Javelina Indigenous Dining

Being the eldest of six, Alexa taught herself to cook in order to take care of her siblings, thus finding her passion in cooking. After high school in 2012, Alexa moved to Portland, where she attended Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School while working as a line cook. Her experience took her through several acclaimed Portland restaurants and after a decade of hard work, she became the Chef at a well-known restaurant, where she ran operations and menu development.

In September 2023, just six weeks after giving birth to her first child, she started the Javelina: Indigenous Dining pop-up with her husband Nick. And after a year and a half of pop-ups, she opened her first brick and mortar location in May 2025.

Chef Alexa makes it a priority to create a welcoming and representative space to gather for the Indigenous community which resides in the Pacific Northwest.

Chef Alexa Numkena-Anderson’s food draws on her Hopi, Yakama, Cree, and Skokomish heritage while pushing to revise what North American cuisine is understood to encompass. Javelina stands in Portland’s noticeable gap of restaurants serving Indigenous cuisines, but it’s also, outside of any great expectations, a kitchen putting out delicious, considered food on its own terms, from the tepary bean dip, bison steak, and oysters at dinner to the lunch-only “Powwow Burger,” served between two slices of frybread.

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