Here is the catch-up Twin Cities metro restaurant report for the week. It covers not a restaurant per se but a food court, at Hmongtown Marketplace in St. Paul. This meal was eaten on a weekend in early February, during ICE’s depredations in the state. Living almost an hour south of the Twin Cities, we were not affected by ICE’s actions in the way that people in Minneapolis or St. Paul were. But that’s not to say that ICE was not active in our town as well or that we were completely unaffected. We are, of course, fairly privileged people in terms of class but we are also visible minorities. While all four of us are citizens—the two of us naturalized, the boys born in Minnesota—it’s not like details like these were keeping people from being harassed or abducted or worse by agents of the federal government. We were operating therefore with a low to medium hum of worry at all times, especially for our boys as they made their way across town and back for school and other activities. We also weren’t sure if it was a good idea to keep going out for our usual weekly meals in the Cities. In the end, we chose to keep doing it—both to exercise our privilege and support immigrant restaurants and businesses that were still open, and to assert our own autonomy as citizens of colour.

Which brings me to this meal at Hmongtown Marketplace. In normal times, Hmongtown Marketplace is always bustling on the weekends, even in the dead of the Minnesota winter. On this Saturday in early February, however, there didn’t seem to be many people there beyond those who work there. The shops were all but deserted and we were the only people in the greenmarket. We purchased a few things and made our way to the food court where we were meeting friends who live in St. Paul for lunch. The food court too was a pale shadow of its usual self. On normal weekends you have to work to find a table even for a party of four. We were a party of seven and had no such trouble: there were entire sections that were almost completely empty. Signs prohibiting entry to ICE and other federal agents were everywhere but most of the market’s usual clientele were clearly and understandably wary.

But if the market was a ghost version of its normal self, at least the food was as excellent as ever. It had been a while since our last visit and it seemed like a number of the counters were new but the offerings were more or less the same: a range of soups, noodle soups, fried and grilled meat and fish, larb and other salads and so on. We got a mix of things from a bunch of the counters and sat down to eat it all. The conversation was a bit sombre but the meal was tasty.

For a closer look at it all, please launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see what’s coming next.

These were all cash transactions and so I cannot tell you how much it all cost—but as you can tell from some of the pictures, prices remain extremely reasonable. I should also add that we chose to pay with cash; you can actually use credit cards at almost every if not every counter.

If you’ve never been to Hmongtown Marketplace, please don’t judge the atmosphere as it appears in these pictures during the federal government’s siege of the Twin Cities. Instead, go out there this weekend or the next. The summer is when the greenmarket is at its peak and there are many things available at large Hmong markets that you won’t find anywhere else. And if—as I hope has been the case again for a couple of months now— you have to fight for a parking space or a table in the food court, so much the better.

Alright, next week’s Twin Cities report will also be of a meal eaten at an immigrant restaurant in February. Before that, however, I hope to have a bunch more reports up: two from Los Angeles, one from Seoul and another from Delhi. Let’s see how it goes.