Milwaukee Public Museum is offering a unique event to honor Native American Heritage Month (November) – a dinner catered by Ketapanen Kitchen, Chicago’s first Indigenous pop-up kitchen and catering company. The meal, scheduled for Thursday Nov. 14 (5:30-9 p.m.) at the museum, will feature a blend of traditional and modern Indigenous cuisine – “modern Indigenous” is the label Ketapanen’s co-founder uses. “I take ingredients from every [Native] region and kind of melt them together, making sure that they [use] indigenous ingredients,” says Executive Chef Jessica Walks First (Pamonicutt).
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
This dinner will feature a harvest salad; braised bison with blackberry mole; sage and sumac roasted chicken; Manoomin wild rice, berries and maple; roasted brussels sprouts with squash and cranberries; pumpkin cornbread; Chantilly cream cake with Medicine Berries – all served with seasonal lemonade.
Chef Walks First, a member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, will also speak at the dinner. As a Native chef, she sees education and advocacy as a crucial part of her work: “I’ve done these dinners all over the place, and usually about 75% of people who attend them either have very little or no knowledge of Native foods [and] have never experienced a presentation of Native foods, even though they probably eat them every day. I think they walk away with a better understanding of our culture as well, not just the food.”
Chef Walks First served as a guest judge on “Top Chef: Wisconsin” – episode 9, “The Good Land.” Of the experience, she says, “That was the very first representation [of Native American cuisine] that’s really out there on a national [level]. It was a very fruitful experience for that alone.”
Bookending the meal will be a presentation about the Indigenous art installation The Gathering Place, which will be positioned in the outdoor plaza of Milwaukee Public Museum’s future home. It will serve as a space to welcome visitors and honor the cultural heritage of Wisconsin’s Native tribes. The installation’s creator, Germantown’s Mark Fischer of the Oneida Nation, will lead the presentation.
Guests will also have the opportunity to explore the museum’s second-floor exhibits after the meal.
Members $100, nonmembers $125. For more info and to make a reservation, click here.
