Immigrant home cooks shine in new Twin Cities dinner series

There were tears, at times, during the heart-wrenching stories of displacement and trauma, and groans of gastronomic approval from guests after the savory first bites of each course. But the biggest reaction of the night at Immigrant Kitchen, a family-style dinner for 60, came when organizer Mecca Bos explained why she had chosen to spotlight immigrant home cooks in the first of a new Twin Cities culinary series.

“Immigrants are my friends, they’re my colleagues, they’re my neighbors, they’re my family, and when we started hearing the things that we hear daily in the news about immigrant communities, I just thought, ‘Oh, hell no,’” Bos said to a burst of applause.

The cheers filled the handsome dining room at Harriet Brasserie, the Linden Hills restaurant that in April hosted the first Immigrant Kitchen dinner, which aims to put personal faces on a hot-button political topic through food and storytelling. (The second dinner is June 4.)

The featured cooks that evening were Phon Sann and Sina War. Sann came to the U.S. as a Cambodian refugee, while War is the U.S.-born daughter of a Cambodian refugee family. They came to the microphone at the start of each course to explain their dishes, as well as the significance of carrying these recipes on as family legacies in 2025, the 50th anniversary of the Southeast Asian diaspora’s arrival in Minnesota.

Holding her infant son Apollo, War presented beef skewers glazed with lemongrass and served with crunchy pickles, or Sach Ko Jakak, which was linked to a memory of backyard barbecues. She was born in the United States after her family immigrated to California from a Thai refugee camp, having been displaced by the Vietnam War. “My family didn’t really talk about it very much, but they taught me my culture through food,” War said through tears. “I get a little self-conscious that I really don’t know a lot. But I feel proud that I could taste what I learned through the food. You don’t have to say much.”

Bos followed up. “You don’t have to say a lot, because you say it through the food.”

Bos, a food journalist and chef, is the co-founder of BIPOC Foodways Alliance. The organization, which she created with her niece, content director Sabrina Fluegel, and her partner, James Beard Award-winning chef Sean Sherman, shares and preserves multicultural food histories. One avenue to do so is by breaking bread with friends and strangers, starting with their first series, “The Table,” intimate 14-seat dinners catered by home cooks.

Bos found that many of the cooks who were either featured at these events or who just helped out in the kitchen were immigrants.

“They were working with us when current events got fired up and I was standing in the kitchen one night after one of our Tables, and I just thought, we can’t have this. We need a counter-narrative,” Bos said. “So we wanted to do something to showcase people’s stories through the lens of food, and also let them tell their own stories, most importantly.”

While some of the Twin Cities’ finest chefs are immigrants, Bos decided to feature only home cooks because “you can’t get this in a restaurant,” she said. “When people talk about authenticity that they’re looking for in restaurants, I think what they’re talking about is they want home cooking.”

Ekta Prakash was the home cook who catered a previous BIPOC Foodways Alliance Table, sharing her mother’s Indian recipes. She was in the audience for the first Immigrant Kitchen dinner.

“It was a beautiful experience,” Prakash said about being the person in the kitchen. “It felt like I was honoring my mom. Now, I want to help grow this.”

Having worked for decades in refugee resettlement, Prakash said food is integral in providing a sense of continuity, of home, to new arrivals to the United States.

“When you are in a space where you feel like a stranger, food is very authentic,” she said. “It’s all about sitting around the table and talking, and when you can get that kind of experience of eating it and enjoying it, you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m home.’”

Tevy Phann-Smith, one of Phon Sann’s daughters, introduced the last savory course of the evening, Ba Baw Banh Canh, a Cambodian version of chicken soup with rice and noodles.

Sann came to the restaurant five hours early to prepare it with help from her sister, Samein Sann. It was more time than the dish needed, but also essential for coaxing out something more than deep flavor, Phann-Smith explained. The time spent together cooking was what linked the present and past.

“You know when you have your home-cooked meal made by your mother, and you will swear that is better than anybody else’s home-cooked meal? That extra love and that energy, just like picking a fresh fruit off the vine and you eat it, and you’re like, ‘Gosh, why does this taste so much better than the grocery store?’ So for our family, the elders and the aunties, there are no tears shed. When they’re cooking, it’s cathartic, it’s healing and it’s shared space,” Phann-Smith said. “I will walk up to it and hear these very tragic stories, and they’ll just talk about it like ‘La-dee-dah-dee-dah, pass the garlic.’”

Stories like those are the reason Bos wanted to center immigrants at the table.

“These are the stories that have been carried through generations, across borders,” she said. “The really important stories are oftentimes oral histories.”

And ultimately, sharing them across different communities can help “break down silos,” Bos added.

Michele Smaby was one of the guests seated communally at the dinner, after she heard about the new series on the radio.

“This is something I want to support, be behind and hear about,” said the adult ESL teacher.

“It counters what we hear about immigrants,” Smaby said. “It’s beautiful.”

To keep up to date on future BIPOC Foodways Alliance events, including Immigrant Kitchen and The Table, go to bipocfoodways.org or subscribe to the BIPOC Foodways Alliance newsletter for early access to tickets. Scheduled events include:

June 4: Masa Makes Family features two mother-son teams, Elsa and Jeremy Moran and Areli and Alex Gadea Dominguez, who will share why regional dishes are important in their culture and homes. Sold out.

July: Just announced is Quintessential Palestine by Safa Abdulareesh, who will present a traditional four-course Palestinian meal, including musakhan and kunafa. Abdulareesh, a retired Islamic teacher, immigrated to the United States more than 30 years ago from Jordan. The date and location have yet to be announced; tickets will be $75.