Fresno Hmong cooks open NyabTee’s Kitchen after social media following

NyabTee’s Kitchen sold out its first stretch of food in two days after opening at 635 N. First Street, just north of Belmont Avenue, turning years of Hmong New Year booth sales into a permanent Fresno restaurant. Tee Her and his wife, Porxoua Moua, opened the shop after building a following that already knew their Hmong dishes, sauces and spice packets from the annual celebration at the Fresno Fairgrounds.

The move is tied to a customer base that was already large before the doors opened. NyabTee Live’s TikTok profile was publicly listed at 44.1K followers and 792.2K likes, and another local snapshot put NyabTee’s audience at 124,700 followers on TikTok, 70,000 on Facebook and 1,700 on a separate cooking page. That online reach helped make the restaurant a year-round destination for people who had been asking where they could buy prepared food outside festival season.

Her said the family wanted a space where they could serve food without relying on a home kitchen. The menu stretches beyond Hmong staples and reflects Cambodian, Thai and Indian influences as well, giving the restaurant a broader Asian fusion identity than a single festival booth could support. Even though neither Her nor Moua had owned a restaurant before, they worked with city and county officials before opening and filed Nyabtee Kitchen LLC on June 1 with Her listed as manager and the principal address at the same North First Street location.

The opening landed in a city where Hmong food already has a deep market. Fresno State says Fresno remains the second-largest Hmong population center in the country after Minneapolis-St. Paul, with about 32,000 Hmong residents, and California has the largest Hmong population in the state in Fresno. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources estimates Fresno’s Hmong New Year draws more than 100,000 participants each year, and the celebration marked its 50th anniversary in 2025. That long-running crowd has become both a cultural anchor and a customer base for families like Her and Moua.

The first days at NyabTee’s Kitchen showed how quickly that demand can translate into business. Her said the family thought they had enough food for a week, but they sold out in two days and moved to morning deliveries to keep the kitchen stocked. The restaurant also adjusted its hours for nearby nurses getting off overnight shifts, a sign that the customer traffic is already shaping the rhythm of the block.