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FLAVORS: A HOMAGE TO MOM – Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos Food Truck

Owner Linda Gilcrist runs her food truck, Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Taco with her daughters Jordan Gilcrist and Shyanne Ryan.
Stella Fong
Owner Linda Gilcrist runs her food truck, Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Taco with her daughters Jordan Gilcrist and Shyanne Ryan.

Frybread and Indian Tacos honoring Joan Marie Standfast is being served up in a food truck emblazoned with the colors of orange, tangerine, and pink with fuchsia pink lettering spelling out Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos.

Owner Linda Gilcrist shares, “My mom is from South Dakota. My mom is basically a full-blooded Sioux and she raised eight children. We grew up in a little town in Wyoming. So there’s four girls and four boys. There’s eight of us.”

Her parents met in North Dakota. Gilcrist’s father, from Texas, “used to travel up north to North Dakota to work in the fields.” Her mother would also venture up to work there, picking potatoes or packing produce.

Frybread is made with exactness and precision at Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos. The truck can be found around town on Tuesdays and weekends.
Stella Fong
Frybread is made with exactness and precision at Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos. The truck can be found around town on Tuesdays and weekends.

“My maiden name is Flores, a very Mexican Hispanic name. I am half Sioux and I am half Hispanic,” Gilcrist shares.

In her childhood household her father did most of the cooking. “My dad was making the tacos. My dad was making the menudo. My dad was making us rice.”

Her parents stopped moving the family around when the boys got to teenage age and settled in Wyoming. “We grew up with my dad’s side of the family. So, I had uncles and I would listen to them speaking Spanish all the time. And I have an older cousin that actually grew up in that time with my dad and she’s the one that teaches us the ways of what they used to do, and she talked about making tamales and making tortillas, and she’s always the cousin that will bring the big pile of tamales to funerals or to weddings.”

“My mom knew how to make tortillas. She would either make a stack of tortillas and if it wasn’t tortillas, then we had fry bread.”

Owner of Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos utilizes her biology degree in making her frybread with exactness and precision.
Stella Fong
Owner of Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos utilizes her biology degree in making her frybread with exactness and precision.

Gilcrist really wanted to honor her mom when starting her food truck. Also, in another way she wanted to remember the brother that passed away in January. She remembers making frybread for him and how much he enjoyed the treat. “He was very young. And, for me, I’m the kind of person that I aways have to be doing something. Because when I’m not doing something, it gives me time to think. And I just knew that I wasn’t in a good place. And the idea of let’s make a food truck came up.”

“The original frybread was derived out of necessity,” Gilcrist wants to state. “It is when our people were placed on reservations, they were rations provided by the government.” “They got flour and they got lard.”

Over time, frybread has a place of nostalgia in many appetites. “Nowadays we like to share it with people at events. You know, we make it for celebrations. We make it for holidays. We make it for dinner.”

Unfortunately, Gilcrist’s mother passed away suddenly in 2015. Gilcrist says of securing the original recipe, “The unfortunate thing for me is I never really got to ask my mom about it. The exact ingredients of what she had put in it. So, before she passed, she had a massive stroke. She wasn’t able to tell us anymore, but I knew that it was a part of something that I wanted to remember about my mom.”

The Traditional Indian Taco topped with seasoned ground beef, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and crema is the crowd favorite.
Stella Fong
The Traditional Indian Taco topped with seasoned ground beef, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and crema is the crowd favorite.

“So we took the majority of the ingredients and we put our own little flair on it.” She added butter and yeast and other ingredients that she wants to keep a secret, items that were not afforded during her childhood.

She reached out to a few cousins in South Dakota to try to resurrect the recipe.

In 2023, she bought a food truck from a woman who had cooked lobster rolls in the mobile kitchen. She refashioned the 10 by 6 foot truck to include two fryers, work space, refrigeration, and wash sinks.

Her daughters Shyanne Ryan and Jordan Gilcrist helped design the outside of the truck. Jordan admits, “I was the third wheel of the group. It was my sister Shyanne and mom who had the idea. And they were like, jump on board with us if you think it’s great. So, I followed alongside these two, and here we are a year and half later.”

In finalizing the recipes, she used her skills and knowledge from her biology degree and work as a LASIK surgery assistant to work. On Tuesdays and the weekends when her truck is found at events or around town, she starts the bread in the morning and then allows it to rise. She weighs out each dough ball and then rolls them with an electric sheeter. The demand for her bread quickly eliminated rolling out the dough by hand.

The barbacoa, braised pork cooked with chili powder, onion and garlic salt is started the night before.

The Traditional Indian Taco, topped with seasoned beef, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and crema is the top selling item. Her other savory items include the slow-cooked shredded pork, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and crema followed by a vegetarian option with pinto beans.

Traditionally wojapi is a sauce made with chokecherries, grapes or blueberries. The berries were cooked down with very little sweeteners. At Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos, owner Linda Gilcrest uses strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries which are more readied available and adds sugar and lemon juice to her sauce.
Stella Fong
Traditionally wojapi is a sauce made with chokecherries, grapes or blueberries. The berries were cooked down with very little sweeteners. At Mama Joan’s Frybread and Indian Tacos, owner Linda Gilcrest uses strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries which are more readied available and adds sugar and lemon juice to her sauce.

Dessert flat breads include wojapi, traditional sauce made with chokecherries, grapes or blueberries, but Gilcrist brings a modern touch by cooking down strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries with the addition of some sugar and lemon juice. Other options include honey drizzled on the frybread and bread bites tossed with cinnamon and sugar topped with a sweet glaze.

Gilcrist and her daughters make their frybread with love and can be found in town or at special events. (Check the following links for where they can be found: https://www.facebook.com/mamajoans.mt/ or https://www.facebook.com/groups/billingsfoodtrucktracker/). Gilcrist shares, “And so I think people feel that when we provide it to them. I just want them to know that it’s more than just us giving you something and taking your money.” “We put a lot of care into what we’re doing, the same feeling that my mom gave us.”

Stella Fong shares her personal love of food and wine through her cooking classes and wine seminars as well as through her contributions to Yellowstone Valley Woman, and Last Best News and The Last Best Plates blogs. Her first book, Historic Restaurants of Billings hit the shelves in November of 2015 with Billings Food available in the summer of 2016. After receiving her Certified Wine Professional certification from the Culinary Institute of America with the assistance of a Robert Parker Scholarship for continuing studies, she has taught the Wine Studies programs for Montana State University Billings Wine and Food Festival since 2008. She has instructed on the West Coast for cooking schools such as Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, Macy’s Cellars, and Gelsons, and in Billings, at the Billings Depot, Copper Colander, Wellness Center, the YMCA and the YWCA. Locally she has collaborated with Raghavan Iyer and Christy Rost in teaching classes.