Pie Hole Pizzeria + The Pearl Farmers Market: Oh, The Possibilities

Did you know that, at Tulsa's Pie Hole Pizzeria on Cherry Street, any pizza lover can purchase dough enough for a large pizza for just $3?

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Mod's Coffee and Crepes. Plus, ZOMG!!1! My kid was on TV!

It's not very often one sees a child at a downtown restaurant in the middle of the day. Suits and ties, yes; Toy Story light-up sandals and Zany Bands, no.

Maybe that's why when my little guy visited downtown earlier this week to try my friend Rusty's new restaurant, Mod's Coffee and Crepes, he attracted the attention of the media.

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El Rio Verde: The Wet Burrito

Having lived in Tulsa for more than a quarter century, I've had my share of meals that by most accounts would fall into the Mexican food genre.

Set down in front of me on technicolor Fiestaware has been everything from the cheese-doused, deep-fried chimichanga filled with Rotel and composite chicken to handmade tamales I had to order either in Spanish or by number from one of those back-lit menu boards we know from snack bars at high school basketball games.

I know I just painted the two ends of the spectrum of what could be called Mexican food in the lower Midwest in very different lights. But, here's the deal. I'm not one of those food writers who leads a concurrent life as a food snob. Sure, I like fine food and dishes that resonate with authenticity. But, I also like bagged tortilla chips and several brands of canned enchilada sauce. I'd eat the dishes I described in the preceding paragraph with equal satisfaction. And vigor. And by dirtying the same number of napkins.

A secret: All the great food writers are messy eaters. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. This is one of the easier ways to aspire to greatness in our lives.

Since my opinion on the importance of authenticity of cuisine is neither here nor there, I'm also not one of those food writers who is hellbent on globetrotting to discover how different foods are "supposed to be prepared." I've never been to Mexico, but I have shopped in grocery stores that, for a certain red-headed, self-tanner addict, required an English-Spanish dictionary.

All of that said (yes, I'm about to get to the actual food part of this post), I love to get my nosh on at El Rio Verde.

At 38 N. Trenton, just off of Admiral and Utica, its safe to say the location is right for authentic Mexican food. The decor is spot on, too.

While what comes out the mouth of the conservative talk radio personality Neal Boortz usually makes me want to jump out of my skin, I love what I heard him once say about Mexican food restaurants. He likes 'em bright, he likes 'em gaudy and he likes 'em pretty darn near offensive to the eye. The more cacophonous and contrived the decor, the better the food, he says.

I couldn't agree more.

This, ladies and gents, is the fabled El Rio Verde wet burrito.

What it is: A steering-wheel-sized flour tortilla is packed with pulled beef (or pork or chicken), refried beans, fresh pico de gallo, rainbows, ponies and baby giggles. It's smothered in a rich, zingy enchilada sauce and topped with a few hands full of queso blanco. Sour cream and fresh guac are stacked on top almost humorously, like eyes.

Anyone still feeling snooty about authentic Mexican food? I know a lot of folks say that once cheese and refried beans come into the mix, a dish ceases to be authentic Mexican food. To those people I say, fine - all the more for me.

Girls, don't let anyone tell you it's not ladylike to eat the entire thing. I did it, and no one looked at me sideways. My debit card was charged a mere $6, a bargain for a platter-sized lunch, and I was allowed to continue to sit at my table to chatter with my friend and dining buddy, our basket of housemade tortilla chips and salsa being refilled regularly. We didn't even hear a tisk-tisk.

My buddy and I, we were in real-girl heaven.

Guys, if you can't eat a whole wet burrito, you'd better have the cash for a tip to make up for it. You can't slack on the machismo in a place like El Rio Verde and expect to get away with it.

Have you made your way to El Rio Verde? What do you order there? I hear the breakfast is good enough to send a person back to bed.

Would You Like Some Art With That?

Yummy food and local art - it's a hard combination to beat, right? 

There are some inspired food combos out there - steak and potatoes, peanut butter and jelly, pepperoni pizza and Ranch dressing (hey, foodies of the stuck-up variety, don't act like you don't stand at the refrigerator at three in the morning dipping those 'Nilla Wafers in that tub of Nestle chocolate chip cookie dough) - but for my money, I'll take some pretty pictures served up with my supper any day. 

There are a few places in T-Town that offer a side dish of local art. One of them is Thyme: An American Bistro, operated by the elite local chef Bill Harris. 

Harris, a favorite among fans of the local food movement for his menus based on seasonal ingredients produced by area farmers or grown on his own farm, hosted an opening for Tulsa painter Deborah Berry Tuesday night. The timing was certainly right. Berry's work was inspired by the gardens she remembers from her youth. Her subjects? Flowers, flowers and more flowers. 

A particular piece caught my eye. Bright orange poppies on green stems sprang out from a deep blue background - Berry's love for color is apparent in each of the pieces hanging at Thyme right now - and since I work with these colors often in my knitting and quilting, I had to know more about the creative process behind that painting. 

She said that, first, she turns on some music. Berry is a classically trained pianist, and she played for 15 years before her farsightedness prevented her from reading those little music notes on the staff any longer. Still, the rhythm in music guides her in her painting. The music's flow told her where on the canvas to put those orange flowers, and the painting was what Berry called "a push and pull" from there.

Oh, boy. I love talking to artists. 

