# Where are all of the Native American restaurants? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 20, 2013, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787 "2013-12-20T01:49:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![beandog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beandog/32/7604_2.png) [@beandog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beandog)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/21 "2013-12-20T05:05:50Z")
The restaurant in the Monument Valley visitor’s center on the Navajo Nation serves Navajo food - and not just fry bread tacos, but lots of meat dishes and soups. I remember it being very good. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/22 "2013-12-20T05:09:48Z")
While restaurants exist, I think you’d be better served going to a powwow or other festival. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/23 "2013-12-20T13:21:27Z")
It doesn’t exist any more, but there used to be a **Yah - Ta- Hey Navaho Taco** place at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City. Trolley’s been considerably shaken up since I left, ages ago, and almost everything is different, so I’;m not surprised that it’s gone from there. A quick internet search shows it hasn’t relocated elsewhere in the city, though. There are other Navaho restaurants, though, there and elsewhere. I see there’s a **Navajo Hogan** on 33rd South: [http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/54/591483/restaurant/South-Salt-Lake/Navajo-Hogan-Salt-Lake-City](http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/54/591483/restaurant/South-Salt-Lake/Navajo-Hogan-Salt-Lake-City) ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/24 "2013-12-20T13:54:01Z")
There used to be a restaurant (now defunct, I believe) in Cherokee, NC that sold “Native American” cuisine. Apparently, according to my Cherokee friends, it wasn’t authentic and it was priced for tourists. I did eat rattlesnake there once, but my guess is that rattlesnake is not a common staple for the Cherokee. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/25 "2013-12-20T13:58:51Z")
> [@apollonia](#): > > There used to be an excellent restaurant in Vancouver called Liliget Feast House, owned and operated by a really amazing Gitksan woman. I believe it’s closed now, though, or so I hear? Anyway, it served only Aboriginal foods, mostly Coast Salish. I still remember the whipped sopalali berries. It was pretty cool. [It is closed now.](http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-2801378-liliget_feast_house_vancouver-i) Apparently it went down hill fast after her daughter took it over. ---
**Author:** ![MickNickMaggies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/59ef9b/32.png) [@MickNickMaggies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MickNickMaggies)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/26 "2013-12-20T14:33:42Z")
> [@beandog](#): > > The restaurant in the Monument Valley visitor’s center on the Navajo Nation serves Navajo food - and not just fry bread tacos, but lots of meat dishes and soups. I remember it being very good. Very good, in my opinion. My husband could happily live off that menu but for one thing- the Rez is dry. I, on the other hand, could live off the fry bread alone. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/27 "2013-12-20T14:48:53Z")
There was a Bison meat place in Ruston WA (never went in - that stuff is like biting into a blood clot for me), and, over along Hood Canal on the reservation, places with fry bread w/ honey butter. Not as nasty as a Krispy Kreme, and just as good as New Orleans beignet. ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/28 "2013-12-20T17:05:07Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > There used to be a restaurant (now defunct, I believe) in Cherokee, NC that sold “Native American” cuisine. Apparently, according to my Cherokee friends, it wasn’t authentic and it was priced for tourists. I did eat rattlesnake there once, but my guess is that rattlesnake is not a common staple for the Cherokee. My wife and went to diner in Cherokee that had a Native American buffet night with stuff like rabbit, buffalo, trout and other items native to the Americas. Have no idea how authentically Cherokee that stuff is though. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/29 "2013-12-20T17:32:21Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > However, if you look at accounts of the foods of North American native cultures at first contact, as **Shagnasty** says they would still have been rather basic: various cornmeal preparations, beans, squash, grilled or stewed meats and fish. Most North American cultures didn’t go in for elaborate preparation of food, or use many spices or condiments. > > In contrast native Mexican and Caribbean cookery (the basis of Jamaican cuisine) used chiles and many other spices. In fact the Seneca Casino restaurant was called The Three Sisters, the name they gave to corn, beans, and squash, the staples of their diet. It still is, but the menu is basically identical to Chili’s or Applebees. They easily could have updated the dishes to modern tastes. Nobody really expects any other type of restaurant to feature recipes unchanged from peasant days. Modern corn, beans, and squash have been subject to 500 years of cultivation anyway. I bet a pre-contact Seneca would hardly recognize the taste. > [@](#): > > Despite the presence of many immigrants from Scandinavian countries in the US, you won’t fine many Scandinavian restaurants outside a few areas where these nationalities are concentrated. Scandinavian cuisine beyond Swedish meatballs has never become popular with the wider culture, perhaps because it’s also generally bland. We’re deeply into a period where spices are the rage, but that’s something brand new in my adult lifetime. German restaurants were once common, and even upscale, and their cuisine is hardly spicy. English-style pubs are everywhere and English food is notoriously bland - they go to Indian restaurants when they want spices. Cuisines that feature spicy foods, like Mexican and Asian, were literally unknown when I was growing up. Chinese restaurants were Cantonese, filled with dishes that were basically bland American, like chop suey. What we think of as American food is itself pretty bland. Blandness has always sold well in America. Think of a classic Thanksgiving dinner. It’s not only bland but entirely in shades of beige. 🙂 (And a modern-day turkey looks and tastes nothing like a wild turkey of that era.) I would explain the presence or lack of certain ethnic cuisines culturally by the size of the immigrant population and the tendency of that population to start restaurants. It wasn’t that lots of Scandinavians opened restaurants but saw them fail because nobody liked the food. They simply didn’t open restaurants. I don’t know why but I’m sure some sociologists have studied it. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/30 "2013-12-20T18:23:09Z")
