Long before she ran the kitchen at Salt+Scoria, Candace Stock was — and still is — a forager, a farmer, and a land steward. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, has worked in catering and hospitality since 2008, and cooked her way through East Coast restaurants and kitchens around the world before coming home to the Midwest. Today she’s based in Fargo, where she raises her son, Oliver, who loves farm life and the outdoors as much as she does. 

A member of the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Nation who grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, she cooks from a belief she returns to again and again: that food is medicine, and that people and the land are medicine for one another. In Fargo she became a fixture of the region’s Indigenous food movement — running the kitchen at the former BernBaum’s, hosting sold-out Native Heritage dinners with chef Edward Rodriguez, and leading pay-what-you-can community meals built around staples like the Three Sisters, bison, elk, and wild rice. 

Away from the line, she forages, teaches cooking demonstrations, and leads foraging walks — much of it alongside her mentor Noreen Thomas of Doubting Thomas Farms, an organic-grain and conservation-minded farm that shares her sense of what it means to care for good ground. She’s an outspoken advocate for Indigenous food sovereignty and for teaching people where their food really comes from. 

Her path to the Library began with a single meal. Asked to cook for a land blessing in Medora attended by Tribal Elders, she drove out to the Badlands, fed a crowd that turned out far larger than expected, and found a place that welcomed her. That dinner led to the menu she now brings to Salt+Scoria. 

At the table, expect food that is wood-fired and seasonal, drawn from native botanicals and ethically sourced game, and rooted in the idea that names the restaurant: take care of what takes care of you.