Black Sheep Cafe - Native American Cuisine and the Provo Food Scene

restaurants

Jun 16

Mark Mason hails from Scottsdale AZ, where he found his love for the kitchen and spent his time after work watching and recording famous chefs on VHS. And the more he started dabbling with cooking, and even throwing private food events for his friends, the more Mark realized he wanted to enter the food business.

So when his sister Bleu Adams approached him in 2010 about a new concept for a restaurant in Provo, Mark came up to Utah from Arizona to help her launch what would soon be Black Sheep Cafe. His time with Black Sheep and Utah, in general, was intended to be temporary, but now almost four years later they're still hard at work and already on their second restaurant.

Mark Mason and Bleu Adams are half Navajo and half Mandan Hidatsa, and much of Mark's passion and inspiration for his food is drawn from his memories of his great grandmother cooking early in the morning in their Navajo Hogan on a reservation, and creating dishes like blue corn mush, a fine grind of blue cornmeal boiled like porridge and garnished with cedar or juniper ash to give a small smokey taste.

Today, Mark strives to incorporate Native American cooking tradition and food with an American take, in hopes that we see a resurgence of indigenous food in our food scene.

Join us for a great conversation that takes us through all of this and more with Mark Mason of Black Sheep Cafe and our host Chase Murdock.

This episode of The Utah Foodie was hosted and produced by Chase Murdock. Visit our episode archive on Ventricle Presents, and stay connected with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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