Tulsa Food

Chinese food in Tulsa? There isn’t any! I used to use that line quite a lot but as of yesterday I can’t, because I’ve discovered Mandarin Taste. Rigorously authentic dishes typical of the north China plains await behind an unassuming facade. We walked through the door to find a pleasant dining room with several tables [...]

Some foods inspire cravings. A few inspire obsessions. One of these is Banh Mi, that meal in a baguette that’s a marriage of French flair and Vietnamese flavor. Until a few months ago, if you wanted a Banh Mi you had to drive to Oklahoma City, and some people did. Then came the Lone Wolf [...]

Sleek, spare yet somehow elegant, Utica Square’s newest gastronomic delight looks like a temple to good food. The servers, hushed and reverential, add to the foodie ambiance; service is unusually good. With sushi in the name, the star, as you’d expect, is raw seafood, but there are plenty of delights for someone who, like me, [...]

Granted, the slogan “good mood food” is already taken, but if Arby’s hadn’t thought of it first…it could be aptly tied to Thai food…the best kind of comfort food I know. No matter what life experience you’re going through, Thai food provides a complimentary flavor fit for your mindset with a sublime blend of sweet, [...]

These are exciting times! Over a month ago, I wrote an article about how we need more food trucks. All of a sudden, BAM! More food trucks have started appearing. This is so great! I’m so excited. And it’s all in good timing because Tulsa is having their very first Tulsa Food Truck Festival on [...]

Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese are foods I adore. Packed with unique flavors and spices and generally with a touch of heat. But I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve ever tried Korean-style food. Odd. I have no recollection of ever eating a bite of bulgogi, yangnyum, bibimbob, etc. These dishes are quite foreign [...]

Royal Dragon offers a good though average Chinese buffet and some extraordinarily delicious a la carte items. I’m a bit late to the party. Royal Dragon’s been serving hungry Tulsans for 35 years. (The original owners, who ran it for over three decades, sold it a few years ago.) It was one of the first [...]

Fusion, Pacific Rim — those are culinary buzzwords (more so in the late 1990s than now) but most places get them wrong. The Tropical gets it right. Fusion means a marriage of Asian and American ingredients and cooking techniques, but all too often the vibrant, exciting flavors of the East are dumbed down in the [...]

I was recently out of town and got back just yesterday. For a number of reasons, not the least of which was an insanely good deal on airfare, I flew into and out of OKC. I landed late yesterday afternoon and hit the turnpike. By the time I struggled through the beginnings of rush-hour traffic [...]

Valentines Day is over. Chances are you purchased some flowers and chocolates, took your sweetie out to a luxurious meal, and possibly bought some bling as well. Chances are your pockets are lighter too. What to eat and where to go next? How about a change-up for some great Vietnamese food at Hmong Cafe? And, [...]

For years I’ve complained that there’s no decent Chinese food in Tulsa, and all that time I could have been eating here. Mind you, Chopsticks offers little more than a glimpse of the manifold glories of Chinese cuisine, but it’s a good solid glimpse. Most of the menu has the same Chinese-American offerings, vaguely inspired [...]

“It was the junk business that brought me to Tulsa,” says Gary Turner, the affable Californian who, along with his wife Soya, owns Yaki Monster. Fortunately it wasn’t the junk food business. Even the soy sauce is lovingly made by hand at Yaki Monster, the newest addition to the restaurant row at Jenks’ Riverwalk. The [...]

“Noooo, don’t order that! It has raw fish in it!” Some of the waitresses heard me and cringed, or perhaps snickered. This is not the best line to use in a sushi restaurant if you want to show the world your sophistication. But last night it made sense. There have been quite a few reviews [...]

After working up an appetite whiffing golf balls at LaFortune park, D and I decided to try the Thai restaurant on the corner- Bamboo Thai Bistro. With its plain facade and strip mall local I learned not to judge a book by its cover. Things are not always as they seem! Though its name professes it to [...]

No one would ever walk along the drab, nondescript blocks of Third Street west of Main without a reason. Now there is a very good reason. Turn into a doorway just past Boulder and you will be here. It’s a well-lit place with high ceilings, but you’re not here for the decor. You’re here for [...]

Near the corner of 41st and Memorial is what looks like a boarded-up abandoned storefront. Most people pass it without a second glance. I’ve driven by countless times without stopping. That’s a mistake. Stop, park your car, walk through that unmarked and singularly unprepossessing door … and you’re in Japan. On the lanterns is the [...]

There are quite a few more good Thai restaurants in Tulsa than you’d have a right to expect, and some of them are surprisingly good. Lanna Thai, while not the best (that would be My Thai) easily falls in that class. I remember when it was the best. When it opened ten years ago in [...]

When I’m in the mood for sushi I become an unstoppable force. Nothing but a straight line and time separate me from fulfilling this craving. With a variety of fish flown in twice weekly, Fuji’s sushi menu is where I look for some of Tulsa’s freshest sushi. Fuji has been serving authentic sushi for 25 [...]

I carry a short list of local restaurants in Tulsa that I would consider a “Foodie’s Paradise”. What does that mean to me? Let’s use Bali Fusion Cafe, located at about 71st and Memorial tucked away in the shopping center next to the dollar theater, as an example. Fresh, made to order, from scratch dishes [...]

“Ohhh you’ve ordered something VERY traditional!” Lisa Nguyen, the woman who runs Mekong River restaurant more or less single-handedly, was excited. “Let me show you how to eat it.” I was less excited. I figured I knew how to eat things. “First you fill half your spoon with rice.” She pointed to a bowl heaped [...]

I miss the joy of New York Chinatown. I’d wander the streets and find a place that looks like a rundown soup shop with six tables … but the menu would have over two hundred items and there’d be elegant dining rooms concealed in back. Inside the soup shop part there’s be a bunch of [...]

A spanking new Thai restaurant has come to grace the tired old strip mall at 51st and Yale. From the outside, it looks like an abandoned McDonald’s, but walk inside and you’re in a totally different world: austere, modern and very red. A few months ago, I reviewed My Thai Kitchen, and in that review [...]

Pho can become an obsession. Hot, steamy, redolent of beef and a thousand spices, curiously comforting and evocative, with hints of the sea and the land, of rice paddies and temple bells, to us a bit exotic but to Vietnamese bringing memories of home and childhood in quite the same way as a simple tea [...]

The title of this entry should really be “Covering Traditional Thai with Velveeta Cheese is smackyomomma GOOD!” I have been involved in many discussions about totally Americanized Pad Thai vs. more authentic Pad Thai.  After visiting Thai Village the non-traditional like yo momma made mac-N-Cheese or just straight up covered leftovers with cheese, in my [...]

So far I have been to the new Yokozuna Sushi bar twice and both times I was more then happy and impressed with my experience. What do I look for in good sushi? I always imagine how difficult it is to pack multiple ingredient into a very small bite size roll. This is not easy, [...]

Some time before the year 1300, groups of tribal farmers from Yunnan in southwest China drifted down into the virgin untilled lands just east of Burma. They called themselves Thai and the land became Thailand. We were sitting in the tiny, cozy dining room of My Thai restaurant and I was trying to impress my [...]