Situated on 44th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard across the street from a Safeway gas station and next to an orthodontist’s office in Denver is a one-story grey building. Around the corner, there’s a mural of a man hidden on the wall adjacent to a comically small and ridiculously-difficult-to-navigate parking lot. In the winter, the mural is the only visible color in the area. Pink plumes painted in delicate strokes frame the outline of the head, while various hues of blue, purple, and orange detail the rest of the depicted traditional dress, which pays homage to the Osage Nation of the Midwest. The man depicted on the mural is alone, seated with no background or other people. He is totally on his own.
Around the corner from the mural is a glass door with three purple handprints and the words “Tocabe: An American Indian Eatery” printed below. Inside, the restaurant is reminiscent of a Chipotle, with large overhead menus detailing various plate options such as Indian Tacos, Melting Pot Salads, Stuffed Fry Bread, and Medicine Wheel Nachos. Posu Bowls of Wild Rice or Red Quinoa are also listed alongside Berry Braised Bison Ribs and Wojapi cups. The fare tells a story, speaking to both the yield of the land and the traumatic and painful history of the West.
Tocabe first opened its doors to the public in 2008, when owners Matt Chandra and Ben Jacobs of the Osage Nation decided to test out a more permanent home for their recipes, which had previously won multiple awards at the National Indian Taco Championship in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Now, they operate two restaurants in the Denver metro area that are committed to their vision of embracing “the traditions of American Indian Cuisine and ingredients by building community through food.” In creating Tocabe, Chandra and Jacobs sought to create a contemporary space for traditional Native American cuisine, and were conscious in their decision to cultivate an atmosphere that is open, warm, and unapologetically connected to Native cultural elements.
With over 560 different federally recognized and hundreds more unrecognized Native American tribes in the United States, it’s difficult to conceptualize how “An American Indian Eatery” should manifest itself in today’s food scene. The sheer diversity of Native groups with their distinct ingredients and cuisines makes representation complicated, which is why Chandra and Jacobs emphasize that their recipes should be understood as merely an introduction to North American Native cuisine. To convey this, Tocabe incorporates various ingredients and flavors that appear across Native cultures.
Fry bread, for example, is a staple in many Native tribes throughout North America and can be made a variety of ways ranging from with or without lard to based in yeast and cornmeal or all-purpose flour and baking powder. "Fry bread is an easy introduction," Chandra says, also explaining that "it's universal," which is why the restaurant chooses to highlight it. Using the fry bread as the base, Tocabe then builds upon the more complex flavor palettes of specific tribes, offering fry bread options with pinto beans and green chile or sweet corn, radish, poblano, and green onion on top. All of the ingredients are trademark “Made by American Indian,” a certification bestowed by the Intertribal Agricultural Council that identifies food products made by federally recognized tribes.
Tocabe continues to explore ways that food can advance the dialogue surrounding the treatment of Native cultures in the United States. Chandra and Jacobs are purposeful in their planning of every aspect of the restaurant, not just the menu. Their design choices are especially meant to create space for and highlight indigenous iconography in everyday American pop culture. Outside, the mural exalts the archetype of an Osage man, while inside, the walls are decorated with framed works by Kiowa-Choctaw filmmaker, graphic designer, and writer Steven Paul Judd. Judd describes his work as “Native pop art” because it transforms contemporary US cultural icons by re-envisioning them through a Native lens. He attributes the creation of this style to his childhood, during which he often looked for reflections of Native culture in mass media. In an interview with Ron Castro of the Arkansas CW, he explained that “In popular culture, I didn’t really see the representation of myself that I wanted,” promising his childhood self that he would make consumable media that reflects Native traditions and values. He seeks to create a space for Natives in the world of mass media, and he now deconstructs icons such as Dr. Seuss’s Fox with Socks, replacing him with Dr. Sioux’s Fox with Mocs.
Judd’s artwork operates as a means of resistance against white supremacy and Native erasure in the same way that Tocabe itself is revolutionary for fostering a space for Native cuisine in Denver’s food culture. In a city where the emergence of new restaurants is often synonymous with gentrification and the continued oppression of low-income residents of color, Tocabe strives to steer Denver’s culinary scene in a more representational and equitable direction. The current mainstream and whitewashed understanding of the American West perpetuates the erasure of indigenous people by promoting images of white cowboys in a pastoral West that derives a particular holiness from being uninhabited and untouched. Tocabe is flipping that narrative, reminding clients that the preservation of the landscapes of the West has only been made possible by Native management of the land. Before white people began committing genocide and mass murder against indigenous people, the relationship that existed between Native groups and the land was one built on mutual respect and dependence.
Tocabe upholds this relationship in its vision as a restaurant. Chandra and Jacobs boast an important goal: according to their website, they are striving to become “the Industry Standard of American Indian Cuisine by offering the highest quality food, service and atmosphere at an affordable price that does not compromise the integrity of the product, staff, culture, and community.” Tocabe dares to create a restaurant atmosphere and mission that marries the land, its yield, its people, and its history.
Operating a restaurant like Tocabe is no easy feat: Chandra and Jacobs are dedicated to amplifying voices that have long been marginalized at the expense of US expansionism and white supremacy. As the only Native American restaurant in metro Denver and one of only a handful located within the United States, Tocabe is faced with the unique challenge of simultaneously reconciling the bloody and violent history of the US while elevating the recipes and narratives that have been stifled over centuries of colonization. The restaurant is a vessel that brings Native American cuisine to a wider audience in a new and innovative way.
People from all over the country come to Denver to indulge in shredded bison with Chile beans, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and red onions topped with an Osage Hominy salsa, hot green chiles, and the Ancho Chipotle sauce—but the restaurant is about more than just its menu. Tocabe is a new manifestation of resistance to colonialism and white supremacy that honors the Native Americans who have suffered for centuries in the United States. Intergenerational trauma has resulted in the inheritance of injustice, which the restaurant is working to reconcile through both food and space by providing a platform for cuisine that white settlers have attempted to erase. The backs of the employee uniforms read, “My heroes have always made fry bread.” Tocabe honors these heroes through food, bringing their revolutionary, unapologetic dedication to Native representation to a new audience.
Mediocre Issue | November 2019