Native Foods Café is delicious, fun, plant-based food that is chef-crafted and made inhouse every day, including homemade tempeh and seitan. Everything is under $10 and designed to appeal to everyone—from vegans to carnivores!
Is this your first restaurant?
Our first restaurant opened in 1994 in Palm Springs, California, and we now have twenty locations…and plan to add more!
What’s your favorite dish on the menu?
I love the Scorpion Burger. It’s homemade blackened tempeh, chipotle sauce, romaine, carrots, avocado, and onions. It’s my go-to sandwich!
What’s your most popular appetizer?
It’s a tie: our Native Nachos with Native Chipotle Crema and Native Cheese or the Native Chicken Wings. It’s all in the batter!
What’s the most popular entrée on the menu?
Again, head to head are the Rockin’ Moroccan Bowl (tofu or Native Chicken marinated in our homemade Moroccan sauce with grilled veggies and quinoa, topped with currants and toasted almonds) and the Twister Wrap (salad greens, fresh avocado and cucumber salsa, creamy chipotle sauce, and your choice of crispy, blackened, or grilled Native Chicken in an organic whole wheat wrap).
What’s your most popular dessert?
Peanut butter parfait! It’s creamy whipped peanut butter filling layered between Boogie Bar crumbles and chocolate chips, sweetened with agave syrup. And it’s gluten-free!
What do you feel is special about your restaurant?
We have such passionate team members and guests. It’s a special place to work and the guests always tell us the vibe is awesome, warm, and welcoming. We are also very community-oriented: We celebrate Native Community Days each month by giving back a portion of sales to a local group, such as animal rescues, children’s education organizations, environmental groups, and community or school garden programs.
How often do you change your menu items? Do you have daily or weekly specials?
We change our menu two to three times per year with the seasons. We have daily specials and once a month we do Special Meals, where we introduce a new menu offering for three days.
Do you have gluten-free, soy-free, and sugar-free options on your menu?
We sure do! We have an additional menu in-house that is very detailed. We want everyone to be able to eat at Native.
What do you do to reduce your environmental impact?
No meat! We only serve plant-based food, and we use one-hundred-percent recycled napkins and to-go boxes.
What are the most important lessons you’ve learned as owner or chef of this restaurant?
You’ve got one opportunity to gain a guest for life on their first visit. We are very welcoming and, as a fast casual restaurant, we’ve found out guests love the little extra table touches: checking in on how they like their food, offering free drink refills. You have to have great food and great service. If you have only one of those, you’ve lost them!
What led you to the vegan diet yourself?
Growing up on a farm in the Midwest, you get pretty attached to animals. One day, when I was seven and my sister was nine, our favorite cows went missing. A year or two later, our parents explained where they ended up. Enough said! Became vegan!
In the time since your restaurant first opened, how has the plant-based food movement changed? Do you find more demand now for vegan food?
Oh yes. Chicago has really been our proving grounds where we’ve found ninety-five percent of our guests are not vegan or vegetarian. Yay! We feel like the stigma of veganism is being eradicated.
Where do you see the plant-based food movement going in coming years?
It’s going mainstream. You see so many mainstream restaurants now offering several vegan options. Plus the number of people who claim to be vegan have doubled in the past five years! 
Bistro Steak Sandwich
Serves 4–6
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 French rolls or bread of choice
4 ounces Seitan Steak* (recipe follows)
6 tablespoons Native Blue Cheese (recipe follows)
3 Oven-Roasted Tomatoes, very cold (recipe follows)
½ cup Crispy Shallots (recipe follows)
½ cup baby arugula
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
* This requires 8 to 12 hours of marinating time.
Brush the olive oil on the French rolls and place them in a warm pan. Toast and repeat briefly on other side of the bread. Remove and set aside. In a pan, sear the steak seitan for two minutes on each side.
On the bread, spread 2 tablespoons of Native Blue Cheese. Place the hot steak seitan on top of the cheese. Then spoon 4 tablespoons Native Blue Cheese on top of the seitan. Arrange 3 pieces of roasted tomatoes on top of the blue cheese, skin side down. Place ½ cup of Crispy Shallots on top of the tomatoes. Place the arugula on top of the shallots. Sprinkle with parsley.
Crispy Shallots
3 cups thinly sliced shallots
⅛ teaspoon and ½ teaspoon sea salt
⅛ teaspoon black pepper
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
2 cups soy milk
1 cup all-purpose flour (for tossing)
Vegetable oil for frying
Place shallots in a bowl and add the salt, pepper, garlic powder, and soy milk. Soak the shallots for 2 hours and strain from the liquid.
In batches, toss a handful of soaked shallots in a large bowl with flour. Make sure to coat the shallots well. (They should feel dry.) Repeat until all shallots are breaded. Drop 2 cups of flour-dusted shallots in a stockpot with oil and fry for 1 to 1½ minutes or until golden brown. Remove using tongs or slotted spoon. Place on a baking sheet lined with paper towels to remove extra oil. Repeat until all shallots are done. Sprinkle the Crispy Shallots with salt and store in a shallow container.
Native Blue Cheese
1 cup vegan mayonnaise
2 teaspoons tahini
2 teaspoons garlic powder
4 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 12-ounce box silken tofu
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, tahini, garlic powder, lemon juice, vinegar, black pepper, and salt. Crumble the tofu into the bowl, keeping the pieces small (no larger than ¼ x ¼) and fold into the mix.
Oven-Roasted Tomatoes
1 cup sectioned Roma tomatoes (see sectioning instructions at right)
3 or 4 cloves garlic
⅛ teaspoon sea salt
⅛ teaspoon black pepper
½ tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon thyme, whole sprigs
½ tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut ¼" off the top of each tomato (the vine end). Then cut in half. Cut each half into 3 equal pieces for 6 pieces total, per tomato. Place the tomatoes in a bowl. Add the other ingredients and toss well. Lay the tomatoes out on a small sheet pan. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. After removing them from the oven, remove the whole thyme sprigs and garlic. Cool completely and serve cold.
Seitan Steak
½ cup soy sauce
¼ cup lemon juice
½ cup olive oil
½ cup water
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
6 cloves garlic
1 pound peppered seitan
To make the marinade, place all ingredients, except the seitan, into the blender and blend until smooth. Split the marinade into 2 batches and save 1 batch in the fridge for another time. Using a thin blade, slice all the peppered seitan. Place the seitan in a pan. Pour the marinade over the seitan and allow to marinate for at least 8 hours, no more than 12 hours. Strain the seitan from the marinade. There will not be a lot of liquid left over. Allow the seitan to strain for 10 minutes. Serve warm or in the Bistro Steak Sandwich.