Oklahoma City’s origin story is as complex and interesting as the diverse food scene you’ll find today. By Greg Horton Taste of the Town
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Food writers and adventurous eaters have gradually becomemore cautious about using the word “authentic” to describe food, especially food fromdifferent ethnic groups or nationalities. As writer and food expert GustavoArellano pointed out in a recent interview, “Just because it’s ‘authentic’ Mexican food doesn’t mean it’s good. Authenticmight just mean it’s awful food but made by someone from that place.” The caveat is important. Everyone’s parent isn’t a great cook, wherever they’re from, but the food is authentic, so authenticity probably isn’t a good standard anyway. Arellano talks about “traditional” a lot in his writing, and that’s the best place to land, but what is important for a guide to food in a city is to note that these traditional foods become part of the overall landscape of a place; they become a part not just as “ethnic” food but as staples in the diet of the people in that place.
Because of the Land Run and subsequent immigration, Oklahoma has nothing we can point to and call “Oklahoma food” -- unless it’s pre- Colombian dishes from indigenous people. That’s one of the strengths of our food scene: hang around long enough, make good food and we’ll say it’s local food, because it is, and it contributes to our set of wonderful,
complex, exciting and adventurous options. Our staples are drawn from menus and spice cabinets of the East Coast, Deep South, Texas, NewMexico andMexico, Vietnam, Lebanon and Laos, Guatemala and Honduras, etc. When people come to a place, they bring their food with them, or at least their recipes, and some of their parents are and were great cooks. We’re happy to add them to our menu of local staples. The heaviest cluster of local restaurants are within the urban core, a roughly three-mile by one-mile rectangle with downtown proper as the center of the south edge. But as is often the case in cities with plenty of land, great local restaurants are scattered in every direction, including our Taco Trail southwest of downtown. For the truly adventurous, simply type “tacos SW OKC” into the search engine, and enjoy the moveable feast. For everyone else, we have suggestions, but we’ll start with what Oklahoma is mostly known for.
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