A native menu
Located in the heart of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Owamni was designated in June “Best New Restaurant in America” by the James Beard Foundation, an association that celebrates the cream of American chefs. As Thanksgiving approaches, November 24, a national holiday that some native (Amerindian) activists experience as a “day of mourning” commemorating the conquest of their lands, chef Sean Sherman promotes more than ever, through his menu, the culture of his ancestors. The name of the place he opened in the summer of 2021, with his now ex-girlfriend Dana Thompson, is a tribute to Owámniyomni, the village created by the Dakota and Anishinaabe tribes who were on these lands before the erection of the city. The menu features what chef Sean Sherman calls a “decolonized kitchen”.
A very “Sioux” chef
Ambassador of the “new native american cuisine”, Where “indigenous cuisine”, a growing culinary movement, Owamni boss Sean Sherman, 48, is known as “the Sioux chief”, the nickname he gave himself and which plays with the homophony with “sub-head”. He grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Thanks to his grandparents, attached to tradition, he learned to hunt as a child, killed his first pheasant before he was 10 years old and left, in his spare time, to collect wild turnips, berries and other plants in the wild. the family cooks according to the ancestral recipes of its people. In 2017, he wrote a cookbook dedicated to the gastronomy of Native American tribes, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (University of Minnesota Press, untranslated).
A locavore gastronomy
Supplied by local and primarily native producers, Owamni honors the traditional ingredients of indigenous food. A far cry from the fried bread and canned fruit in syrup, widely consumed on the reservations, and which have caused this ethnic minority to suffer today from one of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. from the country. In his recipes, Sherman therefore does without wheat flour, cane sugar and dairy products. He cooks game, bison, insects – “We use nearly 8 kilos of locusts per week”he recently declared to public radio NPR –, and many rare products, such as the manoomin, a variety of wild rice harvested by hand in the Great Lakes region.
An activist restaurant
To accompany the 500 meals prepared at each service, the chef selects wines produced by women and people of color, prioritizing natives based in California, Mexico and New Zealand. Nearly two-thirds of Owamni’s staff are Native Americans. The address attracts committed local celebrities, such as novelist Louise Erdrich, who owns a bookstore in Minneapolis. At the entrance to the restaurant, a red neon announces “You are on Native Land”. During the marches following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Sean Sherman helped the Indigenous Food Lab to prepare and distribute free meals to protesters. It says it pays its employees decent wages and offers health insurance to anyone who works more than 30 hours a week.
Why aren’t there more native cuisine restaurants in the United States? A TED talk (in English without subtitles) by Sean Sherman aka “the Sioux chef”