Good question, no good answers

Reddit asks a really good question!

Why aren’t there any Native American restaurants?

You’d expect such restaurants in Oklahoma where the Cherokee have been good at farming and business for a long time. Never saw one. There are plenty of typical native foods, but nobody has tried to feature them in a restaurant.

Before looking at Reddit’s answers, I can think of two possible answers.

(1) Some ethnic groups like to run restaurants and some don’t. No particular logic, just different tendencies. There are plenty of Italian and French restaurants but no British or Irish restaurants.**

(2) Most native foods like potatoes and tomatoes and corn and squash became the basic staples of Euro American food, and then Euro Euro food, 400 years ago. Potatoes are now “Irish” and tomatoes are now “Italian”. So there’s no longer a separate category of native foods. Maybe pemmican might qualify. Pemmican is travel food, so it could have been the specialty of a lunch wagon like pasties or pierogis or hot dogs.

Reddit doesn’t hit those answers squarely. Some are citing the occasional exhibits of native food in museums, some are quoting the old standard colonize crap.

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** Later thought: There are plenty of British and Irish TAVERNS but no French or Italian taverns. There are plenty of native and Italian CASINOS, but no French or British or Irish casinos. Each group has its own specialty within the broad field of ‘hospitality’. Italians cover two fronts at once.