Native American restaurants that serve anything close to local traditional foods are incredibly difficult to find. Few years back I spent many days driving thr

Native 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.