Chef Shane Clark wants guests to try something ancestral. His creative cuisine has garnered a loyal following in the Post Falls area in northern Idaho, where patrons experience traditional Native American flavors in every entrée. Signature dishes at the Pow’Waw Food Truck showcase ingredients such as bison, salmon and turkey punched up with mint, maple, sage and other pre-Colonial flavors.
“I wish I could go back 1,000 years and see exactly how they cooked,” says Clark, who is a descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. His wife, Megan, a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Idaho, handles the business’ marketing and social media platforms and lends a hand in the food truck from time to time.
“The idea behind the food truck was a modern riff on the Indian taco,” he explains. “Frybread is the bridge, but it’s not traditional by any means.”
To Clark, frybread serves as a symbol of adaptation and survival, perseverance and ingenuity, resourcefulness and resilience. Its crisp, golden-brown exterior and fluffy, chewy interior connect generations and cultures, uniting the old ways of ancestors with modern palates.
The name Pow’Waw is derived from an Algonquin word for medicine man or spiritual healer. “To me, it represents the concept behind the food,” Clark explains. “The food is intended to be spiritually nutritious as well as physically nutritious.”
Visitors quench their thirst with red sage or maple-juniper teas, huckleberry-guava soda or Pow’Waw’s signature soda made with sarsaparilla, sumac, allspice and cacao nibs. “I think of it as Indigenous cola,” Clark offers. “It’s a savory soda.”
Most main dishes feature frybread or locally sourced manoomin (wild rice), topped with time-honored ingredients. The namesake Pow’Waw Bowl or frybread meal features both braised bison and cold-smoked salmon along with pumpkin seeds, mint, sage and housemade sauces, including honey-maple-agave, avocado-spruce and pumpkin fire—a Native American berry sauce made with habanero and chile-wojapi.
Frybreads and bowls also come with Native Relish, which features a trio of staples known as the three sisters: corn, beans and squash. Those ingredients are also the foundation of Clark’s signature purée. Traditional dishes consist of braised bison, cold-smoked salmon and poblano turkey, or try the innovative and popular Indigidog—a bison-and-elk sausage link served atop frybread with cherry tomatoes and pickled onions. Other offerings include the smoked and fried turkey leg with honey-maple and chile-wojapi sauces, the crispy-fried baby corn with juniper salt and a spiced honey-maple glaze and a mixed green salad with relish, pecans, pickled onions and pumpkin and sunflower seeds with a maple vinaigrette.
Many guests order dessert for the road. Choose from maple-sweetened frybread with pecans or a homemade chocolate bar infused with dried fruit and studded with sunflower seeds.
“I want people who are visiting here to understand they are on ancient, ancestral lands that the Coeur d’Alenes once roamed,” Clark says. “I want to welcome them here and invite them to experience our history and culture through food.”
Published on January 8, 2026