We begin our show with the biggest event our state holds the fair yet again. It's so big every single day

it could be the state's third largest city which to me a non-native Minnesotan is just banana pants but I digress

among people have been living in Minnesota for a half a century now and yet out of all

the food at the Minnesota State Fair there's's never been Hmong cuisine until now.

In the summer of 2022, a new food stall opened at the Minnesota State Fair, featuring

H-M-O-N-G. The H is silent. The H is silent. The H-E-P-P-P-P-E-P-E-E-E-E-S-E-E-S-E-S-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-T-E-S-E-E-N-G. The H is silent. The H-O-P-E-O-O-O-N-O'N-O-N-O-O-O- among people So when this Hmong food stall opened at the state fair,

people took notice.

Business is booming.

Since we've been out here,

the line has been non-stop,

stretching all the way back there. The chef who opened that food stall was Yewang.

One of the things that we were very proud of was our menu.

Our menu, half of it was in Hmong.

And we were very intentional about it, because one of the things that we loved

was watching some of the older generation among people coming by and looking at

the manneew and saying oh I can read that they either were the ones teaching the white person standing next

and goes like what's what's all what does that mean? Well that's hot peppers.

No wait wait what's purple sticky rice? Well what do you do with that? Well you dip

into the hot pepper with the meat. And now it's a role reversal, right?

Now we aren't the strange kids anymore. We're actually the experts and all our white brothers

and sisters around us, you know, they're the ones coming in

wondering what's the secret. This is the Sportful. It's not for Foodies, it's for Eaters. I'm Dan Pashman.

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