SoYen Runs on Doughnuts

The Cities’ hottest new pop-up isn’t exactly new — but fluffy, cream-filled brioche doughnuts are propelling it to new heights

Yen Fang owes her sweet tooth to her dad, who, between shifts at her family’s pretzel shop in the small town of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, would take her across the street to the Green Dragon, a bustling Amish farmers market. In between the paperback books and apple barrels, they’d pick out spongy carrot cakes, cheesecakes, and other sweets — vendors heaped their stands with doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, and strawberry pies. Dessert, Fang says, was like art. “I always just loved looking at desserts — the beauty of them, the way they put things together.”

Fast forward a few decades and Fang, whose family eventually relocated from Pennsylvania to Minnesota, is herself slinging sweets at one of the Twin Cities’ most exciting pop-ups, SoYen Desserts. She’s skilled in the art of beignets, crepe cakes, and cheesecake soufflé cupcakes, but it’s her fluffy, cream-filled brioche doughnuts that have SoYen selling out at warp speed every day it opens in downtown St. Paul.

Fang first launched SoYen in 2018 — back then, she was mostly making Japanese cheesecakes, selling them to friends and family. It started as a hobby, a follow-up to a cake decorating class she’d taken a few years earlier at Michael’s. (“They showed us a basic buttercream frosting — it was hideous,” she says, laughing.) Fang and her husband had traveled to New York and Korea, where she’d eaten Asian desserts she couldn’t find at home. “I was like, I need a hobby,” Fang says. “I’m just going to start learning how to bake these desserts that I crave.” The name, SoYen, is a combination of her name with her daughter Soraya’s, but it also means so Yen. “Everything that I make is just me,” she says.

Justine Jones

Fang added her brioche doughnuts to the SoYen menu about a year ago. “It just blew up,” she says. “Everyone wanted it.” She sold them from a food truck for a while, then out of the kitchen of a Maplewood restaurant, and finally at the downtown St. Paul location she’s been subleasing, just across from the farmers market.

SoYen’s doughnuts, airy and creased around their middle like hamburger buns, come dusted with granulated sugar. Fang and her husband Kong and brother Kuma, who work alongside her in the kitchen, stuff them with pastry creams — flavors range from ube Oreo and strawberry to pandan coconut and vanilla. The creme brulée doughnuts come lacquered with an amber sugar shell; the strawberry milk buns channel Japan’s viral strawberry sandwiches. “I don’t like super sweet flavors, I can’t eat buttercream and stuff,” Fang says. “In our Asian community, I think a lot of our desserts are more subtle in their sweetness level.”

SoYen sells a few savory items too (congee; egg salad) and drinks like Thai tea. Fang usually opens every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — she often sells out within the first hour.

As she juggles the demands of running the pop-up with working full-time, Fang keeps one idea at the core of SoYen: noj qab, nyob zoo, or “eat good, live well” in Hmong. “In our culture, we often do blessings, and elders would tie a string on our arm and hand or wrist and they would always say, noj qab, nyob zoo,” Fang says. When she was younger, she says, she never fully appreciated those words — but now, after some health challenges, she grasps their full weight. “I want to use that in my bakery, for everyone to always eat good and live well.”

Find SoYen at 275 4th Street E., St Paul, and check Instagram for updates on opening hours.

Justine Jones

Yen Fang