Consider these menu options: pumpkin soup with wild puffed rice. Cedar-planked, fire roasted juniper Pacific salmon. Tortilla soup. Jicama, orange, and nopales salad. Lobster roll. A smoked turkey sandwich on wild rice bread with cranberry relish.

American palates have become more sophisticated in recent years, but it’s still a surprise to find these foods as daily fare at a cafeteria. Yet these and other dishes – rich in whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats – are drawing regular crowds at Mitsitam, the cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in Washington, D.C. When the museum was planning its cafe, it could have gone the fast-food route. But W. Richard West Jr., the museum director, said, “We decided we really wanted to represent native contributions to American cuisine.” The 365-seat cafe has been divided into five stations representing geographical and culinary traditions. The Great Plains station, for example, is where you find buffalo chili and buffalo burgers. But if you want Pacific salmon, you head to the station devoted to the Northwest Coast.

If planners worried that the more exotic dishes – pork pibil or quinoa grain salad, for instance – might put people off, they didn’t worry long. According to Duane Blue Spruce, an architect and the facilities planning coordinator at the museum, Mitsitam, which is operated by Restaurant Associates Corp., is feeding twice as many visitors as anticipated. “A lot of it is food that people have eaten before – like tacos and enchiladas – but didn’t realize was native,” he said.

Museum visitors who go looking for fry bread, the food many people associate with American Indians, can find it at the cafe, too – plain, with powdered sugar and honey, or as the base of a taco.

But fry bread isn’t a native dish. After the Civil War, when many American Indian tribes were forced onto reservations without their guns and could no longer hunt, they needed a source of food, says Marty de Montano, manager of the museum’s resource center. According to West, the U.S. government responded by providing flour, sugar, and lard. And fry bread was born.

The National Museum of the American Indian, at 4th Street and Independence Avenue SW, Washington, is open every day from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, Mitsitam until 5 p.m. Main dishes cost from $5.95 (a sweet corn tamale with guava puree) to $14.95 (a smoked seafood platter). A buffalo burger with trimmings is $6.05.