OKC Underground by Eating OKC

Angela Muir is the owner and founder of Boom Town Creamery , which for our money, is the best ice cream in the metro. Shortly after beginning the process that would lead to Boom Town, Muir, a Tennessee native, hired Chef Kayli Bartnicki to oversee culinary operations for the now 4-location, locally owned ice cream concept. The addition of a chef was a major indication that Muir was making somethin...

The mind behind Della Terra Pasta and Carletti's menu.

Chef BethAnn Lyon is one of only three women to graduate from the Coach House apprenticeship program, along with Chefs Anna Banda and Mackenize Bentley. Over the course of her career, she has worked in every aspect of restaurants, including owner (Black Cat food truck and one of the original The Collective tenants).

Chef-owner Stefanie Embree opened OKC Sweets in 2020, after working as a home baker since 2018. We met in late 2020 while judging a spiked hot chocolate competition for Halloween. I stopped by her Western Avenue bakery shortly after, and was immediately impressed with her products, the thought and creativity that went into the displays, and of course, how damn cute all the specialty items are.

At this point in 2026, it seems obvious that Le Parisien is our best new restaurant, and one of the overall best in the city period. The combination of an incredibly talented team, remarkable food, excellent wine list, solid cocktail program, and beautiful buildout has made the Midtown French bistro a favorite for date night, special events, casual dining, and happy hour. Much of their success is...

Jonas Favela is the executive chef at Vast , a job that includes overseeing lunch, dinner, tasting menus, banquets, Nova Lounge , and a crew of dozens. The Las Vegas native has been an Okie most of his life, and he's spent a good chunk of his career in some of OKC's best restaurants, including The Metro , The Ranch , and now Vast. He had his own spot a couple times, including Graffiti in T...

Chef Gabriel Lewis made his MasterChef debut when only 19, moving from fast-casual "Mexican" food to one of the best stories in the Gordon Ramsay corpus of television cooking shows. Not because he won, but because all of us who watched remember the emotional moment when Ramsay, clearly taken with something sincere and promising in Lewis, said after the elimination that he would finance L...

Chef Caleb Stangroom is currently executive sous at The National , where oversees culinary operations at Tellers , Gilded Acorn, and The Vault for Coury Hospitality . The New Hampshire native grew up in southern Missouri, and he's been cooking as long as he can remember. While working at various spots around the metro, he's been refining a concept that one day will move from pop-up to bric...

Sheamus Feeley  is an acclaimed executive chef and restaurateur based in Oklahoma. His restaurant Little Belly in Tulsa is turning heads.

John and Mark Hunnell founded Levity Breakfast House in Norman in 2024. The brothers are Cleveland, Ohio natives but came to OKC via Portland, where John worked for Apple and Mark learned all about coffee at Stumptown Coffee, one of the third wave pioneers in the bean business. Their spot on Peters just off Main is in a converted house, and the homey vibes contribute to a feeling of sitting down t...

Chef Jessie Gomez was running the kitchen at Birdie's until last month, when he made the move to Vast , where he's running the Daily Table, Vast's lunch program. The Edmond native is the kind of chef and person that makes people sound like grandfathers when they describe him; to wit, when our very own James Frazier said, "He's a very impressive young man." Yup, that sound...

Enoon Cafe is one of the latest additions to the rapidly developing Capitol Hill District , or, as it's been known for years, Calle Dos Cinco. We were naturally intrigued to hear about a new coffee shop that was leaning into Mexican flavors and aesthetic -- including a revisioned Diego Rivera-esque mural on the east wall, but really, I went for the horchata latte, and along the way discovered...

Tamashii Ramen House opened in the original Midtown location in June 2015, and they were immediately busy. That year was pivotal for OKC's food scene, especially in terms of Asian food, because while the Sebachers were opening Tamashii, Chef Jeff Chanchaleune and 84 Hospitality founder Rachel Cope were rolling out Project Slurp in the Plaza District , a series of pop-up ramen dinners that were...

Behind every great meal is a beard that created the recipes. This beard has created some of the best meals in OKC for a long time and now he's launching something new.

Courtney Mankin is president of and partner in The Social Order Dining Collective , the company that includes The Jones Assembly and Spark , as well as franchise locations of Fuzzy's , and Dave's Hot Chicken . For the past two years, she's participated in a Leadership OKC hospitality panel at Jones, and in both cases, I've been uber impressed by her grasp of the issues and her abil...

Cody Wilson is the former owner of George's Liquor and current co-owner of Modern Liquor, but for this episode, he's the guy who is the new brand ambassador for Prairie With Love, the line of Delta 9 beverages from Prairie Artisan Ales .

We talk with Denzel Akuffo, the creator of Supper Club OKC.

Ross Crain is a Binger, Oklahoma native -- yes, the hometown of Johnny Bench, and Bench has been a guest in Crain's eponymous restaurant on OKC's northwest side. The Crain opened in late 2024, and was instantly popular, driven by Ross Crain's 30-plus years of hospitality experience, including 21 years at the helm of Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in Bricktown, and the tal...

You know him from Chick N Beer and Bungalow 23, but his latest venture is going to change the way we eat out.

James Leewright is a former state representative and senator from the east side of the state, and we've already forgiven him for that because he's doing fantastic work as the head of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association . His official list of titles includes leadership in the ORA, Oklahoma Hospitality Foundation, Oklahoma Hotel & Lodging Association, and Oklahoma Travel Industry Associa...

Chef Erick Jones isn't 21 yet, but he's been an entrepreneur since he and his fraternal twin brother were 8. The born-and-raised NEOKC chef did his culinary training at Metro Tech under the auspices of previous podcast guest Chaya Pennington while still in "high school" -- in quotes because he and his two siblings were homeschooled, a reality he chafed at while a preteen and teen...

California-born Cally Johnson is currently the executive chef at Lorena Southern Twist , Lori Burson's Midtown sister restaurant to Stella Modern Italian . She came back to Oklahoma after a long hiatus in California to help Burson with her Southern concept. This necessitated Johnson digging into a genre of food she knew a little about, because growing up in Bakersfield, California means you ar...

Chef Andy Bruch is an Iowa native who made his culinary reputation in Denver. We ate at his Point Easy last time we were in Denver, and it was the best meal we had that trip, so it was great to see 5280 had the same level of respect for his spot as we did. When we learned Bruch was coming to OKC to open the first of at least two concepts, we were understandably excited, and the food at Superfly ha...

It's rare that I sit down with an operator or chef and don't know anything about their backstory, but such was the case with Provision Concepts founder and CEO Jeff Dixon. To be clear, I've known him for more than a decade but we've always just talked business, so I was very curious to hear about his upbringing. (Weatherford? Weatherford. Who is from Weatherford?) Once we get the b...

This is a year-end recap more than anything, but we wanted to take some time to talk through our list of Best New Restaurants and look at what's coming for 2026. James Frazier finally gets behind the mic and contributes to this episode, so you have that year-end perk if you listen. And since we're wrapping up the year, here are the numbers that matter.