The Best New Restaurant in the Country Pays Tribute to Indigenous Cultures in North America

Owamni, which received the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2022, isn't only altering the Minneapolis food scene. As it remains anchored in the land, the people, and the spirit of resistance, it is also bringing Indigenous culinary traditions to the fore.

Working only with foods used in pre-colonization North America, chefs Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) and Dana Thompson (lineal descendant: Mdewakanton Dakota, Wahpeton Sisseton) avoid using dairy, wheat, refined sugar, beef, chicken, or pork. Alternative proteins like crickets, foraged herbs, local game and fish, and wine and beer from mostly Indigenous-owned enterprises could be used in recipes instead.

Cricket & Seed Mix

I’m Lakota, and the bison is a sacred animal for us. we have so many tales which might be interwoven with bison. most of them had been slaughtered in the mid 1800s as a part of a strategy through the U.S. government to slowly weaken the tribes inside the Midwest, the fantastic Plains, and different regions. however bison have been brought back from close to extinction, and nowadays, we’re in a position to buy directly from a Lakota tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. — Sherman

Game Tartare With Blue Corn Tostadas

I grew up deer-hunting in northern Minnesota, and hunting is so important to Indigenous sovereignty. whilst Sean first created a tartare using recreation meat, i used to be blown away. It melts to your mouth. — Thompson

Maple Chaga Cake

There are lots of opportunities to guide different Indigenous-owned tasks in the Minneapolis place. After Owamni, stop by Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark Books, where the Chippewa writer shares works by way of Indigenous writers in every style, plus artwork and artisan earrings. Order a takeout box lunch on the Gatherings Café, through Diné chef Brian Yazzie, even as its home on the Minneapolis American Indian middle is being renovated; the eating place, as a way to reopen in 2024, has come to be a destination for dishes like purple Lake walleye tacos, wild-rice salad, and bison with heirloom-corn polenta.