(soft bouncy music) - How do you like that for hand work?
All right?
Can I work a side job here?
- Absolutely.
(both laughing) (soft heartwarming music) - [Lidia] Changing traditional products to big business products... Beautiful table.
The values change, the appreciation, the cooking, everything changes.
So he's bringing it back, and I admire that very much.
(Una bella tavolata) - [Lidia] Tavola is table.
Tavolata means table.
(chuckles) Hi, Nicole, how you doing?
- Hi.
- Welcome, welcome.
- Thank you.
- Give me a kiss.
Thank you, welcome, welcome.
Hi Linda, nice to see you again.
- You too.
- Hi, how you doing?
- Good, how are you?
- Nice to see you.
- Nice to see you.
- [Lidia] At the end of that journey, I was very proud because I felt this is the greatness.
These people are genuine, honest, diversified, each respecting their own culture, working towards society.
How you doing?
All right.
- So good to see.
- Pleasure, pleasure seeing you again.
Hi Nicole, welcome.
- Nice to see you.
- Okay.
- [Sean] All right, I just wanted to welcome all of you guys to Owamni.
So this is a really big statement to be able to have a Native restaurant featuring Native food from Native food producers.
You could find food from all over the world in most cities, just not the food from the land that you're standing on.
We have some wonderful dishes that our chef selected for you guys today.
- [Lidia] Sometimes change might be objectionable, but in that group change was positive.
It was bringing some of the tradition and all the knowledge and customs to change America to something better and new.
- [Linda] I don't even know what to start with.
- [Chad] Wanna try the bison?
- [Linda] Thank you.
- [Diner] Wild rice is just basically an aquatic grass.
- We use a lot of sunflower oil.
- [Patricia] To California, the sunflowers, they grow wild all along the freeways, the highways.
- Never had crickets before, so that was new.
(chuckles) It's really unique.
- What did you say this little- - [Sean] Maple chili crisp.
- [Lidia] Delicious.
The squash is delicious.
- [Nicole] The way that it's cut, the way it's cooked, it's really good.
- Do you want some more is the question.
(laughs) Okay.
At the bottom of it, food is the connector.
It was all about one message, the importance of food, of everybody having enough food.
- [Chad] I was always interested in doing as much as I could to improve our environment, protect the planet.
- [Kari] I don't think you can move forward without reflecting on your past, without looking to what's been done.
- [Sean] It's important to think about how can we take steps to start to regain some of that control over our own food system.
- [Patricia] We all have a right to eat healthy food.
- [Nicole] So yeah, I'm excited for the future.
We have quite a bit of work to do, but it's really thrilling.
(chuckles) - Well, thank you all for coming.
And, you know, as we do, we say in Italian... (Tutti a tavola a mangiare!)
But also a good salute.
Salute.
- Salute.
- [Lidia] Cheers.
So it was a great food message, and that's what I've been doing all my life, message through food, cooking, and ultimately eating.
- [All] Cheers.
(glasses clinking)