Opening 2024
The Sly Fox Den Restaurant and Cultural Center
Sly Fox Den is a restaurant and cultural center that educates the public on Indigenous food ways, culture, and history. At Sly Fox Den, we honor the food that is from these Northeast Indigenous lands and waters. We practice traditional techniques in farming, hunting, fishing, and cooking that make this food possible.
About Our Foodways
Food is seasonal
At Sly Fox Den we embrace the bounty of each season. Every Thanksgiving, all Americans experience fall harvest flavors in the foods that our Wampanoag people brought to the new settlers in our land. In the same manner, Sly Fox Den will bring the flavor of each season to our diners.
In the Wampanoag tradition, we celebrate the new year in spring, when all things become new again — the fish come back from the north, the birds come back from the south, the flowers and berries bud again, and the first greens that come to us are wild ramps & fiddlehead ferns.
The Creator brings Indigenous fare with every full moon, something new is always on its way.
Food is medicine
Americans are often distanced from natural food traditions, and it takes a toll on our health. At Sly Fox Den, Chef Sherry chooses only the finest ingredients, and our kitchen uses traditional, slow food methods that preserve their nutritional integrity. Our meals are carefully curated with sustainably raised, hunted, and fished meats and seafood, alongside fresh, whole fruits and vegetables, much of which is cultivated in our very own gardens.
Native medicine is not just about the body but the whole person: Mind, body, and spirit. Let Sly Fox Den be your home away from home, where culture, love, and joy meet at your table. A meal at Sly Fox Den is good medicine.
Food is Indigenous
Did you know that about 60% of the foods we eat worldwide originated here in the Americas?
When the settlers first arrived here there were over 70 varieties of corn, hundreds of types of potatoes and beans, as well as avocados, bananas, and many other foods that Europeans had never seen.
Indigenous peoples were some of the most innovative and progressive farmers in the world.
The Three Sisters
Corn
The corn stalk gave the beans a tall structure to grow on…
Beans
…the beans replenished the soil with vital nutrients that corn depletes…
Squash
…and the squash spread along the ground, preventing weed growth, while their leaves lock moisture into the soil.
We believe that a return to Indigenous foodways is a return to our best selves - best for our bodies, our communities, and our mother earth.
A special thank you (kutâputôtamawush) to the Eastern Woodlands Rematriation Collective for seeding our traditional fruit, vegetable, and herb garden.
About Our Lifeways
We are all connected
The Sly Fox Den Cultural Center gives us an example of how a Northeast Coast Indigenous family would live, survive, and thrive. Indigenous cultures carry the knowledge of how to be in good relationship with ourselves, each other, Mother Earth, and all living beings.
The core values of Indigeneity (defined by La Donna Harris and Jacqueline Wasilewski) are: Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Redistribution. The Cultural Center gives us an interactive experience of those values in action.
You’ll walk through the Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, learning about how they support one another in growth and protection. You’ll enter a wetu, a Northeast coast home, made of bark, saplings, grasses, and animal hide. You’ll learn how every part of every plant and animal is respected by being put to use, as food, transport, clothing, heat, and building materials. You’ll sit in the mishoon, a burnt out canoe made of wood, that could travel swiftly in the water to harvest seafood, visit nearby communities, or simply enjoy the breeze and the birds. Down by the brackish water of the Poquetanuck Bay, you’ll see local oysters growing in handwoven baskets, responsibly harvested to maintain a healthy ecosystem balance.
All of these experiences help us see the direct connection between our health and the health of the environment. It is our collective responsibility to create a world that the next seven generations can thrive in. The Cultural Center is a space where we can learn, enjoy, and be inspired by Indigenous foodways and lifeways.