In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, many children in the United States learn stories about that famous 17th-century feast—turkey, squash, and venison shared by English colonists and the Indigenous people who originally occupied the land. However, mainstream understanding of Native American cuisine hasn’t expanded much further than that until recent years, as Indigenous chefs across the country have started to increasingly spotlight Native foods and recipes.
Today, there are more than 570 federally recognized Native American tribes across the United States, each with their own distinct food traditions. Many Native chefs across the country are reviving or paying homage to the centuries-old techniques of their communities and creating dishes that showcase vegetables native to the Americas, such as beans, squash, chiles, tomatoes, potatoes, and corn, as well as proteins like buffalo and salmon. For these contemporary chefs, serving Native dishes is all about showing that the cuisine isn’t “survival food” but rather rich, diverse, and contemporary. And it’s also about supporting local communities that are often overlooked by the American mainstream.
For Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman, uplifting local Native communities is one of his top goals. “We prioritize purchasing from Indigenous producers—first locally, and then nationally—and then we support our local food system as much as we can,” Sherman told Afar in a 2022 interview.
Here are 13 standout Native American restaurants across the country that are worth a visit:
1. Owamni by the Sioux Chef
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Chef Sean Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and later founded a catering company called The Sioux Chef in the Twin Cities. In 2021, he opened Owamni by the Sioux Chef, which quickly won the James Beard Foundation Award for best new restaurant in the country. (Sherman himself was already a winner for his 2017 cookbook The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen.) Owamni offers a completely “decolonized” menu, using only ingredients that would have been found in North America prior to European colonization. That means no wheat flour, cane sugar, dairy, or even black pepper. Guests can expect seasonal dishes like elk poyha (which is similar to meatloaf) with wojapi (a Dakota berry sauce), sofkee (a corn porridge), dry-aged bison ribeye, and turkey tacos.
2. Sly Fox Den Too
Charlestown, Rhode Island
A member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, chef Sherry Pocknett made history in 2023 when she became the first Indigenous woman to win a James Beard Foundation Award, for best chef in the northeast. Her Rhode Island restaurant, Sly Fox Den Too, takes its name from Pocknett’s late father, Vernon, who went by Chief Sly Fox. Start your morning with the Indigenous, a breakfast sandwich on fry bread with venison sausage, two eggs, and home fries, or come back later in the day for quahog clam chowder or three-sisters succotash, served in a vegetable broth with smoked-birch sea salt. Venison and smoked local seafood (salmon, mussels, and scallops) feature heavily in the dinner menu, which is best washed down with a sassafras iced tea, made with the medicinal roots of a nearby tree.
Through the food served at Miijim, chef Bryce Stevenson hopes to tell the history of the Ojibwe people.
Courtesy of Miijim
3. Miijim
La Pointe, Wisconsin
One of the newest Native American–owned restaurants on the national culinary scene is Miijim, which opened in May 2023. Located on Madeline Island (also known as Mooningwanekaaning in Ojibwe), the restaurant is helmed by chef Bryce Stevenson, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The restaurant is a bit similar to Owamni in that there’s no gluten, dairy, or refined sugar on the menu. However, Miijim distinguishes itself by serving traditional Ojibwe dishes with a French flair, echoing the local Ojibwe history of marrying French settlers. Here, diners can feast upon decadent dishes like charcoal rabbit with French lentils and braised fennel, whitetail venison striploin, bison back ribs, and gamebird and red chile stew, made with braised goose, duck heart, and green gooseberries.
4. Bison Coffeehouse
Portland, Oregon
Portland’s only Native-owned coffeehouse serves beans from Native roasters across the United States. The café was a longtime dream for Loretta Guzman, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes of Fort Hall, Idaho, who visualized the idea for a community space representing her ancestry while battling stage-four cancer. The namesake animal occupies one wall of the shop, and it’s seen as a “symbol of resilience” to the Shoshone-Bannock—and especially to Guzman, who made a full recovery. In addition to serving expertly prepared lattes and her signature biscuits, Guzman uses her space—filled with Native American art—to raise awareness (and funds) for dozens of causes, including wild bison preservation and the water crisis at Warm Springs Reservation.
5. Black Sheep Cafe
Provo, Utah
Founded by Bleu Adams, a restaurateur of Navajo and Mandan/Hidatsa heritage, Utah’s Black Sheep Cafe serves Southwestern food with a Native twist and doubles as a gallery for Native American artists. Standouts include frybread tacos with green chili pork or red chili beef and burgers wrapped in nanniskadii (a tradition Navajo flatbread). If you see it on the menu, try Yanabah Navajo tea, an herbal tea made with the greenthread plant, which grows wild on the Navajo Reservation and is harvested in the fall and winter.
Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe recently reopened inside the National Museum of the American Indian.
Photo by NLM Photo/Shutterstock
6. Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe
Washington, D.C.
Taking its name from the word for “let’s eat” in the local Piscataway and Delaware language, the restaurant at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian reopened in May 2024 with a new culinary team and menu concept. Frybread and bison burgers will return from the old menu, alongside unique dishes like manoomin (wild rice) cakes with smoked candied salmon and Southwest lamb stew. The museum’s espresso bar also offers Native-inspired foods, such as posole, wild rice salad, and Hatch green chile corn muffins.
