Sherry Pocknett, seen here with her daughters Cheyenne and Jade Pocknett-Galvin, is the owner of Sly Fox Den Too and a Wampanoag chef who specializes in cooking indigenous foods. Ryan T. Conaty, The Bostn Globe
“Chef Sherry Pocknett [Wampanoag Nation] owner of Sly Fox Den Too, cooks with sustainably raised, hunted and fished animals at Charlestown restaurant.”
Excerpt:By Jenna Pelletier Globe Correspondent,Updated September 29, 2022
“Chef Sherry Pocknett started cooking locally and seasonally long before the term farm-to-table became buzzy. A member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, she has been foraging, farming and fishing since she was growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s.
Chef Sherry Pocknett, owner of Sly Fox Den Too , remembers helping her mother in the kitchen when she was a little girl. Ryan T. Conaty, The Bostn Globe.
‘Our people have always focused on local food,’ Pocknett says. ‘In the fall, we’d have raccoon and rabbit. In the springtime, it was striped bass with fiddlehead ferns, sunchokes and wild ramps.’
Pocknett now shares her Indigenous culture through the food she serves at her 30-seat Charlestown restaurant, Sly Fox Den Too. She runs it with her daughters, Jade and Cheyenne Pocknett-Galvin. The trio make dishes including quahog chowder, venison skewers, and three-sisters rice with corn cakes.
Roasted rabbit with root vegetables cooked at Sly Fox Den Too Ryan t. Conaty, Boston Globe.
The restaurant is named after Pocknett’s father, Chief Sly Fox, Vernon Pocknett, who died in 1999. ‘He taught us everything,’ she says. ‘He took all of the tribal kids under his wings and taught us how to fend for ourselves in nature,’ she says.
Sly Fox Den Too
The ‘too’ in the name references the fact that Pocknett’s Charlestown restaurant is actually her Plan B. Shortly before the pandemic began, she started raising funds to renovate a property near her home in Preston, Conn. She is still working on developing the project, called the Sly Fox Den Restaurant, Museum, and Oyster Farm, where she plans to cook as well as offer educational programming on Indigenous culture. But her progress has been slow.”
