As Glacier National Park-goers exit the mountains, the hunt for the perfect post-hiking (or biking, fishing, paddle-boarding, etc.) meal ensues. Those on the east side need look no further than a bright purple building with “Aliens Welcome” painted across its roof.
In the remote town of Babb, Two Sisters Cafe is hard to miss. Its eccentric exterior hints at the eclectic atmosphere waiting inside. While customers dine in, they’re treated to the license plates, first responder patches, and other gifted bits and bobs lining the walls. “Of all of the things in our restaurant, we’ve purchased maybe fifteen of them,” said Susan Higgins, co-owner of the cafe. “Everything else has come from somebody else. Our customers, our clientele, our friends.”
Since 1993, the titular two sisters Susan and Beth Higgins have owned and operated the seasonal cafe alongside Susan’s husband John Cunningham. Chef Beth stands at the helm of the kitchen, serving up classic Montana fare tailored by a New Orleans twist from her time spent training in the Louisiana city. With a menu that boasts trout and waffles, loaded burgers topped with smoked bacon and creole sauce, and a hearty collection of huckleberry-based desserts, there’s something for everyone.
“We get a lot of folks that come in and are looking for something where they can get an elk osso buco and their kids can get chicken nuggets,” said Susan Higgins. “We try to cover everyone’s dietary spectrum.” That includes a healthy helping of vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options as well.
Their latest crowd-pleaser dots the menu in multiple dishes and promises a taste you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else; bBison raised by the Blackfeet tribe in their own backyard.
“We had been serving bison for years. We had been buying it from conventional sources. We had been buying it from Cisco and US Foods,” Higgins said. “And it was good. It was tasty. There was nothing wrong with it in any way whatsoever.” But a few years back, Higgins heard through the local grape vine that Siyeh Corporation, the Blackfeet tribal-owned business enterprise, was selling cuts of bison meat from the tribal herd.
“So we bought a small order initially. And wow, what a difference in the flavor,” Higgins said. “It’s so much more bison-y. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
For those looking to sample that “bison-y” flavor, Two Sisters offers two different steak entrees: a tenderloin dressed with a port wine huckleberry sauce because “you can’t really go wrong with huckleberries on anything,” and a side of wild rice topped with cranberries and almonds; or, for those looking for something a little more pared down, the Cut of the Day comes with a mushroom jus and roasted fingerling potatoes.
“My sister, who is a fantastic chef, cuts all of our steaks,” Higgins said. The decision to cut steaks in-house by hand both allows for more consistency and alleviates pressure off of the Siyeh Corporation’s processor.
Two Sisters also offers a bison bolognese in the style of the traditional southern Italian dish — a rich, creamy meat sauce with cooked-down carrots and celery, finished by a red wine and tomatoes. Their bison burger, however, has quickly become a best-seller among customers.
Although Higgins is partial to a good burger, she encouraged first-timers to go for something a little less crowded by buns and toppings; “The bison burgers are great, but if you really want to taste it, you have to have a cut.”
For decades, the Blackfeet Nation has worked tirelessly to bring the largeonce large roaming animals back to their natural home. In the 19th century, wild buffalo were very nearly slaughtered to extinction — by hunters after the hefty price for their hides, and as a concerted effort by the U.S. government to damage Native populations that relied on the animal. The year 2023 marked a historic step forward for the Blackfeet Nation Buffalo Program as 20 buffalo were released near Chief Mountain in an effort to reestablish a wild herd. Alongside re-wilding efforts, the Tribe has been managing a growing herd of free-roaming buffalo on more thanacross over 20,000 acres of land.
“The tribe is very hands off,” Higgins said. “They really want the herd to be as natural as possible, as close to the original bison as possible.” No hormones, no steroids, grass-fed, and free roaming; the Tribe’s herd-raising methods make for a quality of meat not easy to find.
“It’s three steps from the field to our plate,” she added.
