There’s a relatively new restaurant in Minneapolis, near Mill City and right by the shore of the Mississippi River, and it’s a restaurant dedicated to indigenous ingredients and foods traditionally eaten by various First Nations people. The menu changes every day, and the restaurant always uses locally-sourced ingredients—and from Native businesses and vendors (as much as possible, I’m not sure if they get ingredients only from those places).
The creator of the restaurant is an indigenous person themself. I don’t know all that much about them… I am only sharing the info that’s been shared with me. This comes mostly from the waiters (who are trained/taught about the things they serve & the restaurant’s mission statement) and local news sources.
The food was really good! If I wasn’t such a damned picky eater (and god how I wish I liked more things), I would’ve eaten pretty much everything, without hesitation. The dishes with ingredients I did like were amazing!
My mother and I went together for lunch, and we ordered bison tartare, a Red Lake trout dish, and the sweet potatoes. I liked all three of them, but I only tried a little of the fish (because it was mixed with beans, and texture is a big issue for me). It was some of the best fish I’ve ever tasted. Seriously.
The menu also has a combination of English and one of the languages from an indigenous tribe in the USA written on it. One side of our menu was Anishinaabe, and the other side was… Ojibwe or Dakota (because my memory is suddenly blanking and I’m pissed off about it, the experience was really cool and I want to remember, dammit).
Anyway, if you’re ever in Minneapolis, or the Twin Cities in general, I very strongly recommend seeing if you can get a table at Owamni. It deserves the hype it’s been getting, in my opinion.