It's arguable whether good food is art or craft, but either way, I love to eat just as much as I love a chat with someone who makes his or her living from creativity. That includes chefs, and that includes especially Chef Bill Harris. Not only is he open, friendly and extremely funny, but he is sharp, knowledgeable and, most fun, passionate about what he does. While some chefs are content to let others run their kitchens while they avoid anyone in the community who isn't an oil company CEO, Harris has been in his kitchen every time I've called his restaurant. On his days off, he volunteers. 

He's not one of those chefs who just gives lip service to Tulsa's farmers and food producers - he uses local, seasonal food as the cornerstone of his entire menu. Try to find tomatoes in what he's cooking right now - you won't find them. Know why? Because tomatoes aren't ready to pick in Tulsa, Oklahoma, until June at the earliest. Anyone who has tasted the difference between a trucked-in, out-of-season tomato with one that's homegrown and picked at the peak of ripeness knows why Harris doesn't waste his time cooking with anything else, and why you shouldn't, either. 

Berry's show will hang at Thyme until next month. Head over soon, and while you're nourishing your soul, don't forget to nourish your taste buds, too. 

Firsts

Last weekend was a weekend of firsts for my little family and me.

We started things off with our first show at the BOK Center.

Yes, I know it's been open since September. Yes, I know there have been dozens of A-list musical acts in and out of there since then. And yes, I know that it's silly that a blogger who writes about things to do in Tulsa just went to her first show in the six-month-old, newest addition to Tulsa's famous skyline.

I know. Okay? It's just that, I'm a SAHM (I like the explanation of that acronym by Dooce's Heather Armstrong better than any other) who writes for these people and these people part time, and though my husband works very hard all day long, he's still in college. So, not only do we have to spend our free time wisely, we like to do the same with our money, too.

Thus, our outing to the BOK Center to see the Sesame Street Live show, Elmo's Green Thumb. When I was a kid, my parents to took me to see all of those "Live" and "On Ice" shows that came to Tulsa. Despite my generally low tolerance for pain, I've been interested in carrying on the tradition - maybe not the part where the parents spend $100 on dolls and light sabers and balloons at the little booth in the lobby, but the rest is still good.

Our little guy loved the show. He tried to run away a couple of times, but that's just because he's really getting his sea legs and likes to run around screaming and laughing and being a general ray of sunshine. Mostly, he sat in my husband's lap and stared at the giant fuzzy things dancing around on stage. He even clapped and waved bye-bye at the end of the show.

We spent the rest of Saturday grocery shopping and eating Wal-Mart pizza and drinking Stella Artois (weird combination, I know - and no, Baby didn't have any, so hang up the phone. While you're at it, just take DHS off speed dial).

Sunday morning we woke up hungry, and I mean hungry. It was cold and windy, but by golly, we were willing to brave the elements to try a Tulsa breakfast treasure, Tally's Good Food Cafe, on historic Route 66 at 11th and Yale.

Remember my search for Tulsa's best chiles rellenos? I started it before I began writing this blog and there's not much of a record here, but I have a thing about quests for the best stuff in Tulsa. I hosted Natalie's quest for Tulsa's best pizza here on this blog; lately, I've been in search for a new breakfast meet-up for my family, which has been displaced from its usual Sand Springs diner by cooks who hide the side of the pancakes they burnt by stacking them black sides together, overcook eggs and, for some reason, suddenly developed really awful service. Oh, and I found a smudge of lipstick on my coffee cup not once, but twice, and it sure as heck wasn't my shade.

Tally's wasn't such a great source for a story I just wrote for Tulsa Business Journal on where Tulsa's up-and-comers like to do business over the breakfast table (check it out in the April 13th issue - the story turned out to be a great example of how useful Twitter can be to a reporter), but the folks there sure know how to please a girl who's looking not just for a down-home diner, but for food that's so good that I'm forced to curl up under the table and suck my thumb for 45 minutes.

I love it when waitresses call me and my baby boy but NOT my husband "hon," "sug" and "babe" - that was my first indication we'd landed in a good, homegrown spot. Second, at about 8 in the morning, the place was absolutely packed. A few barstools and a booth or two were all that was available.

Then, the waitress brought me three perfect pancakes - light and fluffy, not dense and gummy, and huge - platter-sized, even. Hubs ordered something called The Smart Bomb, which came from the kitchen looking like a cow-pig-chicken had eaten two kinds of peppers and a whole bunch of onions and tomatoes, laid a few eggs and promptly exploded all over his plate. It wasn't pretty, but sometimes the best food isn't.

Great part was, we got out of there for about $18. That's tough to do when a family of three goes out for lunch or dinner.

Needless to say, I made a formal recommendation of Tally's later that day to the matriarchs of my family who so need some breakfast relief. To show her appreciation, my grandmother cut my baby's hair off.

Actually, I told her to, but she couldn't. I don't blame her. Who could whack all of those crazy blond curls? Instead, she just trimmed the wings that had formed above his ears and tamed the mullet forming on the nape of his neck.

The mullet genes are not, ahem, from my side of the family. Ask hubs, who hails from southern Arkansas. Who cares if he can hardly grow hair for himself? He will claim the mullet genes, or he will eat nothing but beans this week. Not that he would complain. Because he never does.

I don't know if it's unusual in other parts of the country for four generations of one family to be in the same room on a regular basis, but around here, it's the norm. Not only do I know several families that have parts (or all!) of three or four generations still in town, but I'm a member of two of them. There's something very southern and Oklahoman about that to me.

It's just one more reason why I love to live here.