Growing up as military kids, Susan and Beth Higgins were accustomedused to moving around from place to place; ending up in Babb, Mont., more than three decades agofor over three decades now, hadn’t exactly been their plan. Susan and Beth’s father, who was born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation before becoming a lieutenant colonel in the Aair Fforce, had returned to his childhood home after retirement. When he caught wind of a local cafe up for sale, he passed the message along to his two daughters, both of whom already had extensive experience in the restaurant industry.
But it was John, Susan’s husband, who first made the trek to the Northwest. While fixing a tire in the for-sale cafe’s parking lot during a cold November afternoon, he became convinced that this was the place to be. “The whole time he was out there, he had one car drive by,” Higgins said. “And he came back and he said, ‘You are going to think I lost my mind, but I really think we should do this.’”
So, Susan and John, based in San Francisco, and Beth still in New Orleans, came together to fulfill a long-running dream of starting a restaurant together.
“I didn’t know that I would ever view this as home,” she added, “but boy it sure is.”
As the cafe’s 34th summer season has come to a close, Higgins was pleasantly exasperated by the popularity of the Blackfeet-raised bison. Though they had been serving cuts the two years prior, their most recent season saw a surgen insurgence of interest. So much so, it was difficult to keep up with the demand. Higgins recalled days where up to 50 fifty customers would come in looking for a cut, when the kitchen had only slotted 20 to sell. “That’s a lot of people to turn down,” she said. Still, she was glad to see so much excitement around the dishes, and an opportunity to share a piece of her indigenous culture with those stopping by.
“We are super proud of our Iindigenous heritage and we do like to showcase that to people,” Higgins said. The cafe is quick to hang up posters advertising events hosted by the Tribe and point customers in the direction of the Blackfeet Tribal Visitor Center. This year, they were even gifted a license from Nunavut — the Canadian territory that is the traditional home of the Inuit people — to add to their ever- growing wall collection. “We were super excited about that. Being Native, that was just like the cherry on the cake of our day,” Higgins said.
For Higgins, the boom in popularity of their bison aligns with a broader cultural shift she’s observed. “There has been really a resurgence, I think, among Native tribes and Plains tribes in particular, of trying to return to a more native diet, if you will,” Higgins said. “A lot of the western diet features are not particularly good for native genomes.” She cited the three-time James Beard winner chef Sean Sherman as both a source of pride and inspiration. Sherman, who is a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe, has gained national recognition for bringing Indigenous food, ingredients, and cooking techniques to the forefront through his company The Sioux Chef, non-profit Native American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems and Minneapolis-based restaurant Owamni.
At Two Sisters Cafe, Higgins said, they’re trying to feature more Indigenous items on their menu. She highlighted their Three Sisters Salad, not as a misnomer from the cafe’s name, but a reference to the three crops — corn, squash, and beans — that were traditionally grown together. Roasted corn, butternut squash and black beans sit on a bed of lettuce, topped with pickled red onions, cotija cheese, and avocado ranch — an updated take on their agricultural history.
“So many people, so many people, have basically no idea where they are,” Higgins said. “They know they’re in Glacier. They know about the geography of the park, for the most part. But they don’t really understand, many of them don’t even know they’re on the Reservation.” During her years at the cafe, she’s noticed a hesitant interest in customers regarding Indigenous culture and life on the reservation — something she believes most people in the U.S. don’t have access to.
While she’s shouldered the occasional stereotypical or ill-mannered question, she’s seen a polite curiosity with which she’s more than happy to engage. Don’t get her wrong, plenty of people stop by just for a quick bite — and to try that bison they’ve been hearing so much about — before heading on their way. But there’s often a crowd of inquiring folk hoping to hear a bit more about the land they’re on and its rich, storied history.
“It’s nice to kind of expand that knowledge base so that people have just a little bit more idea about who we are,” she said, “about what our life is like, and about how beautiful our home is.”