About Owamni
Sean Sherman — the Oglala Lakota chef who calls himself The Sioux Chef — built a restaurant with a premise so clear and so radical that it reshaped conversations about American cuisine the moment it opened. Owamni serves only pre-colonial ingredients: no wheat, no dairy, no cane sugar, no pork, no chicken, no ingredients that arrived on the North American continent after European contact in the 15th century. What remains is a larder that most American diners have never properly encountered — and Sherman transforms it with technique, intelligence, and genuine reverence.
The restaurant opened in 2021 inside the Water Works Pavilion, a restored 1870s building at the edge of Owamni Yomni — the Dakota name for St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River. The setting was intentional: the site of the falls holds deep cultural and spiritual significance for the Dakota people on whose land Minneapolis stands. In October 2025, Owamni announced its relocation in spring 2026 to the restaurant space on the main floor of the Guthrie Theater — one of Minneapolis's most dramatic riverfront buildings — which will give the restaurant an even more commanding stage for what Sherman is doing.
The menu has evolved from an à la carte format to a $175 tasting menu, reflecting the kitchen's increasing ambition and the seriousness with which Sherman approaches his mission. The food is genuinely unlike anything served anywhere else in America. Bison, walleye, wild rice, cedar, sumac, sunflower, maple, tepary beans — ingredients that predate colonisation, prepared with a skill that honours both their history and their flavour.
The Food
To eat at Owamni is to be educated as much as fed. Sherman's approach is not didactic — the food does not arrive with lectures — but the experience accumulates into something that reshapes your understanding of this land's culinary history. A smoked bison carpaccio. A walleye crudo dressed with cedar and sumac. Wild rice prepared with the care that a Parisian restaurant would bring to a risotto. Tepary bean preparations that reveal a legume tradition as sophisticated as any in the Mediterranean.
Wild rice is perhaps the restaurant's most eloquent ambassador: grain that sustained generations of Anishinaabe people across the Great Lakes region, prepared here in ways that demonstrate it is not a side dish but a centrepiece ingredient of extraordinary complexity. Sherman's treatment makes you wonder, without resentment, why this grain is not at the centre of every conversation about American cooking.
Why Owamni for a First Date
No restaurant in Minneapolis — or perhaps in the country — generates conversation on a first date more reliably than Owamni. Every dish provides a natural starting point: What is wild rice exactly? How do you make something taste this clean without butter? What does tepary mean? The setting, on the riverfront, provides a physical environment that is dramatic without being oppressive. A first date at Owamni signals that you are the kind of person who seeks out the genuinely new, who thinks about culture and history, and who chooses experiences over performances. That is an excellent first impression.
Why Owamni to Impress Clients
For the client who has eaten at every Michelin three-star in New York, London, and Tokyo, Owamni is the restaurant that stops them mid-conversation. They have not been here before. They cannot compare it to anything else they have eaten. The James Beard recognition is internationally understood. The setting, the concept, and the food itself all communicate that you know where to find the extraordinary — which is precisely what you want a client to think about you.
Location Note — 2026
Owamni is currently relocating from its Water Works Pavilion location to the Guthrie Theater at 818 S 2nd Street. The new space will open in spring 2026. Check owamni.com for current status and reservations before visiting.