Often life takes strange turns. Consider the case of Baltimore native, Richard Hetzler.
As a high school graduate, his first job was trimming trees. A decade or so later, Hetzler is not only an executive chef at a first-rate restaurant, he is an acknowledged expert in Native American cooking and has become a sought-after and rather famous speaker on indigenous foods.
After graduating from the Baltimore International College’s School of Culinary Arts, Hetzler worked in various Maryland and Virginia restaurants. He was eventually hired by Restaurant Associates, the company that oversees the kitchens of many major local and national enterprises, including the restaurants in the museums in the Smithsonian Institution.
And that’s where you’ll find Hetzler today, running the amazingly complex kitchen and menus of Mitsitam Cafe (“Mitsitam” means “let’s eat” in the native language of the Delaware and Piscataway peoples), on the ground floor of the National Museum of the American Indian.
Enjoying one meal here will convince you that the man’s a genius in the kitchen, someone who can understand unfamiliar ingredients and re-create recipes culled from the memories and legends of other cultures.
His Native American recipe sleuthing began long before Mitsitam Cafe opened in 2004, while he was still cooking at the American History and the Natural History museums.
“We looked at regionalizing the menus,” Hetzler said, “and finding the right ingredients. We did focus groups for each Native American region to see how authentic the food was.”
As Mitsitam’s executive chef, Hetzler – cooking seasonally as the American Indian would have – creates a total of 20 different menus each year to correspond to the cafe’s five different geographic regions of the Western Hemisphere – Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Mesoamerica and the Great Plains – and to the four seasons.
But more importantly, Hetzler works closely with existing communities to purchase their crops and meats – he is hoping to include Navajo churro lamb and he buys all-natural native buffalo from a tribal cooperative; instead of beef for hamburgers, he uses ground buffalo meat.
Not only does using such ingredients help visitors taste something outside of their usual experience, but also it helps the farmers and growers to build their crops and herds and to earn money.
But has Hetzler’s food passed the taste test with those who really know, the members of the American Indian communities?
“They think it’s great,” he said. “I speak at many Native American events. They definitely look at me, thinking, ‘white man, Native American food.’ But there’s no place in the country like this, and people realize that it’s a plus.”
IF YOU GO
Mitsitam Cafe
Where: National Museum of the American Indian, Fourth Street & Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC
Contact: 202-633-1000
Hours: from 10a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily except Dec. 25
