OWAMNI BY THE Sioux Chef, the modern Indigenous restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, sits along the Mississippi River atop the ruins of an 1800s-era flour mill. Chef and owner Sean Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, opened Owamni in July of 2021 to promote the foodways of the Ojibwe and Dakota tribes with a menu of precolonial ingredients indigenous to North America.
The dining room has clean lines of blond wood, black steel, and gray brick. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the Mississippi River and St. Anthony Falls, a sacred site known as Owámniyomni in Dakota. The bar seating gives diners a view into the heart of the open kitchen where a dozen or so cooks, waiters, and bartenders work in quiet harmony.