our travels in Southeast Asia.
Rick and I traveled for three to four months
and just backpacked around,
and got to try all the different foods
and experience all of that culture.
Immediately there was a lot of inspiration for dishes.
A lot of the flavors that jumped out at me
were just the use of so many fresh herbs,
of course lots of fish sauce,
and fun, stinky fish and shrimp things
when we were in places like Northern Thailand.
And there were just the flavors of coconut, lime leaf,
lemongrass, ginger, all the things that I love.
When we were in Bali,
we had tried this amazing suckling pig roast
that was called babi guling,
and that was one of my favorite dishes,
so, for years, I was just kind of trying to replicate it.
Our Balinese chicken thighs, inspired by the suckling pig.
It was such a delicious dish,
but, of course, it's hard to replicate that here,
considering that we don't have a giant fire pit
and a cute guy to just sit there and swab it for hours
(laughs) while it cooks.
So, instead, we decided to kind of translate it
into a chicken thigh dish,
where we just marinate the chicken
in kind of those same aromatics,
like a lot of turmeric, ginger, lemongrass,
and coconut oil, lime leaf.
And then we just grill it.
And then the suckling pig had this amazing, crispy skin on it
that was almost like candy,
so to sort of replicate that, we have a crispy chicken skin
that we do, instead.
And then we just serve it with jasmine rice,
which they would do, and then they would also have
a little vegetable mixture.
So we have this kale and bean sprout salad,
that we put some shallot, and lime leaf,
and lime, and coconut oil in,
and just sort of macerate it.
Water fern cakes always remind me of the best part
of Vietnamese Sunday School,
which was eating tasty snacks in the basement.
I didn't really care much about church,
but those water fern cakes were delicious.
There would just be some ladies
that made them at the church.
And then you'd just have these styrofoam
room temperature packs full of these banh beo,
which is the water fern cake,
and you just eat them with fish sauce.
Yeah, they were delicious.
The water fern cakes are a comfort food to me,
just because they embody all
of the Vietnamese flavors and textures.
You have these steamed rice cakes,
which kind of have a little bit of a gelatinous texture.
But they're steamed, and then we add mung bean on them
and some scallion oil, a little pork, some fried shallots,
and a little Thai chili,
and then we eat them with nuoc cham,
which is that fish sauce and lime juice mixture.
But, I really feel like eating a bite of that
reminds me of childhood.
It reminds me of just growing up.
'Cause, yeah, we'd have those at family gatherings, too.
So, a dish that Rick and I had when we were in Hanoi
that really stuck out, was the turmeric dill fish,
it's called cha ca,
and it's a dish that they pretty much only make in the north.
We had it while we were traveling over Christmas.
And, you know, it's tough when you're not with your family,
and we were like, "What do we do?
Let's go try this really fun, special dish."
Yeah, just the flavors stuck out as different,
because there's use of dill,
which is a really uncommon ingredient in Vietnam.
And there was just loads of it,
like handfuls of dill and scallions.
And they just pan-fry the fish in front of you.
For our version, we take some Alaskan cod.
We coat it in some turmeric salts.
We pan-fry it in some turmeric oils,
so lots of turmeric.
And then, of course, just traditionally throw in
an uncomfortable amount of dill and scallions.
And just let that barely cook.
And then we serve that over some rice noodles
and serve it with two different sauces,
the nuoc cham fish sauce,
and then also a fun pineapple shrimp sauce.
So this has been one of my favorite dishes.
And then, later on, when my mom saw it
on the opening menu for HAI HAI,
she was like, "Oh, that used to be one of your grandpa's
favorite dishes."
I never got to make it for my grandpa,
but it's just cool how food can connect us,
even to people who have passed away,
and my favorite grandpa.
The first time that I visited Southeast Asia,
I think I was 19 or 20.
I went backpacking alone for probably about three months.
It was the first time that I had been there before.
And so, it was totally a culture shock but also amazing
to get to visit the place that my parents grew up.
It felt really strange but also really familiar, in ways.
It was crazy.
There's tons of Vietnamese restaurants here,
but I was noticing that there's a lot of dishes
I tried over in Vietnam or in Thailand
that didn't necessarily make it onto menus here.
Maybe just because people aren't familiar with it,
or because they're more labor intensive.
Pretty much the whole menu is just cooking food
that I wanna eat every day.