Cedar-braised bison over manoomin (hand-harvested wild rice) is the canonical Indigenous Minneapolis dish: gamy bison shoulder slow-cooked over wood, plated with smoky lake-grown rice.
The Twin Cities sit on Dakota land. Indigenous foodways were largely absent from the city's published restaurants until Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, opened Owamni on the Mississippi at Mill District in 2021. The kitchen runs a strict no-Old-World-ingredient program: no wheat, no dairy, no sugarcane, no chicken or pork. Bison, salmon, manoomin, sumac and tepary beans replace the European pantry. Owamni won the James Beard Best New Restaurant award in 2022. Manoomin is harvested by Anishinaabe families on lakes north of Mille Lacs each September, parched over wood smoke, then shipped statewide.
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