Jessica Walks First three-peats Monday Night Foodball

All-Native cookout with tamales and bison tacos. [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( [Food & Drink]( | May 31, 2024 Jessica Walks First nailed it on Top Chef: Wisconsin a few weeks ago. The chef behind Chicago’s all-Indigenous Ketapanen Kitchen wasn’t competing. Rather, she was sitting at the judge’s table during episode nine’s Elimination Challenge—along with Kristen, Tom, Gail, and Minneapolis chef Sean Sherman—when Adalina executive chef Soo Ahn presented “roasted butternut squash, huitlacoche puree, and wild rice gnocchi.”  The camera landed on Walks First after a bite. “I can tell you this wild rice came from my reservation,” she observed. “It kind of reminds me of home.” Home would be Omǣqnomenēw Ahkīheh, Menominee lands in Wisconsin, from where she brought the wild rice and donated it to the Top Chef pantry, which was stocked with Native foods, including wild rice that Owamni chef Sherman brought from Minnesota.  Walks First had no doubt Ahn had used her grains. “Minnesota rice tastes different,” she told me later.  That is exactly the kind of finely tuned, laser-focused palate you want cooking your bison burgers with blackberry aioli and rabbit and carrot mole tamales, which is precisely the reason Walks First and Ketapanen Kitchen is [returning]( to [Monday Night Foodball]( the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at [Frank and Mary’s Tavern](.  This is Ketapanen Kitchen’s [three-peat]( in fact, simply because Walks First and her crew always nail it, without fail. This time, they’ll be setting up on the patio (weather permitting) and reprising the grilled bison burgers, along with her Menominee maple baked beans, Ojibwe purple potato salad, and elote pasta salad.  New this time: those rabbit mole tamales, bison prickly pear tamales, and bison tacos.  It’s an all-Native cookout beginning at 6 PM, this Monday, June 3, 2905 N. Elston, in Indigenous Avondale.  Don’t miss this, but if you must you can catch Ketapanen Kitchen at the [2024 Summer Youth Pow Wow]( on June 22 at the Trickster Cultural Center, 190 S. Roselle, in Schaumburg, followed by the [Northwest Pride Fest]( on the 29th; and the [American Indian Center Powow]( at Foster Avenue Beach on July 25.  None of those throwdowns, however, will interrupt your packed Foodball schedule, every Monday night this summer at Frank and Mary’s: [It’s an all-Indigenous cookout when Ketapanen Kitchen three-peats at the next Monday Night Foodball]( Check out Jessica Walks First’s Native foods menu for the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern in Avondale. by [Mike Sula]( | [Read more]( → [Food apartheid: the erasure of Black health in Englewood]( Residents, community organizations, and new legislation are making profound steps toward achieving food sovereignty in Chicago. by [NaBeela Washington]( | [Read more]( → Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at [fooddrink@chicagoreader.com](mailto:fooddrink@chicagoreader.com?subject=Reader%20Bites&body=). [Kitcha fitfit (chechebsa) at Mella Cafe]( Most people unfamiliar with Ethiopian cuisine probably first approach it for dinner, as I did: sour, spongy injera on a round platter made for sharing, with a variety of colorful dishes ready to be eaten by hand. But Mella Cafe, a relatively new counter-service spot in Edgewater, instead has Ethiopian and Eritrean breakfast and lunch—plus gelato, coffee, and other treats. — Taryn Allen [a bowl of food and a bowl of salad on a table]( [With Marisol inside the MCA, Jason Hammel paints a new canvas]( December 2017 | The Lula Cafe chef’s menu is its own form of contemporary art. by [Mike Sula]( | [Read more]( → [Aaron Arnett of Davanti Enoteca makes peace with green peppercorns]( September 2012 | But first they had to be tamed. by [Julia Thiel]( | [Read more]( → Get the latest issue of the Chicago Reader Thursday, May 30, 2024 [READ ONLINE: VOL. 53, NO. 17]( [VIEW/DOWNLOAD ISSUE (PDF)]( [Donate to the Chicago Reader.]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [Twitter icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( [YouTube icon]( [Website icon]( [Logo] You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from the Chicago Reader. Want fewer emails from us? [Click here to choose what you want us to send you](. Or, [unsubscribe from all Reader emails](. We’ll miss you! [Sign up for emails from the Chicago Reader]( | [Forward this e-mail to a friend]( © 2024 Chicago Reader. All rights reserved. Chicago Reader, 2930 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 102, Chicago, IL 60616