About

A Santa Fe, New Mexico-based chef, award-winning author, Native foods historian, and photographer, Lois Ellen Frank was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, New York, with her dad’s side of the family. Her first career experiences included being a professional cook and an organic gardener.  

In 1982, Lois entered the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, from which she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, in 1985. Graduating at the top of her class, she received the exclusive Photographic Illustration Award. An award that recognized only one senior student who has consistently demonstrated the highest ability to apply knowledge of technical process to effectively communicate ideas through photographic media. She has subsequently earned prestigious commissions, which continue to take her throughout the Americas. Projects have ranged from depicting traditional cultures to documenting contemporary haute cuisine and agricultural products. A prospectus, complete list, and portfolio are available on request.

She received her master’s degree in 1999 and her Ph.D in 2011 from the University of New Mexico in Cultural Anthropology. Her Dissertation was entitled, The Discourse and Practice of Native American Cuisine, Native American Chefs and Native American Cooks in Contemporary Southwest Kitchens.
  
Lois spent over 30 years documenting the foods and lifeways of Native American tribes from the Southwest.  This lengthy immersion in Native American communities culminated in her first cookbook, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, featuring traditional and contemporary recipes, published by Ten Speed Press. It won the James Beard Award in the Americana category and was the first Native American book to win the award.  Her second book, Taco Table, was released in 2010 by the Western National Park Association and won the Glyph Award upon its release. Her newest cookbook, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky, which she did with Walter Whitewater as the Culinary Advisor, won two IACP International Association of Culinary Professionals awards in the Health and Wellness Category and the Food Matters Category in 2024. She has worked with world-renowned chefs, scientists, and academicians and has published many culinary posters and cookbooks.   She has worked with National and International advertising agencies as well as many editorial clients.

Some of her advertising clients have included: Nambe, Inc., International House of Pancakes, Kundsen, Taco Bell, Evian Water, Carnation Co., Simpson Paper, Lavosh Hawaii, XOCHI, and many others. She has also photographed many food posters, including: The Great Chile Posters, Indian Corn of the Americas, Tomatoes, Sunflowers, Squash, Exotic and Tropical Fruits, Citrus, Grains, Chesses of the World, Shellfish, and Eggplant, to name a few, and photographed cookbooks for some of the most famous chefs in the United States. These chefs include: Mark Miller, chef and original owner of Coyote Cafe & Red Sage, Santa Fe, New Mexico and Washington D.C.; Hubert Keller; chef/owner Fleur de Lys, San Francisco; Roy Yamaguchi, chef/owner Roy's Restaurant, Honolulu, Hawaii; John Sedlar, chef and owner St. Estephe and Abiquiu and Eloisa Restaurants, Los Angeles and Santa Fe; Jim Coleman, Executive chef at the Rittenhouse Hotel, Philadelphia, PA; Tommy Tang chef/owner Tommy Tang's, Los Angeles, Holly Arnold Kinney proprietress The Fort Restaurant, Morrison, Colorado as well as the La Casa Sena Cookbook, The Steaklover's Companion, Great Bowls of Fire, Pasta Exotica, and a book on Tamales with Mark Miller, Stephen Pyles and John Sedlar published by Macmillian, USA. The Great Bean Book, which she worked on with Florence Fabricant and Elizabeth Berry, and most recently, her own cookbook, Foods of the Southwest Nations.

She has exhibited her work at the Western States Muesum in Santa Barbara, California with a show entitled "Under the Spell of the Pinon Smoke", Contemporary images of Native Americans and the American Southwest, Spring 1987 and another exhibition at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque, New Mexico with a show entitled, "A Common Thread, Corn and Culture in Mexico", 4 x 5 Polaroid Transfers featuring images of Culture and Ritual, May 1997.

She continues to be involved in research on foods, including medicinal and spiritual plants, as well as working on projects focusing on the importance of traditional foods amongst Indigenous Peoples throughout the Americas, as sustenance and their uses ritually.  Her Ph.D. thesis examines contemporary Southwestern Chefs using indigenous ingredients in their cooking and how this is representative of their own identities. She works with Native American & Non-Native chefs, combining traditional ingredients with contemporary techniques. A big part of her dissertation work includes the senses, the ethno-aesthtics of food and food presentation, and food as being representational of local identities. She uses her strong photographic background with her learned academic knowledge to publish books, museum exhibitions, and papers on this subject.

She is a featured cooking instructor at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, where she teaches about Native American foods of the Southwest.  Guest Chef appearances have taken her to many famous restaurants around the country, where she, with Native Chef Walter Whitewater (Diné) have prepared delicious menus from the foods she has studied.  She continues to teach about foods as a guest chef, lecturer, and instructor nationally. She is an adjunct professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and teaches Reclaiming Native Ancestral Foods: The Key to Health and Wellness. She has also been the Chef/Educator for the Health and Wellness Professional Development Training Program for Senior Centers in the state of New Mexico for the Obesity, Nutrition and Physical Activity (ONAPA) and Aging and Long-term Services Department (ALTSD), New Mexico Grown with the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH). And Lois Ellen Frank has been a chef/instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), where she continues to work with and promote healthy plant-based foods for Health and Wellness.

Lois has written food articles for New Mexico Magazine, Guest Life New Mexico, Edible Santa Fe, Aboriginal Voices, Vegetarian Times Magazine, to name a few, on foods of the Southwest and Native American foods of the region.  In each published piece, she has been the photographer as well as the author and chef. She was the project coordinator on the Indian Pueblo Cultural Centers’ event entitled Connecting Communities: Native Foods and Wellness. She has been featured in many more articles, which can be seen Press on the Red Mesa Cuisine website.

Lois started a Native American Catering and Food Company named Red Mesa. Red Mesa cooks for private events, parties, weddings, corporate meetings, and gallery openings as well as Native events and organizations all over the United States, where she cooks alongside Chef Walter Whitewater (Diné/Navajo).  Red Mesa combines Native American Culture and Cuisine by providing patrons with the history of the foods from the Southwest Indian Nations that the two chefs serve. This gives their patrons a unique fine-dining experience.  Lois has worked with the Princeton University, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the Tohono O’odham Community Action group (TOCA), the Center for Sustainable Environments at the University of Northern Arizona University (CSE), the Cultural Conservancy in San Francisco, the California Indian Basket weavers Association (CIBA), Museum of Natural History in New York, the Institute of American Indians Arts (IAIA), the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, and opened the exhibit Totems to Turquoise at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, as well as many others.

She has been the subject of many articles on foods, chefs, and authors of the Southwest, and continues to be active in all aspects of her career. Her research and documentation in written, photographic, and food form includes the agricultural, culinary, mythological, and socioeconomic uses of foods & plants amongst various indigenous peoples all over the Americas.  She continues to be actively involved in her photographic career, working with a diverse group of clients as well as pursuing her academic knowledge and teaching about the foods of the Americas.