Native American
restaurants are sourcing traditional foods from near and far.
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Frybread
serves as a base for Tocabe's Indian Taco. ADAM LARKEY
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IT'S EASY TO UNDERSTAND WHY fast-casual restaurants are popular
with diners. They're quick and often affordably priced, plus you
get to build a meal to your exact tastesthink Chipotle's burritos
or Shake Shack's burgers.
In Denver, the fast-casual capital, the concept has extended to
Venezuelan arepas, South Indian curry bowls, and American Indian
eats. The latter can be found at Tocabe, which serves build-your-own
Indian tacos, fry breads, nachos, salads, and posu bowls. ("Posu"
means "rice" in the Osage language.) Ordering one of the bowls feels
routine. There's the base (a scoop of wild rice or red quinoa with
wheat berry), the meat or veggies, the beans, some mixed greens,
the toppings (perhaps hominy and roasted green chiles), and a sauce.
But though it looks familiar, this bowl is not like others.
While much of the food world continues to rally around the concept
of "local first," Tocabe lives by another motto: Native first, local
second. In that one bowl, diners encounter wild rice from Red
Lake Nation Foods, wheat berries from Ramona
Farms, Séka Hills'
elderberries, and corn harvested by Bow
& Arrow Brand LLC, all tribal- or Native-operated enterprises.
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A
bowl from Tocabe might include ingredients from several Native-owned
companies. RACHEL GREIMAN
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When the first Tocabe location opened in December 2008, co-founders
and co-owners Ben Jacobs, a member of the Osage Nation, and Matt
Chandra had a simple goal: to serve indigenous foods and create
a community restaurant, one that recalled Grayhorse, an eatery opened
by Jacobs' parents in Denver in 1989. "There were only certain times
you could get our foodsat powwows, birthdays, [other] celebrations,"
Jacobs says. He wanted the dishes and ingredients of his childhood
to be more readily available, and to share the food traditions of
other Native American tribes, too. Now, with two Colorado locations
and a food truck, the duo's concept is likely the largest American
Indian restaurant chain in the country. "We're reclaiming foods
that have indigenous roots. We're reclaiming the story of them,"
Jacobs says.
Others are, too. In recent years, Native American eateries have
found their footing across the country, such as Café
Ohlone in California, Kai in Arizona, and Black Sheep Cafe in
Utah. There's an homage
to indigenous cuisines inside the National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, D.C., while Off
the Rez, which started as a food truck in Seattle, now has a
brick-and-mortar location in the Burke Museum.
While the mission of rewriting the narrative while serving delicious
food is clear, the process to fulfill it has been slow. Not every
proprietor needs or wants more than one location, but logistics
and financials can make it a difficult prospect for those who do
see a broader future. "It's a fine balance of being culturally driven,
culturally aware, and culturally appropriate while also being business-focused,"
Jacobs says. "We spend more money on a lot of ingredients. A gallon
of maple syrup could be $120."
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Bison
ribs on the grill at Tocabe come with a berry glaze. ADAM
LARKEY
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Patience is necessary. As is flexibility. Jacobs has many conversations
with Native purveyors and may wait years to gain access to an ingredient.
If Washington's Muckleshoot Tribe has huckleberries for sale, he'll
buy all he can and incorporate them into the barbecue sauce for
Tocabe's bison ribs. Or, he'll make the sauce with the 100 pounds
of chokecherries Red Lake Nation Foods has available, even if, realistically,
he could utilize a lot more. The restaurant ran through 14,000 pounds
of pinto beans last year. Jacobs would like to purchase them from
New Mexico's Navajo Pride, but the farm doesn't ship in such large
volumes yet, and he's not able to drive to and from the property
every month. Tocabe also buys most of its produce locally, but not
from Native farms. Jacobs has discussed the prospect with Ute Mountain
Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise in southwestern Colorado,
but growing produce is not within their capacity yet. (The farm
does, however, grow the non-GMO corn Tocabe has used as a salad
topping and in blue corn bread.)