The restaurant at the Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota specializes in Native food. Here’s a link to their [Laughing Water Restaurant](http://crazyhorsememorial.org/our-campus/the-laughing-water-restaurant/); they show stew and tacos, but they also have bison burgers etc. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/31 "2013-12-20T18:24:31Z")
The Mrs. and I enjoyed some yummy O’odham dishes at [The Desert Rain Cafe](http://www.desertraincafe.com/) in Sells, AZ. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/32 "2013-12-20T18:37:54Z")
\Tangent A great article recently on Scandanavian foo - with recipes I intend to make over the holidays: [New Nordic Is Cool, But Old Scandinavian Food Holds Its Own : NPR](http://www.npr.org/2013/11/13/244600582/new-nordics-cool-but-old-scandinavian-food-holds-its-own) (Anybody know where I can find enough rose hips?) /tangent My Thanksgiving dressing recipe is supposedly Potomac in origin. Corn meal pre-roasted and then combined with game broth, oysters, slow-roasted [ramps](http://rickyracer.hubpages.com/hub/Ramps---West-Virginias-Wild-Onions) if you can get’em, leeks and elephant garlic if you can’t, and wild parsley and/or dandelion greens. Mmmmmm-mmm! Don’t know if those ingredients ever really made it to one geographic area though. Ramps grow in the high hills, oysters not so much. . . ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/33 "2013-12-20T19:15:17Z")
My wife and I ate at a restaurant in Cherokee three or four years ago that advertised native American cuisine. I got an Indian taco–fry bread with beans, cheese, and meat. It was one of the five worst restaurant meals I’ve ever eaten, as if the cook was actively malicious toward diners. There used to be a restaurant in Asheville called Spirits on the River that served a variety of wild meats, native-American style. I was a pescatarian at the time, so my options were limited, but I heard other folks say it was quite good. Five years or so ago we ate at a restaurant on a Navajo reservation near the Grand Canyon. I got a Navajo taco there, and it was middling–not great, but okay. I can see how if it were done well it’d be delicious, this one just wasn’t done all that well. And then some twenty years ago I ate at the Pueblo Cultural Center in NM (Albequerque, maybe?). I got a bean burrito. You gotta understand, I love me some bean burritos, I eat at least one every week, they’re one of my favorite foods. This was the best goddamned bean burrito I’ve ever eaten in my life–decades later, I still tear up at the memory of its deliciousness. ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/34 "2013-12-20T21:31:33Z")
I spend a lot of time in Oakland, and I have to tell you, what I call [The Oakland Oak](http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd69/brujaja/tree-oakland-oak422_zpsb3dd88be.jpg) (it’s an oak tree right next to City Hall) produces some fat, luscious-looking acorns. I mean, you know, from a healthy-looking-fat-nutmeat perspective. I have always wanted to try acorn bread, but I understand you have to leave the shelled acorns in a running stream for a week, to get the tannins out. Maybe there’s another way? ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/35 "2013-12-20T21:34:37Z")
Would Indian Fry Bread be of Navaho origin? What about the pre-reservation Sioux, like in Dances with Wolves, would they have eaten Fry Bread? ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/36 "2013-12-20T21:38:18Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > The restaurant at the Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota specializes in Native food. Here’s a link to their [Laughing Water Restaurant](http://crazyhorsememorial.org/our-campus/the-laughing-water-restaurant/); they show stew and tacos, but they also have bison burgers etc. I wouldn’t exactly call that authentic. Not a lot of salmon in South Dakota and I doubt the Sioux of old were making bison burgers. Not to mention, you can get bison burgers pretty much anywhere in western South Dakota. ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/37 "2013-12-20T21:40:33Z")
> [@AppallingGael](#): > > Bisonburgers are all I recall from the menu (bison had largely recovered from near-extinction by then. Or maybe they’ve slid back, and that’s why the restaurant isn’t around anymore). Still plenty of bison around. As a matter of fact, there is an annual [auction](http://gfp.sd.gov/state-parks/directory/custer/events/bison-auction/default.aspx) in Custer State Park in South Dakota to thin the herd. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/38 "2013-12-20T21:48:30Z")
You can get local bison from Upstate New York. Of course, you can also get local ostrich. Local doesn’t mean what it used to. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/39 "2013-12-20T21:50:21Z")
> [@HubZilla](#): > > Would Indian Fry Bread be of Navaho origin? > > What about the pre-reservation Sioux, like in Dances with Wolves, would they have eaten Fry Bread? I always thought it was a relatively modern invention (i.e. last 150 years or so.) It’s made from wheat flour after all. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787/40 "2013-12-20T22:03:28Z")
Well, we put corn syrup in everything nowadays. Maize is quintessentially Native American. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-of-the-native-american-restaurants/676787.md?page=3)