Photo courtesy of TANA
Chef Ming Pu isn’t afraid to be a pioneer. His new restaurant, TANA—which stands for Taiwanese New American—is the first in Louisville focused on the cuisine of his birthplace. Opened this spring in a century-old building in the increasingly hip Germantown neighborhood, the 90-seat eatery’s cozy dining room is a perfect place to enjoy his ramp and red shrimp dumplings, an exemplar of his vision to make Taiwanese and regional Chinese dishes using local ingredients. His inspiration came from traditional dumplings, many of which use chives. Instead, he chose ramps—known for their pungent, sweet flavor somewhere at the intersection of garlic and onion—which grow wild in Kentucky. Pu blanches the greens and juices them with parsley to impart flavor and a chartreuse hue to the dumpling wrapper. Next, he pickles the ramp stems in a mushroom-infused dashi (Japanese broth) and Champagne vinegar for what he calls “an umami bomb” that pairs perfectly with tender, wild red shrimp from the Carolinas and bamboo shoots for texture. He sources 50 pounds of fresh ramps at the peak of spring, juices and pickles them, and uses them in dishes throughout the summer. After years of cooking French, Italian, and American Southern cuisine, Pu says, “I’ve come full circle back to my roots.”
This article appears in the Summer 2026 issue of Southbound.
