Owamni by The Sioux Chef: An Authentic Indigenous Experience
You don’t have to be a Two-Spirit foodie to appreciate Owamni, a fairly new restaurant in Minneapolis that serves indigenous food that predates European settlers in North America.
Diners are finding it hard to snag seats at a new restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that has a menu of items that showcase the true flavors of North America, featuring foods of Mni Sota Makoce, Land Where the Water Reflect the Clouds. That’s right! Owamni by The Sioux Chef is serving up authentic dishes that predate European settlers, and it’s located at OwamniYomni, the sacred site of peace and well-being for the Dakota and Anishinaabe people.
A member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe and dubbed “The Sioux Chef,” Sean Sherman is the visionary behind this unique restaurant named after a waterfall that once flowed nearby. He describes his food as “decolonized.”
Sherman told NBC News, “We’re just pushing back on what that colonization brought. We took away things that were introduced like dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, and chicken – all these items didn’t exist not that long ago. We’re just looking at how indigenous people basically around the world had the blueprint for living sustainably utilizing the world around us.”
Opened in 2021, the James Beard Award-winning restaurant prioritizes purchasing from local and national indigenous food producers. Menu items such as bison, beans, corn, and crickets honor land stolen, but Sherman and co-owner Dana Thompson are taking it a step further, using the recipes preserved by ancestors who could’ve, at one time, been jailed for preparing indigenous food.
Patrons can order dinner dishes such as the Smoked Lake Superior Trout Wojape with white bean spread, cricket and seed mix, duck sausage, nixtamalized native corn tacos with cedar braised bison, blue corn mush, hand-harvested wild rice, and much more!
Owamni is located inside the Water Works Pavilion in Mill Ruins Park in Minneapolis. Click here for more information about the restaurant and to learn more about The Sioux Chef Mission.
