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Native American restaurants
- rdtsc 5y agoIf you’re in DC try http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/ http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/ in the Native American Museum. My partner has been on a Navajo Indian reservation and some of the food was good but most was sort of bland. Sadly, after being driven to these reservations one of the staple foods in the diet became fry bread. It is not the healthiest. Also, it is hard to have a restaurant selling traditional foods like squash when many tribes don’t grow it and eat it themselves, because well, it doesn’t grow in the desert.
- mythrwy 5y agoI live in New Mexico squash grows great here. But ya, can second, Fry Bread and really fatty mutton seem to be staples. Plus whatever everyone else eats (Burger King, lunchables and Gas Station Hot Dogs). My theory is native squash just doesn't taste that good. Sort of like how Anglos switched from boiled parsnips (have you ever eaten that? I haven't) in 1200AD to French Fries and Pizza now. I went to a Navajo buffet once. They did have a little traditional food (mutton, fry bread) but most was just mashed potatoes and stuff you might find at Golden Corral. The native stuff was not very tasty at all as I recall, (this was years ago) and I never went back.
- Nursie 5y agoWho boils a parsnip? They should be roasted, preferably in duck fat, and are delicious :)
- vba616 5y ago>Sort of like how Anglos switched from boiled parsnips (have you ever eaten that? I haven't) in 1200AD to French Fries and Pizza now. Canada produces 5000 tons of parsnips a year! At least as of 2015 or so. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/parsnip https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/parsnip There's lots of things you can do with parsnips... Baked Parsnips With Fruit Parsnip Pie Parsnip Tart Parsnip Wine Parsnip-soffrito Soup Parsnip-pecan Cake Sauteed parsnip slices Parsnip Latkes with Lox and Horseradish Creme Maple Glazed Parsnips on Kale Slow Cooker Parsnip and Apple Soup Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Gratin Carrot-Parsnip Bisque Parsnip, Pear and Pecan Salad Agave Roasted Parsnips ...I guess that's about all.
- jbay808 5y agoParsnips are probably my favourite root vegetable. So much flavour!
- Mikeb85 5y agoMeh, they're at the bottom for me. I'd rather have celeriac, carrots, beets, turnips, potato, etc...
- bregma 5y agoI had parsnip ice cream at an upscale place in Dublin once. Not too bad. Same place had a sumac sorbet that was divine.
- chrisseaton 5y agoParsnips are a pretty common food in the UK, found in any supermarket. Boiled or in a stew or roasted, just like you would a carrot.
- OJFord 5y ago> Sort of like how Anglos switched from boiled parsnips (have you ever eaten that? I haven't) in 1200AD to French Fries and Pizza now. I would guess parsnips (I don't know about boiled (only) though! Meh) are at least as common here in the UK as frites, as distinct from chips to any Briton. But then squash (off the top of my head not sure if it'd be NM's export at any time of year though) and mashed potatoes (and to a lesser extent mutton, much more lamb) are perfectly popular here too, so not really sure what my point is.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoTraditional varieties of squash absolutely grow in the desert. It's not super common on the Navajo res to my knowledge, but the Hopi and O'odham reservations have sustenance and large scale commercial farming. But as a fun fact, the three sisters were often grown dryland on as little as a single rainstorm in pre-contact times. Some of those areas average around 40mm of rain a year.
- rdtsc 5y agoWell I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing it out. My parents grew squash. I was forced to eat it so much in fact I still dislike it even though I know it’s healthy. We grew it in a continental climate, black soil, regular rain so I assumed automatically it needed those conditions.
- jcranmer 5y agoI can definitely recommend the café in the Museum of the American Indian in DC. It's probably the best food on the National Mall (the only other real contender is the African-American Museum), and is a rare example of museum food actually being good enough to go to if you weren't already at the museum.
- bluedino 5y agoI find it odd that Native Americans didn't make cheese.
- mellavora 5y agohmm, given the amount of milk they had available, hmmm
- autarch 5y agoThere's a new place that just opened in 2021 here in Minneapolis called Owamni - https://owamni.com/ https://owamni.com/ I haven't been yet but I'd like to try it sometime.
- treesknees 5y agoI ate here a few months ago, it was delicious. They only use ingredients native to the region so it is a different experience. Definitely recommended!
- gullywhumper 5y agoI haven't been yet either, but it's in a neat location at the very least: on W. River Pkwy by the falls, in an old building that was rebuilt. https://goo.gl/maps/id2R9byxQcm57uK7A https://goo.gl/maps/id2R9byxQcm57uK7A
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI think more native american restaurants would be wonderful. But my eyebrows lift at the idea of "native american cuisine". We're talking about dozens of distinct cultures that covered the entire continent, from the damp, mild ocean adjacent pacific NW to the deserts of the southwest to the grasslands of the midwest to the forests of the east and north east (and so, so much more). Nobody would seriously suggest that there's any possibility of a unified food culture across this range. So, let regional native american restaurants bloom!
