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Acclaimed Rhode Island chef among Women of the Year 2024
USA Today nominated Sherry Pocknett of Sly Fox Den Too, a restaurant that focuses on local ingredients and Indigenous cuisine.
Sherry Pocknett, of Sly Fox Den Too, is getting yet another accolade after a year of recognition for her Indigenous cuisine-focused restaurant in Rhode Island.
USA Today announced Thursday that the chef was one of the Women of the Year for 2024. Pocknett, who grew up in Cape Cod but now lives in Connecticut, was also named Connecticut’s Woman of the Year, awarded by the Norwich Bulletin, a Gannett newspaper.
“Sherry, along with her fellow nominees, has made a significant impact through their activism, igniting positive change on a broad scale to benefit our country and global community,” a release said.
Honorees include 55 representatives from each state, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico, as well as five national honorees.
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Two of the national honorees have Massachusetts connections: Dr. Melissa Gilliam, Boston University’s first female president and first Black woman to lead the school, and Aly Raisman, a retired gymnast and two-time Olympian who grew up in Needham.
Last year’s women honored were from a variety of fields, including Gov. Maura Healey, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and the late Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
USA Today, a newspaper owned by media company Gannett, carried on the program after their initial Women of the Century project in 2020. Nominees are submitted by readers, staff, and a panel of experts, and have included other women who work in food like Pocknett.
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The news comes on the heels of a year full of acclaim for Pocknett and her restaurant, located in Charlestown. Her restaurant was also listed as Rhode Island’s best restaurant in USA Today’s list of best restaurants in each state.
During last year’s James Beard award season — the Oscar’s of the restaurant industry — she won Best Chef for the Northeast for Sly Fox Den Too. Pocknett is the first Indigenous woman to receive an award from the foundation.
“The first nomination, that was just pure luck, and I was really surprised,” Pocknett told The Boston Globe before her win, when she was announced as a finalist last spring. “Then to be in the final cut? The final five of all these people? It’s amazing. People must really like what I do.”
Sly Fox Den Too, set in a red house, is a 30-seat restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch foods, with a focus on local ingredients and Indigenous cuisine. Pocknett, of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, said the restaurant was named after her father, Chief Sly Fox, Vernon Pocknett.
The restaurant’s cuisine in particular celebrates the three original crops: corn, beans, and squash, which Pocknett calls “the three sisters.” Guests will find dishes like venison skewers, corn cake, and frybread on an extensive menu that also includes specials.
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“A lot of people don’t know about Native food,” Pocknett told the Bulletin in her Women of the Year interview. “They really do know about it, but they don’t know that it’s Native food. Everyone loves scrod, and it comes from the bays of Cape Cod.”
Pocknett has been in the process for some time now of renovating a space she hopes to turn into Sly Fox Den, without the “Too,” as a bigger restaurant, event space, and culture center in Preston, Connecticut. In an interview with the Globe, she said she was hopeful it would open some time this year.
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