Insight
Sean Sherman: Restaurants are the worst business model
“Restaurants are really the worst business model, and you have to just constantly keep up with the rising cost of food.”
Assertion Supported
Sean Sherman: Food access correlates with 60% tribal diabetes rates
“Now that I do a lot of work in food sovereignty and health and nutrition, I just look back, and I see a lot of those issues as a direct, you know, correlation of why we have upwards to 60% type two diabetes in some tribal communities because of that food acces…”
Insight
Sean Sherman: Indigenous peoples globally had blueprints for sustainable living
“I realized that indigenous peoples on a global scale, basically had the blueprint to live sustainably with the world around them, and there's just so much plant diversity in indigenous diets.”
Disclosure
Sean Sherman: Indigenous cuisine aims for modern evolution, not recreating the past
“Absolutely, because I wasn't trying to recreate something from the past. I was like definitely interested in learning techniques that people had and were utilizing. But I was really more interested in bringing this into the modern day and creating a sense of w…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sean Sherman knew hundreds of European recipes but under 10 Lakota recipes
“I could name hundreds of European recipes off the top of my head, and I could only name less than 10 Lakota recipes that weren't, I didn't have influence on them, you know.”
Disclosure
Sean Sherman's indigenous food philosophy cuts colonial ingredients like wheat and dairy
“Some of the philosophy I created around what I was doing was to showcase what our modern indigenous foods one of the first steps was just cutting away colonial ingredients, and really focusing on indigenous ingredients. So I cut out things that didn't exist he…”
Disclosure
Sean Sherman: Owamni is strictly gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, soy-free, and pork-free
“Because at the restaurant, we follow that philosophy, and we're gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, soy free, pork free, it's like what every diet's trying to get to, you know.”
Assertion Supported
Sean Sherman: Minnesota wild rice is hand-harvested and distinct from commercial rice
“So, cause we have the true wild rice that grows here in Minnesota. That's completely different from any of the black rice that you see in the markets at all. Cause all this stuff is hand harvested. People are harvesting in canoes. We're buying directly from in…”
Disclosure
Sean Sherman launched The Sioux Chef with $5,000 and 420 credit score
“When I quit my last chef job and started the sous chef, my life savings was a Less than 5000 dollars, and my credit score was sitting at a comfy four 20, I believe, at the time.”
Assertion Partly supported
Sean Sherman: The Sioux Chef had Kickstarter's most supported restaurant campaign
“At the time we were, out of all the restaurants on Kickstarter, I think we were the third most successful at that 150,000 dollar mark. But we also had the most supporters just because we had it, we did it very organically, and like our average was less than 60…”
Assertion Supported
Sean Sherman: Food Lab sent 10,000 meals to Minnesota tribes during pandemic
“We got a small group of our team back together in our kitchen and started doing food relief all through twenty-twenty feeding a lot of homeless encampments, and then as the winter came around, we started sending food directly to tribal communities, so at the h…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sean Sherman: 70% of Owamni's staff identified as Indigenous at opening
“And 70% of our staff identified as indigenous, which was amazing for us, especially in a city like Minneapolis, which isn't that diverse.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sean Sherman: Owamni has been sold out every night since 2021 opening
“We've been blessed that we've been sold out every single night since we opened the doors in July of 21.”
Disclosure
Sean Sherman: NATIFS plans Food Labs in Anchorage, Bozeman, and Rapid City
“We're already planting seeds to open up more food labs right now in Anchorage, Alaska, Bozeman, Montana, and Rapid City, South Dakota to start with, and we have a whole bunch of other cities interested that will soon follow”
Disclosure
Sean Sherman bypassed culinary school to study textbooks while a sous chef
“I'd thought about going to cooking school for a hot second, but I was already a sous chef at that time period, and then so I literally just bought the books and just studied those, you know, and because I was in the kitchens all the time, I just kind of, you k…”
Sean Sherman