- btmiller 5y agoI can imagine NA cuisine being no more unified than Mexican, Tex-Mex, New Mexican, Oaxacan, California Mexican, et. al. are under the category of “Mexican”. I grew up on Tex-Mex and I was dumbfounded at the sight of a wet burrito?? But you learn and grow :) and I’m sure any emergence of NA cuisine would be similar.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoThere's a lot more shared identity today as a result of colonization and the reservation system, which somewhat extends to things like food. Frybreads are a good example since they come directly from the reservation system and the typical ingredients provided by the government for cheap calories: flour, beans, oil, "cheese", and some form of meat, sugar, etc. Despite the common name, it's a shared culinary heritage for many tribes in the US. The real issue is that there's been very little widespread systematization of "traditional" indigenous cookery. We've started seeing that over the past few decades through the efforts of people like Lois Frank and many, many others, but it's a process.
- kevinmchugh 5y agoYeah, this is true and interesting, though I think a lot of (especially the high end) focus on Native American foods is on pre-Columbian cuisines. Btw, If anyone knows any pre-Columbian restaurants for Italian and Indian cuisines, let me know.
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- brk 5y agoKai in Chandler, AZ is an awesome restaurant featuring Native American food/menu inspiration. https://www.wildhorsepass.com/listing/kai/3304/ https://www.wildhorsepass.com/listing/kai/3304/ Definitely worth a visit if you are in the greater Phoenix area.
- swampthing 5y agoI was just going to post about Kai as well. I agree, it's worth a stop!
- bitwize 5y agoI'm of mixed feelings. On the one hand, it would be an incredible experience to eat what the natives ate. On the other hand, what they ate was tied up with the rest of their culture, especially hunting, gathering, and farming it themselves. And Professor You're-Nothing-But-Disease-Vectors-To-Me (also recently featured on Hackernews) had an interesting point about the commodification and commercialization of that which was sacred to Native Americans (talking about tobacco, not food). So maybe Native American restaurants should be not a thing. Maybe they will do nothing but corrupt the meaning food has in their society.
- duxup 5y agoI feel like Native American culture and people are almost unknown to most Americans. “Let’s not do that out of respect.” seems distantly/ unintentionally isolating and hiding a whole people / cultures out of fear of getting something wrong.
- WalterBright 5y agoIt's hard for it to be unknown, as we have so many place names from Native languages. Around here, we have Snohomish, Skycomish, Issaquah, Duwamish, Sequim, Tacoma and even Seattle. Many, many words in American English came from Native tongues.
- duxup 5y agoI don’t think place names are a good example of culture and people.
- WalterBright 5y agoLots of words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_from_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_from_ind... "or describe items of Native American or First Nations life and culture"
- bregma 5y ago
- duxup 5y agoI grew up and had a fair amount of exposure to Native Americans who lived nearby, powwows / dancing. It wasn’t until I moved that I realized that most Americans have more exposure to a long list of foreign cultures than Native Americans.
- walrus01 5y agoSalmon and Bannock is a really good first nations restaurant in Vancouver BC https://www.salmonandbannock.net/ https://www.salmonandbannock.net/ The Yakama tribe in central Washington has a visitors center with a restaurant: https://www.visityakima.com/member-general.asp?ID=79 https://www.visityakima.com/member-general.asp?ID=79
- lytfyre 5y agoAnother vouch for Salmon and Bannock. Mr. Bannock is a North Vancouver food truck, often does some interesting fusion things. Kukum Kitchen in Toronto seems to have closed over the pandemic, but I previously enjoyed their food, and their website is still up - I hope they are able to reopen.
- bregma 5y agoSalmon and Bannock was on my very short must-do list when I visited Vancouver (bonus: it's near a construction site for the new Broadway subway line). It's more of an indigenous-inspired fusion menu sourced from indigenous-owned suppliers, but that pretty much matches the wider picture. The only cultures that are not dynamic and adaptive are dead cultures. I would go there again. Book a table in advance, they only have 4 of them.
- mythrwy 5y agoI took a class freshman year on ethnology of native American tribes. At one point the professor was talking about Athabaskan tribes and what they ate. Pretty much all animal, especially during winter. So I asked him how that worked, because according to health authorities we were supposed to be eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day. His response was they ate a lot of part that we don't usually eat from animals in modern times. Organ meats and even the contents of the stomach. Which presumably covered what was nutritionally needed.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoNot just that. Its the fact that much nutrition breaks down in a short period of time. If you eat it fresh, you can salvage the required vitamins and nutrients before it goes away
- s1artibartfast 5y agoThis is also the case of the Native American in the far north AKA Eskimos, where their diet consisted largely on Seafood protein. They would eat a lot of the Bissell route to get important trace nutrients that were necessary in their protein-rich diet.
