We’ve had a number of tour guests from Tulsa visit us in Denver and Boulder, so we thought it was time to head down there and check out the food and beverage scene. It’s definitely smaller than what we have here in the Front Range of Colorado, but this art-deco-filled city has a burgeoning food and beverage scene that’s worth exploring. Here’s what we suggest for a quick trip to Tulsa.
There are hotels all over town. If you’re a serious Art Deco fan, the place to stay is The Mayo Hotel. Unfortunately, it’s located in a food dessert downtown. All of the good eats are happening in the Brady Arts District and the Blue Dome District, so we opted with a room in the arts district as it was just steps away from an exceptionally fun brewery: Prairie Brewpub.
Prairie Artisan Ales are, in our opinion, the best beers brewed in Oklahoma. They’re available in select liquor stores in Colorado, which is nice. But the selection available at the brewpub is quite substantial. Their artwork is also really fun! Original artwork all over the establishment is reproduced on some of their beer bottle labels, and it was fun to see the paintings in person.
We checked into our room and then walked right over to Prairie for a couple beers. This is a full service restaurant as well, so it’s worth a try if you’re hungry. We had our minds set on artisanal pizza, so after some beers we walked over to Andolini’s Sliced.
Our incredibly nice server explained that Andolini’s has five different pizza ovens to create five different styles of pizza. The requisite wood-burning Stefano Ferrara oven is there, of course, for a classic Napolitano style pizza.
And a wall of four other ovens set to different temperatures creates four other styles of pies: Andolini style, Roman square slices, NYC style, and Brooklyn style.
That’s A LOT of pizza ovens under one roof, and definitely something we’ve never seen before. All of a sudden Tulsa started to feel like a super-foodie town.
Our eyes were definitely bigger than our stomachs, and two different pizzas led to some leftovers, but cold pizza in a hotel room can make your stay a bit more enjoyable later in the evening while drinking wine and watching TV…
From dinner we walked back to the Brady Arts District to put our pizza in the room and explore a couple more watering holes. There’s a tiki bar called the Saturn Room, and it’s clear from their menu guests enjoy stealing tiki glassware as cocktails are served in standard nondescript glasses unless you want to spend $18 to buy a tiki glass. But I get it. Don’t even get me started on the group of 40-50 year old men in Denver who started stealing glassware while on tour with me. Needless to say, I was furious and returned all of the glassware. But, I digress. Back to Tulsa.
We checked it out as we must do our due diligence and then moved on to a local dive bar, the Soundpony Lounge, for an interesting people watching experience. No pictures were needed of our vodka and soda in a plastic cup, but the Yeti statue felt photo-worthy. It was then time to call it a night.
Breakfast in the morning at Chimera Cafe is highly recommended. And, we discovered there’s an Edible Tulsa publication. If Edible publications feel there’s enough going on in Tulsa to warrant printing a magazine, there’s clearly something going on there.
We had some breakfast tacos before checking out the Woody Guthrie museum.
Then we enjoyed a relatively short walk into downtown to check out the art deco buildings that makeup the bulk of Tulsa’s skyline. A quick donut snack at Hurts Donuts on the way back to the arts district felt like a good idea until getting half way through the donut. I mean, who could resist a donut shop with an Emergency Donut Vehicle parked outside?
If you have a sweet tooth, Hurts is for you! Otherwise, you might consider sharing a donut with someone.
The Center of the Universe is an interesting one minute stop. Stand on the circle and talk. It’s one of the most popular “attractions” in Tulsa, so be a tourist and check it out. It’s a mysterious site where the sounds you make are projected and echo back at you.
From there, we bought a snack at the carefully curated Goods Bodega, some chocolates from Glacier Confection, and a cup of coffee at Gypsy Coffee. After an afternoon rest, it was off to Valkyrie, a craft cocktail bar that’s not to be missed.
There are a number of places we didn’t get to try, like Antoinette Baking Company, which looked like a fantastic spot, or Ida Red Soda Fountain, which also looked like it was worth checking out but wasn’t open when we wanted to go. Unfortunately, time ran out and there are only so many calories two people can (or SHOULD) consume in a day. The bottom line is we’d go back!