Freddie Bitsoie is a Diné (Navajo), Native American Chef, and the owner of FJBits Concepts, a firm that specializes in Native American food ways. He is the Executive Chef of The Mitsitam Native Foods Café (Mitsitam means “Let’s Eat” in the Delaware language), the restaurant of The Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Freddie has traveled the country, making presentations for organizations and companies such as Kraft Foods, The College of Holy Cross, Yale University, the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ. He has been featured in and also contributes to Indian Country Today.
As an indigenous chef, Freddie sees the revival of native cuisine from its core elements—the ingredients. “For hundreds of years, ingredients hardly ever changed, yet cultures and trends changed all time. Why try to explain food from ever changing ideals? Let’s observe food from the ever non changing ingredient. That point of view is far more delicious and realistic,” according to Freddie.
Freddie has also been featured in Native Peoples Magazine and Arizona Highways. His most recent works have been on his own television show Rezervations Not Required as well as a guest appearance on famous Italian Chef Lidia Bastianich’s show Lidia Celebrates America. In 2013, he won the Native Chef Competition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Freddie attended the University of New Mexico, majoring in cultural anthropology with a minor in art history before attending culinary school. Today, he is one of the most sought after and renowned Native American chefs and Native foods educators in the country.
He has been featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Cowboys and Indians, and America, The Cook Book. Freddie views the Native American food from the side of the ingredients. Freddie was born in Monticello, UT, grew up in Arizona, and lived in New Mexico. Currently he lives in Alexandria Virginia and works in Washington D.C.