Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [226]
We have not eaten our way through the menu, and some day we will try the smoked turkey breast, the hot links, the Polish sausage, the brisket, the chicken dinners available only on Sunday, and maybe even the double-meat hamburger. But for now, let us salute the two essential items made here: pork ribs that are muscular and yet velvet-tender, crusty with glaze, and packed with flavor, and the pig sandwich, which is vividly sauced hacked hunks of pork in a bun with Van’s own zesty relish. These are two of the best barbecue dishes anywhere. Superb sides include Curlie Q Fries, which are a variegated tangle of honey-tone twigs, and a bacon-flavored, twice-baked potato invented by the current Van’s grandma and listed as “Vanized” in the menu.
“The pie lady goofed,” said the girl taking our order at Van’s counter. “She put coconut meringue on the chocolate pie and regular meringue on the coconut pie.” This heinous error—which, in fact, made the chocolate pie extra-good—was the worst thing that happened during an exemplary meal at one of the great barbecue outposts of the Southwest.
If you like barbecue, you need to eat at Van’s.
White River Fish Market
1708 N. Sheridan Rd.
918–835–1910
Tulsa, OK
LD | $$
Surrounded by light industry and warehouses out by the airport, the White River Fish Market is not where anyone would expect to eat well. Outside, it looks like a hardware store in a strip mall; inside, there is no printed menu—just a posted list of items on the wall above the counter where customers stand in line to place orders. Meals come at fast-food speed to boomerang-pattern Formica tables, some of which are private, some communal; the brightly lit dining room sounds like a rowdy factory mess hall, occupied by blue collars and Oxford shirts, blacks and whites and Native Americans. For all its indecorous democracy, this unlikely outpost serves the most elegant fish in Tulsa, maybe the best in the state. We know, that’s a funny assertion given that Oklahoma is the heart of the beef belt and has no reputation for seafood other than excellent catfish. But you’ll have a hard time naming a place in Charleston or Mobile with as wide a variety of beautiful fish so perfectly prepared.
What’s very wonderful is that you choose exactly what you will eat. At the order counter just inside the front door is a long glass case with trays of raw sea scallops from Boston, catfish live-hauled from Arkansas, rainbow trout from Idaho, red snapper, frog legs, colossal shrimp and popcorn shrimp, salmon steaks, tilapia, orange roughy, perch and whole Gulf Coast flounders. Select what you want and tell the server your preferred cooking method. If you want it fried, the piece or pieces you have chosen are immediately dipped into salted cracker meal; if it is to be broiled, your selection is put directly onto a broiling tray. The ready-to-cook order is then handed through a large pass-through portal straight to the kitchen. Meanwhile, you pay and find a seat. The servers will make note of where you’ve gone, and by the time you’re comfortable and sipping sweet tea, the meal will be carried from the kitchen trailing wisps of savory smoke.
The dish at the top of our must-eat list is broiled flounder. It is one fish, weighing over a pound and wider than a large dinner plate. Its flesh is scored in a diamond pattern, making the display of several raw ones on ice in the glass case resemble a shimmering ocean jewel box. When broiled, the flesh firms up and contracts so it forms a pattern of bite-size diamonds of meat arrayed neatly atop the skeleton. The tail, hanging over the side of the large oval plate on which it is served, is blackened by flame and provides its own smoked scent; and each juicy nugget you lift—using the gentlest upward pressure of a fork slid underneath—has a delicate ocean sweetness that forbids fancying up.
Wilson’s B-B-Q
1522 East Apache St.
918–425–9912
Tulsa, OK
LD | $
A recording of Chicago blues emanated