48 Hours in Minneapolis: Owamni's Indigenous Tasting Menu, Hmong-Lao Food, and the Biggest Mall in America

Indigenous cuisine, chef Sean Sherman

Get: A switchel with cayenne, bison Texas-style chili with duck remoulade, roasted sweet potato with chili crisp oil, elk toast with berries, a duck tasting (breast, leg, and tamale), and a blue corn dessert with squash caramel

One of our favorite dining experiences, full stop, and genuinely unlike anything else we've eaten. Chef Sean Sherman builds the entire menu from pre-colonial Indigenous ingredients only: no beef, no chicken, no pork, no dairy, no wheat, no cane sugar. The bison chili, topped with duck remoulade, was hearty with big chunks of meat and less bean-heavy than a typical Texas chili; the roasted sweet potato with chili crisp oil was simple but cooked so perfectly we called it an A+ dish outright. The duck course won the night for us, incredibly juicy and tender, though the accompanying tamale (made without lard, unlike a Mexican tamale) was subtler and lighter by comparison. The elk toast had a genuinely unique texture, compact rather than tender or ground, with a light gamey flavor that takes some getting used to if you don't eat elk often. Dessert, a dense, grill-marked blue corn cake that tasted like a cross between cornbread and banana bread with a subtle caramel note, closed things out. All of it, plus dessert, ran about $160 for two, which felt genuinely affordable for the quality. Owamni also operates as a non-profit, pays its staff (majority Indigenous) high wages with good benefits, and the story behind the food is worth understanding before you go, it's reclaiming a history that industrialization and colonization nearly erased.

Hmong-Lao food

Get: A Lao sausage, pork belly with jasmine rice, a brown sugar marinated egg, chili oil, and pickled vegetables

A perfect meal for us: savory with barely any sweetness, just enough to bring out the flavor of the sausage, which was less greasy than a typical sausage but still had a good bite and a crispy exterior. The pork belly was extremely tender, reminding us a little of Taiwanese pork belly, and the accompanying brown sugar marinated egg was jammy and almost dessert-like. The chili oil and hot sauce on the table were next-level, spicy, herby, and packed with fish sauce; we said we could eat the sauce over rice on its own. Total for a full spread came to $55, and we walked away wishing we knew of a Hmong or Lao spot back home in LA.

Coffee, downtown

Get: A Nordic latte with cardamom, and a Thai tea latte with oat milk

A downtown coffee stop that introduced us to cardamom in a latte, which we didn't know we needed in our lives. The Thai tea latte, made with oat milk, wasn't quite as creamy as a dairy version, but we still liked it. A good stop if you're exploring downtown Minneapolis via the skybridge system, which lets you walk between buildings, including straight from our hotel to the arena, without ever going outside in the cold.

Sightseeing, the biggest mall in America

Get: A walk through as much of it as we could manage

Genuinely enormous: we walked for about 40 minutes and never made it past the first floor, and after over two hours total we estimated we'd only seen about 60% of the place. It's got its own indoor rollercoaster and the full Nickelodeon Universe theme park built inside, and lockers to stash your luggage run $6 to $9 depending on size. We were surprised there are still malls this crowded left in the world.

Minnesota specialties

Get: Walleye in a fish fry style, and a wild rice chowder with chicken

We stumbled into this one without planning to and were glad we did. The walleye, a fish native to Minnesota, came out crispy with genuinely meaty, high-quality-tasting fish inside, closer to a superior fish and chips than typical mall food. The wild rice chowder with chicken was creamy, a little salty, and hearty enough to be the perfect cold-weather soup. The whole meal ran $43, which felt like a good value for the quality, especially for food inside a mall.

Arena food, Clippers vs. Timberwolves

Get: A pickle-themed chicken sandwich and fries from a stall called Chicken Shack, plus Red Baron's Stadium Pizza

We timed this trip specifically so the Clippers would be the visiting team. The Chicken Shack stall leans hard into pickle puns and had a solid, not overly expensive chicken sandwich and fries combo at $13.99. The stadium pizza ran $10 a slice and read like elevated cafeteria food, fine, but nothing we'd go out of our way for again.