![]() ![]() The burger at Bar Arbolada went from a classic burger that a few people knew about to a burger that everyone wants, and it took less than a year. Huge portions of beef with mashed red potatoes covered in white gravy means it’s dinner for two, or three honestly. ![]() The chicken-fried steak with jalapeño cream gravy at Cheever’s Cafe has been on every local’s must-try list for 20 years, primarily because it deserves to be. For everyone else, we have suggestions, but we’ll start with what Oklahoma is mostly known for. For the truly adventurous, simply type “tacos SW OKC” into the search engine, and enjoy the moveable feast. But as is often the case in cities with plenty of land, great local restaurants are scattered in every direction, including our Taco Trail southwest of downtown. The heaviest cluster of local restaurants are within the urban core, a roughly three-mile by one-mile rectangle with downtown proper as the center of the south edge. We’re happy to add them to our menu of local staples. When people come to a place, they bring their food with them, or at least their recipes, and some of their parents are and were great cooks. Our staples are drawn from menus and spice cabinets of the East Coast, Deep South, Texas, New Mexico and Mexico, Vietnam, Lebanon and Laos, Guatemala and Honduras, etc. That’s one of the strengths of our food scene: hang around long enough, make good food, and we’ll say it’s local food, because it is, and it contributes to our set of wonderful, complex, exciting and adventurous options. Arellano talks about “traditional” a lot in his writing, and that’s the best place to land, but what is important for a guide to food in a city is to note that these traditional foods become part of the overall landscape of a place they become a part not just as “ethnic” food but as staples in the diet of the people in that place.īecause of the Land Run and subsequent immigration, Oklahoma has nothing we can point to and call “Oklahoma food” - unless it’s pre-Colombian dishes from indigenous people. Everyone’s parent isn’t a great cook, wherever they’re from, but the food is authentic, so authenticity probably isn’t a good standard anyway. Authentic might just mean it’s awful food but made by someone from that place.” As writer and food expert Gustavo Arellano pointed out in a recent interview, “Just because it’s ‘authentic’ Mexican food doesn’t mean it’s good. Oklahoma City’s origin story is as complex and interesting as the diverse food scene you’ll find today.įood writers and adventurous eaters have gradually become more cautious about using the word “authentic” to describe food, especially food from different ethnic groups or nationalities. ![]()
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