Where all of our ancestors met

To reach The Ancestor Cafe, you go through the gates of the Fort Langley National Historic Site, the old fur-trading fort on Mavis Avenue. Inside, chef Sarah Meconse Mierau serves bannock tacos filled with bison or elk, house-made jams and bright plant-medicine lemonades.

The name is the point. “The cafe is in a historical site where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people came together to trade furs,” she told the Langley Advance Times in 2024. “I thought it was accurate to call it 'The Ancestor Cafe' because they were all of our ancestors that connected there.”

The café exists because Mierau, who is Dene, set out to reconnect with traditional food herself, and to help other urban Indigenous people do the same.

'I made him something every week'

She has been open about where that started. As she told the Advance Times, she is the daughter of a Sixties Scoop victim and watched her mother work to reconnect with her culture and traditional diet. Her mother died when Mierau was 12.

When her father was later diagnosed with cancer, she cooked for him, starting with potato pancakes, the German Mennonite dish he grew up with. “He told me they tasted just like the ones his mom used to make him… I made him something every week, and every time he got so excited,” she said. He told her she had a gift. After he died, she enrolled in culinary school and earned an advanced diploma in culinary arts and restaurant ownership from the Art Institute of Vancouver.

Restaurant kitchens didn't fill the gap. She spent two years as head chef at a shelter, which she told the paper took a mental toll, and she stepped away from cooking for two years after that.

Trad-ish, on purpose

With her partner's support, she took a class at the Native Education College and started Tradish. “I wanted to be able to help people and make good food, while reconnecting to my culture,” she told the Advance Times. Jams came first, sweetened with maple syrup, and she tested them at powwows, the Vancouver Sun reported. “I wanted to see how the community reacted to it. And they loved it.” A bannock mix and a food truck followed.

Even the name is personal. Shop First Nations reported that “Tradish” honours her late mother, who was known for saying she'd arrive around 10-ish, and that it reflects cooking as traditionally as modern rules allow. The café opened in early 2024, though Mierau told the Sun the location gave her pause: “I didn't want to be the 'token Indian.'” She changed her mind. “It's time for us to take up spaces in these colonized spaces. So that we can be here to show the beauty and tell the truth.”

Bannock, bison and plant-medicine lemonade

The menu on Tradish's website lists Three Sisters (vegan), bison and elk bannock tacos, bannock and eggs, soup and bannock, and bannock with jam or maple butter, plus coffee, plant-medicine teas and lemonades. Jam flavours have included Blueberry Lavender, Smokey Juniper Cherry and Blackberry Sage.

Google reviewers keep coming back to the bannock. “The bannock was soooo good! Fresh and hot, and I loved the jam as well,” one wrote. Another called the lavender baked bannock “pretty much a scone” with “a strong lavender flavour.” The complaints are about waits on busy days, and that “you need to pay the park fee to get in.”

'We'd love to feed you'

Because the café is inside the historic site, plan for site admission unless entry is free that day. The café also closes seasonally and rents its space for private events during that time. We haven't confirmed this season's open days; it's one of the first things we'll ask. Check Tradish's Instagram or call 604-807-2044 before you make the trip. Tradish also caters, and the truck still turns up at events around the Lower Mainland.

Mierau told the Sun she wants to make food “accessible to urban Indigenous who don't grow up around their communities.” Order the bannock with jam, take a jar home, then walk the fort where, as she puts it, all of our ancestors connected.

Photos: Tradish.