It took a long time, but eventually, a new and revitalized Hmong's with an expanded space, new aesthetics, uniforms for servers, etc., opened.
Their food seems better than what it used to be. Their specialty remains pho, which WCG has not had, but which looks quite good. Another specialty, of course, is their egg rolls, which are indeed delicious (they are far superior to those of any Chinese restaurant in the region, with a lighter wrapping closer to what one would actually get in East or Southeast Asia). They still have red curry chicken and shrimp, but they added green curry, which is sweeter and WCG likes it better. There are also a few other new dishes, and they have both Thai and Lao papaya salad (both are quite good).
Much of the Asian food in La Crosse is frankly not exactly authentic. Case in point: the sushi at Festival is not bad, but it is produced by a company that trains non-Japanese sushi chefs to prepare their nationally pervaded food products as "Japanese" sushi; there is in all this something of the mass-produced, as well as–frankly–the for profit cynical duplicity of non-Japanese passing what they do off as "real" Japanese to a public which is none the wiser. The Burmese guy who works for them making sushi at Festival told WCG as much.
Restaurants Sushi Pirate and Bamboo House are similar, with Chinese staff and cooks providing inferior versions of "Japanese" or other forms of "Asian" food to midwestern consumers who don't know any better (by the way Bamboo House's horrible "Thai" dishes, in particular are extremely distant from actual Thai food, oh and they are also horrible). WCG has also been no fan of recent stabs at Indian and Thai restaurants in La Crosse, which seem to have been much the same story, with substandard food that wouldn't make the grade in an urban area with competition in the same "ethnic" markets.
But Hmong's is different. Hmong's smacks of authenticity. Many of the dishes they sell are not traditionally Hmong from time immemorial perhaps, but a product of their real history, stretching from Laos (and perhaps elsewhere even before Laos) to Thailand, and eventually the US, from the 1960s and 1970s to the present. It is, good honest food, authentic culture; it is real. It is also very, very delicious.
To cut to some chasing, above is a plate of takeout, with their absolutely fabulous papaya salad (can't remember if this was Thai or Lao, but both are good, with young papaya, tomatoes, peanuts, cucumber, and a spicy-sweet dressing that can have as many peppers as one wants–WCG gets 3 or 4, which is pretty damned spicy), some Hmong sausage (very good), and a pork egg roll. By the way, the sausage and papaya salad go very well together, with the salad acting as a kind of relish, and both go well with the relative flavor neutrality of rice. The pictured rice is Japanese brown from home, but Hmong's white rice, either regular flaky SE Asian or sticky is just fine. The dipping sauce on the right is a combination of Filipino flavored vinegar, Suka Pinakurat, and sweet soy-based Indonesian Kecap Manis (not from Hmong's but delicious with their egg rolls).
Note that WCG should provide Hmongs' menu, but it is not online. Next time WCG will get their takeout menu and take pics.