- elil17 5y agoIt’s hard to really envision what any “authentic” American Indian ethnic cuisine would look like. Most of what people ate prior to modernization was really, really gross by the standards of modern restaurants because decisions were driven by limited ingredients and limited fuel. Most of what anyone ate at that time was boiled and, outside of regions with easy access to spices, unseasoned. When the rest of the world was developing modern food cultures, American Indians were being subjugated and, later, forcibly assimilated by American colonizers. The only really good recent food invention from American Indian cultures has been fry bread which, while delicious, lacks something in sophistication. There are lots of good indigenous mesoamerican dishes but they’ve been assimilated into mainstream Mexican cuisine. No one thinks of chili verde as a “Native American food.” Look at Wikipedia’s article “Indigenous cuisine of the Americas”. How many of this dishes under the North America subheading would you actually want to eat? Probably fry bread, maybe fish or meat jerky or pemmican, and definitely maple taffy. Everything else is either an ingredient or not very good. I have tried Jonnycakes and they are a step down from cornbread. My mom talks about occasionally eating “mush” (acorn porridge, which would have been called t’epna by her grandparents) as a kid. She describes it as “pretty bad.” Everyone in her family far preferred the version of the dish that was invented in the 20th century, “Frito mush,” which is pretty much Frito pie but with soggy Fritos. What you’re left with is modern attempts to make new dishes featuring the ingredients pre-assimilation American Indians were using. Mitsitam in DC is doing this, and I like their food (or, at least, liked - I haven’t been there in years and reviewers say it’s gone down hill). It’s stuff like “Indian tacos”, “seared boar”, and “salmon chowder.” The only thing there any Indians I know would eat day-to-day is Indian tacos, and I think there are literally no ingredients in those which are native to America except maybe some of the spices in the seasoning (they are regular Tex-mex tacos, with ground beef and the packets of seasoning, but made on fry bread instead of tortillas). I think this is probably the right way to go about doing American Indian cuisine, but it’s just not going to be recognizable in the American eye as an ethnic cuisine in the way that Italian and Chinese cuisines are. Instead, it’s going to look like traditional ingredients prepared with modern American and occasionally modern Mexican cooking techniques. Without knowledge of the history, that seems like it’s “inauthentic” or “westernized”, but really it’s all we’ve got. Well, that and frybread.
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- WalterBright 5y agoThe only one I've encountered is in the Smithsonian in DC. Of course, I went straight there for lunch!
- bane 5y agoI'm distantly Native and have had a mild interest in Native foods for a while. Sadly it seems most of the Native pre-Colombian foodways are long gone (in the U.S. at least). There's some wonderful exceptions though, lots of Tex-Mex style foods are direct descendants of native foods. The foods that are kept as Native foods in many areas are often created out of the hardships that came post-Colombian, and often post resettlement. For example, I spent some time in the Navajo nation and one of the main traditional foods is Frybread -- a tradition that started after resettlement when lard and flour were brought in by the U.S. government to fend off starvation -- and is common on other reservations as well. There's some decent hearty food that's since been built off of fry bread. Is it "Native food?" Or is it food made by Native Americans, who often are trying to modernize folkways and tap into locally available ingredients? To be honest, pretty much everywhere is post-Colombian now. You can get tomatoes, peppers, corn, squash, and potatoes (among other things) pretty much anywhere on the planet. And the converse is true, as the mass of Euro-Asian-African foodways have spread across the Americas just as well. Some videos of native foods from the Cherokee people, a tribe that's been putting tremendous efforts into preserving their language, and culture. A few people have even been identified as Cherokee national treasures for their traditional food knowledge. https://youtu.be/GSBBEYtMPNU https://youtu.be/GSBBEYtMPNU https://youtu.be/kJyYYsEBUWM https://youtu.be/kJyYYsEBUWM https://youtu.be/dKO2UrWwOSw https://youtu.be/dKO2UrWwOSw https://youtu.be/o52BCTqrX_U https://youtu.be/o52BCTqrX_U https://youtu.be/z_u54Vgv6Z0 https://youtu.be/z_u54Vgv6Z0 https://youtu.be/orW1Gcy3otE https://youtu.be/orW1Gcy3otE https://youtu.be/laV4uG-iBD4 https://youtu.be/laV4uG-iBD4
- prpl 5y agoYou would be interested in following Chef Karlos Baca (Diné) who is also generally interested in decolonization of food and has some really interesting things he puts together.
