A national awakening to the Great Plains' gourmet bounty

A national awakening to the Great Plains' gourmet bounty Greg Vaughn/Alamy The vast prairie is hailed as America's breadbasket Once overlooked, new restaurants are embracing exciting foods native to the prairie, as well as nearly forgotten Indigenous recipes, cooking techniques and ingredients. The Washington Post/Getty Images At Owamni, chef Sean Sherman spotlights the overlooked cuisines of Native American cultures On the forefront of a national awakening to the prairie's gourmet potential is Owamni by the Sioux Chef, a Minneapolis restaurant awarded the 2022 James Beard Foundation's Best New Restaurant. Owamni's team crafts artful plates using the prairie's wild tubers, herbs, game and mushrooms – the staple foods of nomadic plains communities like the Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne – and eschews ingredients introduced to America after European contact. As the day's last light morphed the grasslands into a sea of gold, I ruminated on my growing list of prairie restaurants for future Heartland visits: Nonesuch in Oklahoma City, reimagining the possibilities of prairie ingredients with the avant-garde techniques of molecular gastronomy; Emmer and Rye in Texas, where chef Kevin Fink alchemizes biblical grains into luxurious pastas; and, just a few blocks from where I was sitting, Sanaa's Gourmet, a James Beard-nominated restaurant helmed by Sanaa Abourezk, a transplant to South Dakota from Syria.