​About Chef Ann Ahmed

There is more to a chef’s story than the cuisine they cook for their current restaurant’s menu. Chefs are a sum of their parts—from their childhood homes to the kitchens they’ve worked in, their culinary odyssey influences what lands on the plate. Such is the case with two-time James Beard Award Nominee for Best Chef Midwest, Ann Ahmed. Her upbringing in Laos, global travels, and marriage to her Bangladeshi husband, all inform her cooking today. As a 14-year-old, Ann Ahmed would fantasize about becoming a chef. She made that dream a reality in 2005 by opening her first restaurant, Lemon Grass, in Brooklyn Park. It could have been an achievement unlocked, but instead it was a door cracked open to the destiny that lay beyond it. Since then, her restaurants have been stitching together the cuisine of her heritage with immersive beauty and hospitality that deftly walks the line between casual and fine-dining.When the restaurant she’s being recognized for, Khâluna, opened in 2021, it was praised as having “food that delivers on both exclusivity and pleasure — the kind that justifies multiple flights across continents and time zones.