In FERN’s latest story, FERN Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross talks with Sean Sherman, the Native American chef, author, and activist, about his restaurant Owamni and the politics of food. The interview was produced in partnership with Switchyard magazine as part of a special food issue.
“Owamni is a political restaurant, one that allows its patrons to believe they are confirmed anti-racist allies,” Ross writes. “To eat here is to get to be a good person, at least for a time, because what Sean Sherman is doing is a good thing. ‘We look at, you know, just showcasing the amazing diversity and flavor profiles of all the different tribes across North America, all the different regions, and really celebrating that and cutting away colonial ingredients,’ Sherman said in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2022. You can be a part of that by eating Sherman’s food, which, if you think in this way, allows you to buy into that celebration, and also implicitly — and at no extra cost beyond the price of a meal — rebuke the crimes of colonialism. This is much easier than attending a protest or writing a letter to your representative in Congress.
“This kind of politics is not exclusive to Owamni, nor is it the only reason one might eat there — reviewers have nearly universally praised the food, after all — nor is it necessarily fair to Sherman to view his project in this way. Le Bernardin in New York is a Michelin three-star French restaurant, with a French chef, serving French food, and France, as a nation, is eager to spread its culture, language, and politics around the globe, but particularly in places that were once its colonial possession, if they will allow them. But you would be hard pressed to find anyone trying to understand Eric Ripert’s food primarily as political, although it is every bit as much as Sherman’s.”