Owamni by The Sioux Chef
Native American restaurant · Downtown West ·
James Beard award winner serving Indigenous cuisine on the river
James Beard award winner serving Indigenous cuisine on the river
"Indigenous-focused and rooted in Minneapolis, this restaurant became our gathering place; we sat on the patio late into the night with the gushing Mississippi River as a natural score, passing dishes of smoked bison rib eye, maple-glazed pheasant, and hand-harvested wild rice. The menu channels Sean Sherman’s lens on Indigenous foodways, from a tlayuda with black beans, huitlacoche, and insect caviar to a sturgeon taco with pickled corn and tomato salsa." - Kate Nelson
"I experienced Sean Sherman’s Owamni as a place where wild rice is used inventively and seasonally—served, for example, with an elk patty, duck egg, and gravy for brunch—showcasing manoomin as both cultural ingredient and modern culinary element." - Nicholas DeRenzo
"One of Minneapolis’s most acclaimed spots is on the move: the James Beard Award–winning Indigenous restaurant from chef, author, and activist Sean Sherman is relocating from its Water Works Pavilion home to the Guthrie Theater’s riverfront dining space along the Mississippi River in spring 2026, while remaining open at its current location until the transition. Opened in 2021 under Sherman’s nonprofit NATIFS, it quickly became a national destination for a decolonized approach to food—avoiding wheat flour, cane sugar, and dairy while highlighting pre‑colonial ingredients from across North America—topping best‑of lists and earning the 2022 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant (after a two‑month closure in 2023 due to a fire). The Guthrie move nearly doubles the dining room and finally answers demand at a place where reservations are booked up immediately and the waitlist never ends. A larger kitchen will enable pre‑theater snacks, more seafood options, and later post‑show service; lunch and dinner will be served daily except Mondays, with about 60 new jobs expected. The relocation also advances NATIFS’s mission to restore Native foodways, keeping the restaurant connected to Owámniyomni (St. Anthony Falls), a site of deep significance to Dakota people." - Jeffy Mai
"More than a restaurant, Owamni is Sean Sherman’s decolonized interrogation of American food systems—eschewing wheat and dairy for Indigenous ingredients like bison, wild rice, salmon tartare, and duck spoonbread—asking diners to consider roots, land, and power as part of the meal." - Eater Staff
"Sean Sherman’s work, anchored by his award-winning Minneapolis restaurant Owamni and his nonprofit NATIFS, positions Indigenous foodways as both homage and a pathway forward: Owamni’s mission to revive and document North American Indigenous cuisine underpins Turtle Island’s regionally structured chapters, evocative landscape descriptions, and historical context that aim less at making every recipe cookable than at helping readers view where they live through an Indigenous lens." - Bettina Makalintal