10/15/2026
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, chef Tina Archuleta is putting her own stamp on Indigenous cuisine at her restaurant Itality, blending Pueblo foodways with plant-based cooking.
Archuleta, who is from Jemez Pueblo, started out selling burritos in her community two decades ago. When she later adopted a plant-based diet, she found it hard to maintain at home, since many Pueblo communities are food deserts with limited access to affordable, healthy groceries.
That challenge pushed her to start cooking her own meals, which eventually grew into Itality, her Albuquerque restaurant serving whole, plant-based Pueblo cuisine.
Her menu leans on the Three Sisters, corn, beans, and squash, a traditional and self-sustaining agricultural system. She combines this ancestral foundation with the Ital philosophy, a Rasta approach centered on natural, unprocessed food and minimal waste, to create what she calls a "lifeway" rather than just a menu.
Standout dishes include lion's mane pozole with fresh zotah bayla oven bread, green chile cheeseburgers made from beans and quinoa served on frybread, and blue corn pepita waffles topped with fried oyster mushrooms and red chili maple syrup.
Itality also runs on principles of food sovereignty and environmental care. Ingredients are responsibly sourced, including from Native farmers, and every dish is made from scratch.
The restaurant uses eco-friendly products and composts daily, keeping roughly 80 pounds of food waste out of landfills each week.
Archuleta also wants diners to rethink what they know about food history. She told Edible New Mexico that 70 to 80 percent of foods eaten today were originally cultivated in the Americas, something she feels gets overlooked.
"We tend to associate chocolate with Belgium or potatoes with Ireland," she said. "So I'm reeling that back in... and representing food that is Indigenous made in an Indigenous way."
As the only fully vegan Indigenous restaurant in the US, Itality is built on a mission to feed, teach, and heal, sending diners home full and a little more connected to the history behind their meal.