For its part, Bow & Arrow Brand (the Farm & Ranch Enterprise's
retail and wholesale arm) hopes to expand its retail presence in
the coming years. However, shelf space is competitive and its locationa
couple of hundred miles away from the nearest big citiesadds
to the challenges. Operations manager Simon Martinez says success
depends on publicizing the company's narrative. "It's about where
it's grown. Who's growing it," he says. "Ben was one of our first
customers. He's able to share that story."
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Matt
Chandra and Ben Jacobs opened the first Tocabe in 2008. RACHEL
GREIMAN
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Some Native-owned restaurants go beyond sourcing from Native purveyors
and instead rely on more traditional methods. Vincent Medina, a
member of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area,
and Louis Trevino, a member of the Ohlone Rumsen community, co-founded
Café Ohlone. They hand-gather their ingredientsseasonal
items that are indigenous to the Ohlone people and are found along
California's East Bay and in Carmel Valleywith help from their
extended families. Even salt is harvested using age-old methods.
"[We want to] eat the same foods our ancestors ate. Taste those
same ingredients," Medina says. "This place is old. It's been settled
for thousands of years, and the first people here are still present.
There's an established way of eating here."
Medina and Trevino sometimes have to supplement what they've picked
themselves with farmers' market purchases because urbanization has
made it more difficult to source certain ingredients. Acorns"our
most traditional food," Medina saysused in acorn bread or
bisque have to be gathered from oak groves farther east, because
they can't responsibly gather the amounts they need in urban East
Bay. "We would, in the future, like to expand," Medina says. "We
want to be able to expand a presence within our homeland, as well
as show people this is Ohlone land." But doing so in a sustainable
way is complicated. "We never want to overgather or act in a way
irresponsible to these very delicate ecosystems," he notes.
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Foraging
still accounts for many of the ingredients used at Café
Ohlone. CAFÉ OHLONE
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Sharing dishes like Indian lettuce and sorrel salad with elderberries,
venison meatballs, and yerba buena and bay laurel sorbet with the
public is an opportunity to magnify Ohlone culture and ensure these
foods are sustained in their communities. Expansion will only be
possible if the duo can maintain the educational aspects of their
intimate brunches and dinners, currently served in the back of a
Berkeley
bookstore.
Many of these ingredients have been part of people's diets for
generations, but Native purveyors say they are seeing a broader
resurgence. "It's a renaissance for a lot of our tribes across the
country, as people are finally getting a voice. And that translates
into the food as well," says Brandy Button, whose parents, Ramona
and Terry, founded Ramona Farms on the Gila River Indian Reservation
in Arizona in the 1970s. (Ramona's heritage is Akimel O'otham and
Tohono O'odham.) The farm, which is certified organic, is independently
owned and doesn't receive any government, tribal, or grant money.
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Ramona
and Terry Button have farmed traditional foods since the 1970s.
RAMONA FARMS
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Though its retail list has steadily grownand includes Arizona's
Whole Foods outpostsRamona's staff still rely on traditional
methods, such as roasting and drying corn out in the open. As an
agricultural producer, Ramona's heirloom tepary beans, garbanzo
beans, corn, and wheat are at the mercy of Mother Nature's whims,
but the Buttons have found being honest about what they have in
stock and what quantities they can realistically produce has allowed
them to build relationships and grow, while remaining true to their
heritage. "These are nutritional foods. These are our ancestors'
foods. There's nothing written in the history books about it, and
that's why it's my passion to bring them back," Ramona says.
A decade ago, in 2010, Tocabe's founders told
The Atlantic they hoped to have 13 locations "in the near future."
That plan hasn't yet come to fruition. While Jacobs still plans
to spread Tocabe beyond Colorado, he's not in a rush. As indigenous
foods grow more popularand healthy, ancestral ways of eating
continue to trendAmerican Indian eateries and purveyors are
working together to find a path forward. "It's a long, slow process,"
Jacobs says. But, he adds, "We are just as present and forward-moving
as any other culture. We, the Native culinary world, are developing
what the voice of Native foods is so it's not another story told
by someone else."
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