Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [219]
While you can spend $20 to $30 on a steak dinner, lunch can be one-third that price. We like the steak burger in particular. It is juicy and radiant with good beef flavor, served on a nice bun with lettuce, tomato, and pickles, and all the condiments on the side. While dinner patrons tend to be a dress-up group, the crowd at lunch is an amazing mix of rich ranchers in 100x beaver hats and fancy boots, huge blue-collar guys in overalls, and skinny blue-haired ladies out with their friends.
This place is a real taste of old Oklahoma City!
Clanton’s
319 E. Illinois
918–256–9053
Vinita, OK
BLD | $
When Sweet Tater Clanton opened for business in 1927, most of the road out front was not yet paved, and legend has it that to attract customers Mr. Clanton used to walk out the front door and bang a pot and pan together when he spied someone about to drive past. Today Sweet Tater’s great-granddaughter Melissa and her husband, Dennis Patrick, have a crowd of breakfasters so predictable that those who frequent the big “public table” toward the back of the dining room never look at menus and never place an order. When Lowell walks in the door, a waitress calls “Lowell!!” back to the kitchen and the cook starts preparing what Lowell eats. Same for Jim B., Freddy, and Glen.
Clanton’s chicken-fried steak starts with what the Patricks call an “extra tenderized” cube steak they get from Tulsa. The beef patty is dipped in a mixture of egg and buttermilk, then dredged once in seasoned flour. “If you double-dip,” Patrick says, referring to a common practice of repeating this process a second time, “you will get a steak that looks bigger. But it takes you farther away from the flavor of the beef.” The steak is cooked on a flat griddle in vegetable oil until the blood starts rising up through the flour, then flipped and finished. The edge of a fork will sever it effortlessly into a bite-size triangle with beefy, crisp-crusted taste that is ineffably amplified when it’s pushed through mashed potatoes and peppery cream gravy.
Sightseers who get off the interstate to explore the original roadbed of Route 66 often find their way to Clanton’s, which is known for the tourist-friendly tradition of giving fifty-cent pieces as change. But the Patricks relish the fact that their place is a town café with standards set by local taste. Dennis says, “If our gravy is a little off, if the biscuits aren’t as fluffy as usual, if there’s too much salt in the dressing that goes with roast chicken, they will let us know!” He points out that one of the most popular dishes on the menu is calf fries—not exactly tourist fare—and that the pie crust recipe hasn’t changed for decades. Melissa did share the ingredient that ensures the foundation underneath Clanton’s chocolate cream, coconut cream, and banana cream pies is ineffably fragile and flaky—ice water, icy, icy ice water.
Classen Grill
5124 S. Classen Circle
405–842–0428
Oklahoma City, OK
BLD | $
Classen Grill has been our breakfast destination in Oklahoma City since the earliest editions of Roadfood. We love to start the day with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a plate of migas, the Mexican egg scramble that includes strips of tortilla, chunks of tomato, nuggets of sausage, and a mantle of melting shredded cheese. Chinook eggs are salmon patties topped with poached eggs and accompanied by a block of cheese grits. Taquitas are tortilla-wrapped packets of eggs, cheese, and vegetables. When we arrive with insatiable appetites, we go for “biscuits debris”—two big ones split open and mounded with gravy chockablock with ham and sausage chunks and cloaked with melted cheddar cheese.
On the side, it is possible to enjoy some serious potatoes—either home fries or the specialty known as Classen potatoes, which