Khâluna

The Restaurant

Khâluna occupies a transformed dining space at 4000 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis — the former Harriet's Inn has been reimagined into a breathtaking modern-Laotian dining room, sitting on the working Lyndale corridor in the city's southwest five minutes from Lake Harriet and ten minutes from downtown Minneapolis — and has held the seat as the city's reference modern-Southeast-Asian destination since chef-owner Ann Ahmed opened the kitchen. The dining room runs about a hundred and twenty covers across a deliberately gorgeous high-ceilinged parlor with woven-rattan ceiling treatments, working brass-and-walnut bar at the front of the house, careful low-light through dinner service, period-influenced Southeast-Asian-influenced artwork along the walls, an intimate working chef's-counter view of the open kitchen and a deliberate modern-Laotian-luxury palette that reads as a working chef-driven Southeast-Asian destination rather than a strip-mall operation.

Chef Ann Ahmed — a multiple James Beard Best Chef America nominee — runs the modern Laotian and Southeast Asian format the way the format ought to be run. The dining card runs through a careful working modern-Laotian programme that pulls deliberately from chef Ahmed's family heritage and her working Southeast-Asian pantry: working raw-bar openers with Laotian-influenced citrus accents, hand-rolled spring-roll-and-summer-roll plates, careful Lao larb preparations with the working Southeast Asian herb pantry, working sticky-rice and noodle courses, careful chef-driven Southeast-Asian-influenced second-course plates and a dessert programme that pulls from the working Lao and Southeast-Asian-pastry calendar. The format reads as chef Ahmed's working interpretation of her Laotian heritage through a careful modern chef-driven sensibility rather than a fixed-Lao traditional menu.

Service is the older school of modern chef-driven Southeast-Asian hospitality — career servers who can speak the working Lao and Southeast-Asian dining card, a sommelier who can guide the working hundred-fifty-label wine programme through the multi-course Southeast Asian progression, and a pace that treats a two-hour dinner as the format rather than the exception. The wine programme runs to about a hundred and fifty labels with deliberate French-natural, German-Riesling, careful Champagne-and-sparkling and working Southeast-Asian-friendly working sake-and-craft-beer depth — a careful curation that matches the working Southeast-Asian dining card. The Lyndale Avenue South address on the quieter working southwest Minneapolis grid is intimate enough that a real conversation can carry across the gorgeous parlor. For a Minneapolis evening that needs to register as the city's reference working modern-Laotian destination rather than a downtown chain operation, Khâluna is the answer.