The American palate is expanding. Over the last few decades, formerly exotic foods like raw fish have gone from “gross” to grocery store staple: According to market research by IBISWorld, the sushi industry, for example, has grown 2.5 percent every year since 2009. Yet there’s one key cuisine that has somehow gotten lost along the way — and we don’t even need to go far to find it. The cuisine? Native American — perhaps the most truly local style of cooking around.
Though there are restaurants that focus on certain styles of Native American food — from frybread houses to fine dining — they’re few and far between. Even New York City, one of the culinary capitals of the United States, has boasted only one such restaurant, the now-defunct Silverbird, which opened in the mid-’80s. It says something that one of the few Native restaurants on the East Coast is housed in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.