Knotty Pine Is Baaaaack!!!!!!

It was after 1:00 PM, Sheila had just finished cleaning the house, she had another engagement to make in a couple of hours and we were both hungry.  So, we decided to drive down the street to the new neighborhood barbecue place, The Knotty Pig.

When you talk about barbecue in Tulsa one name always comes up, the legendary Knotty Pine on Charles Page Boulevard on the West Side.  For the many decades it operated before a tragic fire, it was the standard by which all other barbecue places were measured.  After the fire, they reopened in Broken Arrow which seemed to me like a bad match.  The Broken Arrow culinary market is better suited to franchise, family friendly, generic anywhere in the U.S. suburbs kind of venues since Broken Arrow is pretty well the epitome of a faceless American suburb.

But, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the Knotty Pine is back, now called the Knotty Pig, at 6835 E. 15th Street, in Tulsa, a much more appropriately gritty neighborhood for a barbecue place.  We were greeted at the door by a sign that was most appropriate to the neighborhood and sure to earn the respect of the vast majority of the hard core Okie food fans who will seek the place out.


6835 E 15th Street has a checkered history.  I think it used to be a Dairy Queen long ago.  Lately, it has been a Harden's Hamburgers, a Billy Ray's Barbecue and last a Zayn's Diner.  In each case, something didn't click.  We used to frequent it when it was Billy Ray's because they had a really nice dinner for two special.  I ate at Zayn's once and crossed it off my list.

We arrived sometime after 1:30.  The parking lot was full and there was one table left.  That table is infamous because even in the middle of the hottest Oklahoma summer, due to some freak accident in the design of the HVAC, it is as cold as a meat locker.  Sheila and I stood it as long as we could but moved as soon as another table opened up.  The dining room is decorated with a mixture of items from the last Knotty Pine and what looked like some items salvaged from the original location.  But, the best decoration was the smell.  The old, original Knotty Pine had a heavenly smoky, greasy in a good way smell about it.  The Knotty Pig shares that same wonderful aroma.
  
Sheila ordered the chopped beef sandwich.  I ordered the jalapeno chicken chunks.  Table service was quick but the food delivery was slow.  We later learned that they were short staffed in the kitchen to start with and at any rate had not expected the "lunch rush" crowd to carry through right into mid afternoon.Sheila's beef was done perfectly, mild and smokey.  The bun was grilled perfectly as well.  Her coleslaw was quite good, not quite up the gold standard of Goldies, but a solid A- at least.  

My chicken platter was a work of art.  Somebody back there knows how to cook Okie.  The chicken bits were deep fried with breaded jalapeno slices, pickle slices and onion bits.  The total effect was amazing.  Sheila kept reaching across the table with her fork to sneak bites as I chewed.  The fries were old fashioned and hand cut.  Hand cut fries can be a disaster but these were perfect.  The cowboy beans were sweet and smoky with bits of beef scattered throughout.  Even the grilled toast was good.  

The chicken was served with a side of the house barbecue sauce which deserves its own paragraph.  Barbecue sauce is very much a regional and often a highly subjective taste.  A good Okie sauce is, like the local geography, somewhere between KC, Memphis and Texas.  The Knotty Pig sauce was sweet, smoky and complex.  It is the flavor I go for when I spend hours in the kitchen mixing my own. 

As we were leaving, we polled the tables around us.  Everyone was raving about the food.  As we pulled out of our parking space another car was waiting to pull in and it was nearly 3:00 PM.  

The Knotty Pig's menu shows it to be much more than just another barbecue joint, although the barbecue itself was quite good.  The burger and other sandwich choices were fascinating and sounded delicious as did the chili based dishes.  I think the owners have a winner here.  The Knotty Pig is setting a high standard for other Okie style joints to match.

Sheila's Birthday 2016 - Krebs Is Off My List

We decided to drive down to Krebs for an Italian dinner to celebrate Sheila's birthday. It was also decided that I would be the designated driver and we would drive Pam and Wayne's big old Honda Pilot.  When you get to be our age, being the designated driver has a lot less to do with alcohol consumption than it does with who gets to nap during lulls in the conversation.  I have to say the Pilot looked pretty formidable sitting there at the curb and it had more controls and computer equipment than some small airplanes.  But, it was easy to drive so long as you stayed within its envelope and very comfortable.

When we got to Krebs, we stopped at Lovera's Italian Grocery first.  Lovera's is something of a legend in that part of the country.  For decades, it was a classic little old style Italian grocery sitting there in the middle of a small, sleepy Oklahoma town.  It was charming and sweet.  But, all of that has changed now.  The cheeses and sausages hanging from the ceiling are gone replaced with modern, high tech looking, floor to over your head, stainless steel shelves stocked with stuff that you can buy in any gourmet food store.  The charming old meat counter has gone vertical too so that you have to stand on tip toes to talk to the butcher.  I was sadly disappointed with the experience.  I didn't have drive to Krebs to shop in a high vertically stocked everything processed for shipment gourmet food store.  We have plenty of those in Tulsa.  As a matter of fact, I could have gotten everything we purchased in our local Reasors.

Roseanna's Italian Food in Krebs is arguably the best of its genre.  Krebs has been known for its "in an old house" Italian restaurants for over a century.  At one time, Pete's Place was the best known of them.  I gave up on Pete's after a couple of incidents of paying an outrageous check for what tasted like Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti.  And, I'm sorry to say the same thing has now happened at Roseanna's.  It began with the fact that our server was pushy and tried to hurry us through ordering.  We had to gently tell her to back off.   Pam had to tell her to bring that menu back, I was still reading it.

The salad was Iceberg lettuce straight out of the bag and doused in vegetable oil.  Mine looked like it came out of the bottom of the bag at that.

I ordered the grilled chicken with spaghetti on the side.  When it arrived, the chicken was cold and the spaghetti had that same, straight out of the can taste that made me swear off of Pete's.  Aside from being cold, the chicken had no flavor.  No herbs, no spices, it didn't even taste like the grill.  I wonder if it was microwaved and then thrown on the grill for a few seconds.  Even the bread was a loser.  It wasn't the nice, crusty, light Italian bread that you would expect. Instead, it was just a loaf of generic French bread and it wasn't good French bread at that.  It tasted like it came off the Holsum Bread truck.  No olive oil and herb dipping sauce was offered.

The other folks in our party fared far better.  The lamb fries were good, the lasagna was good, etc.  The cheese cake, which is made for the restaurant by a local woman was superb.  But, the basics of my simple meal, the meat, the pasta, the salad and the bread were all losers.  Olive Garden or even Spaghetti Warehouse will manage to serve your grilled chicken hot with a few herbs and spices on it.  The Italian bread we buy from WalMart and Reasors is far better than what Roseanna's put on the table.  And for that matter, WalMart generic chunky pasta sauce would be a major step up from what I was served.

Bottom line here, Roseanna's is off my list of "destination" restaurants.  We could have gotten a far better meal at Johnny Carino's or Carraba's and not had to drive an hour and half to get it.