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- kepler1 5y agoHonestly, I think frybread is something that Native Americans would do well to forget and cut largely from their diet, aside from special occasions. It's basically a funnel cake, with all the unhealthy implications. I would no more associate funnel cakes with respect-worthy Native American food than I would with good American food. At best it's a recent implanted/necessity food item that has provides some vague connection with difficult times and history but is not a true cultural heritage, and at worst it keeps people now in obesity and unhealthy diets -- and Native Americans could use all the cultural help to free themselves of those problems. Flame away as insensitive, but these are realities.
- simonw 5y agoThere's a new Native American restaurant in Oakland called Wahpepah’s Kitchen - next to the Fruitvale BART station - and it's absolutely fantastic. Well worth a special trip. Here: https://goo.gl/maps/732xKjHDUwQsWzcGA https://goo.gl/maps/732xKjHDUwQsWzcGA
- pieterk 5y agoIndian Pueblo Kitchen Located inside the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center 2401 12th St NW Albuquerque, NM 87104 505-724-3510 https://indianpueblokitchen.org/ https://indianpueblokitchen.org/
- will_walker 5y agoHere in Oakland we have Cafe Ohlone (https://www.makamham.com/cafeohlone https://www.makamham.com/cafeohlone) which has been featured in the New York Times and I can personally attest creates a Michelin-worthy dining experience. On the fusion side, Wahpepah's Kitchen (https://wahpepahskitchen.com/seasonal-restaurant-menu https://wahpepahskitchen.com/seasonal-restaurant-menu) in Fruitvale offers blue corn waffles, sweet potato tostadas and bison meatballs. I haven't been to it yet but it's on my shortlist. There's a good deal of interest in reviving first people's cuisine and culture. I'm grateful to live in a community that where the people have kept their history alive, despite centuries of discrimination (including involuntary disbanding of the tribe by congress: https://www.dailycal.org/2021/11/05/political-erasure-of-the-muwekma-ohlone-tribe-and-the-complicity-of-silence/ https://www.dailycal.org/2021/11/05/political-erasure-of-the...)
- hydrok9 5y agoPersonally I was always fascinated by the diet of the indigenous far north. I so want to try mousefood! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousefood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousefood
- dustintrex 5y ago> posole, a hominy and pork stew, was prepared and served by Native Americans. Surely this is the Mexican/Aztec classic pozole?
- atebyagrue 5y agoI make it a point to go to the one in DC @ the National Museum of the American Indian every year when I play tourist for a day. Another great resource that I've found on post Eastern Agricultural Complex foodways is Buffalo Bird Woman's book written in 1917, "Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indian". It explains the growing, harvesting, preparation, and storage techniques of their main crops. Very interesting book & I would highly recommend it: https://archive.org/details/agricultureofhid02wils/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/agricultureofhid02wils/page/n9/m...
- jonathaneunice 5y agoNative American restaurants that serve anything close to local traditional foods are incredibly difficult to find. Few years back I spent many days driving through Arizona and New Mexico, including long stretches through Apache, Hopi, Kaibab Paiute, Navajo, and Zuni lands. Sure, there are places to eat in Second Mesa, Window Rock, and the other points along the way. But even completely ignoring Denny's and Subways kind of options and going out of my way to find more traditional options, none of the restaurants I found seemed at all local cuisine. A few food items were labeled "Indian X" or "<tribe> Y" but they lied. Even those were more likely to contain ground beef, sour cream, melted cheese, and other obviously non-traditional ingredients you could just as easily find at a Denny's in Nashua, NH. No matter how aggressively you label them "Navajo Pancakes," if they're just buttermilk pancakes, that's missing the point. Mutton stew, cornbreads, squash, or anything else that might have been out of the American mainstream? Nada. None to be found.
- chasd00 5y agoIn my experience, most of the places you find when driving through the desert southwest are focusing on survival. You're not going to find much that doesn't appeal to the widest audience possible at the lowest cost possible.
- melissalobos 5y agoI think this may have to do with the availability, price, and restrictions around food safety. Most of those places are out in the middle of nowhere, have an audience that cannot afford $20 for unusual meat, and if they wanted to hunt elk to have on the menu, they would run a large risk if the meat was tainted or had prions or whatnot. Usually the food they cook is what the tribe does eat. Things have just changed over time.
- siltpotato 5y ago
- bitcurious 5y agoA while back I was curious about the Native American cuisine of New Jersey, and stumbled upon this short recipe book: Edit: pasted the wrong link. Correct: https://delawaretribe.org/product/lenape-indian-cooking/ https://delawaretribe.org/product/lenape-indian-cooking/ Prior: https://delawaretribe.org/blog/2013/06/27/foods-eaten-by-the-lenape-indians/ https://delawaretribe.org/blog/2013/06/27/foods-eaten-by-the... Some of the recipes use European or modern ingredients, some seemed older than that. It’s pretty interesting and very accessible.
- crumbits 5y agoA little surprised the Liliget Feast House in Vancouver, BC wasn’t mentioned.