7. Cafe Ohlone
Berkeley, California
The Bay Area’s hippie capital sits on Ohlone territory, and in 2017, two Indigenous activists—Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino—founded mak-‘amham, an organization devoted to preserving Ohlone cuisine and language and raising mainstream awareness of their culture. A year later, they debuted Cafe Ohlone, which in its current iteration is located outside the Hearst Museum of Anthropology on the UC Berkeley campus. It’s a beautiful patio space surrounded by a garden of fragrant plants such as yerba buena, hummingbird sage, and artemisia, and from the spring through November, the cafe is open for special events and a few private lunches each month, showcasing seasonal ingredients. They sell out fast, so check reservations early!
8. Indian Pueblo Kitchen
Albuquerque, New Mexico
This Albuquerque restaurant is located inside the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, a gateway to New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos that includes a museum, exhibition galleries, and a shop selling jewelry, pottery, rugs, and more. Here, you can try dishes like Indian tacos, bison cabbage stew, and elk chili with blue-corn muffins—plus fusion experiments like blue-corn-battered pickles that have been marinated in black cherry Kool-Aid and then served with green chile ranch. Be sure to check out their drink menu for beers from Bow & Arrow Brewing Co., the first Native American woman–owned brewery in the country.
Tocabe’s Indian tacos can be topped with proteins ground or braised shredded bison.
Courtesy of Tocabe
9. Tocabe
Denver, Colorado
The only Native-owned restaurant in Denver, this fast-casual spot updates traditional recipes from co-owner Ben Jacobs’ grandmother, a tribal member of the Osage Nation. “Our goal is to create an understanding of what Native food is,” says Jacobs, who opened the eatery in 2008 with his former Denver University classmate Matt Chandra. Menu highlights include Posu Bowls, which include a choice of protein (such as braised shredded bison), beans, cheese, lettuce, and salsas atop either Native-grown wild rice or red quinoa and wheatberry. Bison ribs are cured for 24 hours, then glazed with a seasonal berry BBQ sauce and served with fry bread. Jacobs and his team proudly shout out where they’ve sourced ingredients, such as blue corn grown by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in southwestern Colorado and tepary beans grown on Arizona’s Gila River Reservation.
10. Off the Rez
Seattle, Washington
Mark McConnell grew up eating crispy, honey-laced fry bread prepared by his mother, a member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana, and he channeled those childhood memories into his Off the Rez food truck more than a decade ago. The truck, which serves Indian tacos, sweet frybreads, and more, is still going strong, but he also opened a brick-and-mortar Native American restaurant at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The café expands his menu with specialties like cedar blackberry iced tea, braised bison and wild rice bowls, and frybreads topped with seasonal berry jams.
11. Red Oak Steakhouse
Quapaw, Oklahoma
Occupying a full floor of the Downstream Casino, owned by the Quapaw Nation of Oklahoma, is one of the finest steakhouses in the middle of the country. Renovated in 2019, the Red Oak Steakhouse features a well-lit cabinet in which dry-aged beef hangs—diners can choose their cut, which is then placed on a cherry-wood-fired grill and cooked to their preference. Even better, all the hormone-free beef—and many of the ingredients served at the restaurant—were raised on-site, part of the Quapaw Nation’s commitment to centuries-old Native connections with the land. In recent years, they’ve added bison management, beehives, and a coffee-roasting facility to their operations.
The Frybread Lounge is Old Town Scottsdale’s first Indigenous-owned restaurant.
Courtesy of Frybread Lounge
12. The Frybread Lounge
Scottsdale, Arizona
This August, the team behind Scottsdale’s Native Art Market opened the city’s first Indigenous-owned restaurant, The Frybread Lounge. Chef Darryl Montana, who cut his culinary teeth at Owamni, is a member of the Tohono O’odham community, whose reservation extends from southern Arizona into the Mexican state of Sonora. Frybread forms the base of popular tacos here, which have toppings like bison birria and duck tinga, but they’re just one part of a menu that also includes blue corn mush with maple syrup and berries, elk pozole, and mesquite maple tepary beans, grown locally at the Akimel O’odham–owned Ramona Farms. The regional influence even extends onto the drinks menu, which includes spirits distilled in the Southwest and New Mexico Piñon Coffee (made with roasted pine nuts in the blend).
13. Wahpepah’s Kitchen
Oakland, California
This vibrantly decorated restaurant located near the Fruitvale BART Station opened in November 2022 and is run by Crystal Wahpepah, the first Native American chef ever featured on the Food Network’s Chopped. A member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, Wahpepah was born and raised in the Bay Area and ran a catering business for 12 years, preparing food for tech companies like Google and Twitter, before opening her own restaurant. At Wahpepah’s Kitchen, patrons can expect standout dishes like blueberry-infused bison meatballs, wild native mushroom and pumpkin seed mole, red chili rabbit tacos, and ground Ute blue corn mush for dessert. Expect to see lots of proteins like bison, salmon, and venison—all native to the region and selected by Wahpepah to honor the diet of the Ohlone people, the original inhabitants of the Bay Area.
Additional reporting by Nicholas DeRenzo. This article originally ran online in November 2015; it was most recently updated on October 10, 2024, to include current information.
