With one of the most notoriously difficult reservations to get in the country that a quip about it made it into the national TV series “Unprisoned,” Owamni by The Sioux Chef has a proportionally busy kitchen– in part due to its surprisingly small footprint. 

An average day regularly brings 350 guests through Owamni’s doors, all seeking what is known as the finest Native American cuisine in the country. But Corn Chowder with Dumplings and Jam for hundreds requires a lot of corn stock. Bison birra tacos, a fan favorite, means immense quantities of slowly simmered bison stock– everything needing to be stored in a 12X12 foot walk-in cooler. Until recently.

Now that the Indigenous Food Lab Market is up and running in full swing, the Indigenous Food Lab team has been able to step in to provide a major lift towards the smooth running of Owamni kitchen operations, the restaurant under the NATIFS umbrella as of September 2023.

Owamni executive chef Lee Garman explains an average day in the restaurant’s kitchen before Indigenous Food Lab stepped in several months ago to assist heavily with production: 

“Prep cooks would go into the walk-in and just get lost,” he explained, because not only did all of the prep for the day’s orders need to be kept cold there, but all of the incoming raw ingredients were stored in the same space, with just one double door refrigerator as ancillary space. This also meant that stock, soup, and foundation ingredient prep could not be done days in advance, the way it is in most extremely busy restaurants, but instead every single day– which takes a big toll on labor costs and pressures on workers. It also limits the creative output of the kitchen.

“Not having to prep 132 quarts of soup a week gives us the opportunity to do, for instance, cured things,” he explains. “We have fermented items now– stuff that takes a lot more time– we cure whole egg yolks; hot chili maple; just things that take more time and keep us in that fine dining category.” 

The work is an important challenge for the kitchen at Indigenous Food Lab too. 

“To make the demi glaze, we were cooking about 150 pounds of bison bones a week,” explains IFL Culinary Leader Ismael Popoca Aguilar. Meaning, the kitchen can order 600 pounds of bison bones at one time, store them in the freezer, and rotate them on a schedule that works for everyone– a previous impossibility for Owamni.

And it’s not simply storage, but also labor and firepower that Indigenous Food Lab is massively contributing– taking some of the heat off of Owamni.

“We have two tilt skillets (a very large, versatile braising pan capable of cooking up to 40 gallons of food at a time) two to six burner stoves, two combi ovens (a versatile oven that can cook with steam, hot air convection or both) plus a heated holding cabinet. So we have a lot of cooking power here.”

And unlike other food service operations of similar sizes and popularity, it’s important to remember that Indigenous Food Lab and Owamni are fulfilling crucially important roles in their missions. The two entities combined employ over 100 people, and about 75 percent of them identify as Indigenous. Owamni prioritizes purchasing from Indigenous producers and showcases true North American Indigenous foods and culture.

“Owamni keeps a lot of people working, especially people in our Indigenous community who just otherwise would not be doing something as cool or as meaningful as this– cooking foods from their own culture,” says Lee. “Just the innovation we are able to accomplish here– it’s just extremely exciting and awesome that we get to do this.”