Obviously, there’s Mexican, however near or far from authentic its many incarnations may be. But what about the cuisine of the indigenous peoples north of the Rio Grande?
It’s something that I’ve been wondering for years. I’m from Canada, live in the States, and have travelled all over these countries. I’ve lived near reservations and in some of the most so-called cosmopolitan cities in North America. Montreal has two Ethiopian restos fer cryin’ out loud. Seattle (my current home) has Thai on every street corner. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to native was a hamburger made from bison. In an English pub.
What did Native Americans eat before Columbus? Where are the entrepeneurs willing to exploit this niche? The cuisine of every other culture has been corrupted for our safe consumption, why not this?
When I lived in Salt Lake City there was a restaurant stand at Trolley Corners called “Yah Tah Hey Navaho Tacos”. Pretty good Native American Grub. I’ve also had Amerindian food like Corn Soup at the Otsiningo Powwow in Binghamton, N.Y. There’s no reason that you couldn’t have more Native American restaurants, or a sit-down place, but I’ve never seen one.
Well, in Milwaukee there is a restaurant that has a few native american items on the menu, fry-bread is the only one I recall in particular. And one may spend time on the Hopi, Navaho and Laguna reservations out west and get local native dishes from the menu. But native american cuisine was really quite varied from coast to coast, so there really is no one standard for american indian cuisine. And much of what they do eat represents what was available to them after they relocated to reservations, and not what their diet was really like before
Just outside of Calgary there is a Native restaurant called the Chief Chiniki restaurant. There is also a small amount of Native food served at the Stampede each year.
Yeah, I should have noted that in my OP, but that hasn’t stopped the plague of Chinese restos. Look at the size of that country.
Do they even know what a chicken ball is in China?
I guess my point is, I haven’t seen any place that even uses Native American (is it capitalised or not?) cuisine as a theme, regardless of its authenticity.
Have you ever eaten there? Every time that I drove back to Calgary from Banff or Canmore I’ve seen their billboard and wanted to stop. Nobody I have ever been with has wanted to stop. So I am curious if the food is any good.
I did a quick search and found a dozen or so cook books on Native American cooking so it can’t be because of a lack of dishes to offer. Of course some dishes require deer or bison meat which is not easy to get these days.
My uneducated guess is that there are three main reasons you don’t see Native American resturants:
Native American dishes, while probably quite tasty, aren’t well known by most non-native americans. How many can you name off the top of your head?
Native Americans in general wouldn’t be big on promoting their culture in such a crass or commercial way. I’m not sure why, but that’s my guess.
There isn’t a large pool of ready customers eager to buy their products. No demand… no supply.
I think it’s a chicken and egg problem… there aren’t a lot of resturants because people don’t know about these foods and people don’t know about these foods because there aren’t a lot of resturants. Would a farmer in North Dakota know anything about Mexican food if there wasn’t a Taco Bell around? Think about it…
IMO, the food was very greasy, somewhat bland, and not much different from standard greasy spoon fare. Actually, I only ate there once because of the grease factor.
There are no Aboriginal restaurants in Australia, either - at least according to my Aussie co-worker with whom I was discussing this very same subject just yesterday, coincidentally enough.
There’s one in Mexican Hat, UT - the San Juan Inn and trading post. There’s a good bit of local Native fare on the menu anyway. Pretty good food for the middle of nowhere.
I ate in a Navajo restaurant not long ago in Gallup, New Mexico. Great red chile with pork, mutton stew, Navajo tacos (beans, tomatoes, etc. on fry bread). I’ve also lived on a Pueblo Indian reservation and ate lots of fresh roast corn and homemade bread, baked in outdoor “horno” ovens. Ask a Spaniard and they will most likely tell you that Mexican food IS Native American food, too.
I’ve stopped at Chief Chiniki’s a few times, including once or twice on my touring bicycle. It’s on an Indian reservation and the locals coming and going are a cowboy hat/pickup truck/horse kind of culture.
I would call the cuisine in the restaurant five-star truck stop. Coffee, pies, buffalo burgers, chili, steaks, and a “traditional” (post European contact) type of biscuit called bannock. It’s a very nice restaurant.
I’ve never seen a Native American restaurant either. It’s an interesting question as to why American natives don’t use the restaurant as a foothold business like Chinese, Vietnamese, and Mexican immigrants have. In the past five years here in the Southeast, Mexican restaurants have sprung up like mushrooms, and they offer a hub especially to young guys who work pretty grueling hours to get a leg up money-wise. This spills over to non-Mexican kitchens as well. If La Migra were to raid every restaurant in the Raleigh-Durham, NC, area, nobody would be eating out this weekend. As Jill says, Mexican food is Native American food, at least of the Southwest.
A fine cookbook is Native American Cooking by Lois Ellen Frank. It’s Southwestern, and features the Three Sisters; corn, squash, and beans. It also has recipes for frybread, adobe bread, Hopi piki bread, game meats, and cactus.
Oh I dunno about that. Every November the men in Mrs. Rastahomie’s family (excluding “that city boy” she’s married to) bring home all kinds of deer meat. And at The Sayersbrook Ranch you can get all the bison meat you’d ever want.
[funny story]
I once had a preaching ministry at a small church on the Missouri/Kansas border, and one of the members was a full-blooded Cherokee. Well, I get to talking to her (Anglo) husband about deer season, and she informs me that Cherokees don’t generally eat deer. I asked, “Why? Is it some sort of tribal or religious thing?” She said, “No. Deer is gross. Ewww! :eek:”
When was the last time you saw a restaurant that didn’t serve Native American food? Potatoes, squash, corn, turkey… I realize that these aren’t necessarily prepared and served the same way that they were in 1491, but American food is mostly distinguished by the presence of these exotic animals and vegetables.
Stopped at a restaurant run by Native Americans in New Mexico on a reservation last year.
I had a combo plate of what they claimed was their native food- it was very similar to Mexican combos. My partner ordered Beef and Frybread- the funny thing was that the Beef was identical to Beef stew that we have in England- it could have come from an ‘English’ recipe. Looking into it on return, I found that much south-west native cookery was taken from the Spanish and traditional methods of cooking were submerged by the European interlopers. Even Frybread was credited to the Spanish!
I’d have to second Chronos, in the US, we’re already eating “Indian” food, thus no restaurants specific to that ethinic group. Example… http://www.kstrom.net/isk/food/recipes.html