This fall, State Street will have a new restaurant that has a micro-prairie planted on its building’s rooftop.

Tall Grass, named after the native grass prairies that once blanketed south central Wisconsin, is headed to the ground floor space at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

Executive chef Elena Terry will be at the helm of Tall Grass. Terry, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is known for her advocacy of preserving Indigenous foods and food traditions. She’s also founder of the nonprofit Wild Bearies, which educates people about Indigenous foods. She’s also trained as a wild game specialist and butcher.

With a decade in the restaurant industry under her belt, Terry has collaborated on food advocacy with such organizations as the Smithsonian, the James Beard Foundation and the United Nations. Tall Grass is her first full-time restaurant gig.

Both the restaurant’s layout and the menu are still being finalized, but Terry says the menu will be farm-to-table and draw on Terry’s training in French cooking. It won’t focus on Indigenous ingredients. “As much as I would like to share those, I would like to share the story of community and not be limited in what I am putting out,” Terry says.

Her vision is for Tall Grass to be the gathering and community space both the museum and State Street needs, a cafe in the morning and a quick lunch stop offering sandwiches and salads.

Tall Grass will partner with Wonderstate Coffee, which Terry says has a “great sustainability model,” and source pastries from the FEED Bakery training program that provides baker education and job placement. More partnerships will focus on the farm-to-table concept.

Tall Grass will handle all the catering for the museum’s third-floor event space.

One goal is to offer accessible prices and still support local food production and sustainability efforts — Terry doesn’t want to price out younger diners or UW-Madison students. Still, State Street is expensive; lunches could range $15-$30, while dinner could cost as much as “several hundred,” Terry says. Guest chefs may come in for special dinners.

The restaurant will have anywhere from 40-60 employees, including a chef team, event staff, servers and bartenders.

Plans are for the restaurant to open in fall. The museum’s director, Paul Baker Prindle, says buildout for Tall Grass is scheduled to begin in July or August.

It’s been a long time in coming; conversations about Tall Grass started this time last year, he says. “We talked for a long time. I was looking for a values match above all, and I had a connection to Elena.” Baker Prindle describes the relationship as a partnership. “We both really believe that food is medicine and food is community building. I want the museum to be a cultural third space where people find [a sense of] place.”

“Contemporary art includes so many things now,” Baker Prindle says. “It’s performance. It includes music. It includes food as well.”