high
Pie
c
In Oklahoma, finding great pizza is
anything but pie-in-the-sky.
onventional culinary
wisdom suggests that
New York, Chicago, and
California are the foodie’s
geographic touchstones
for pizza excellence. In
truth, Oklahoma diners craving landmark
pies need not trek across the country.
Everything to fulfill a yen for pizza zen
is available right here. In every nook and
cranny of the state, pizzerias are serving
up unique and tasty combinations of
toppings, sauces, and dough that can be
described in one word: yum.
Playing Chicken
M
a
hint of what they’re about
in their name. Not so for
this pizzeria tucked away in Tahlequah.
Sam and Ella’s Chicken Palace has no
Sam, no Ella, and besides a wickedly
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September/October 2010
rebekah workman
GET YOUR PIE ON
Hungry for mozzarella, sauce, toppings,
and the perfect crust? You’ll find it at the 21
Oklahoma pizza parlors featured here and in
Dining Guide (page 75). Here, Rob Keneipp
readies a Hideaway pizza for serving.
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ost restaurants give
good pie dubbed the Dominequer and
a sandwich, no chicken.
In fact, the only thing the name reflects
is owner Jack Mullen’s sense of humor.
“Lots of people don’t get the joke,”
Mullen says.
It’s an ongoing gag egged on by the
restaurant’s décor: chicken and rooster
figurines, chicken-print vinyl on the tables,
chicken feed sacks tacked to the walls,
and eggbeaters as wall trimming.
It all started with Mullen’s seventh-grade
science class. While discussing salmonella, a
young Mullen thought the words sounded
like “Sam and Ella.” When he and his wife
Andrea cooked up the dream of opening
a pizzeria in the late 1990s, they quickly
settled on the name Sam and Ella’s. And
the Chicken Palace part?
“Everyone thinks salmonella is synonymous with eating bad chicken,”
Mullen says.
While there’s no fried chicken on the
menu, it does offer up salads Mullen describes
as “run through the garden,” a variety of
subs, and mouthwatering specialty pizzas
crafted from the Mullens’ own recipes with
cheese that strings so far, diners need a fork
to capture it all. All of Sam and Ella’s pizzas start with dough made fresh daily that
customers can watch being hand-tossed.
“There’s something about an open kitchen,
especially with the tossing of the dough,
that’s kind of magic,” Mullen says.
Thin through the middle, the dough
is rolled to make a roped crust that’s soft,
chewy, and cradles heaps of toppings.
Next is a generous helping of homemade
red sauce with an olive oil base that lends
a signature, subtle flavor. Some pies, like
the Dominequer, come with a zesty ranch
dressing to complement the crispy bacon,
chicken, black olives, fresh mushrooms,
tomatoes, and hand-grated mozzarella.
By Blair Waltman
O k l a h o m a To d a y. c o m
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Before her rise to fame, American
Idol star Carrie Underwood worked at
Sam and Ella’s Chicken Palace while
attending Northeastern State University.
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September/October 2010
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O k l a h o m a To d a y. c o m
john jernigan
Popular with students, Sam and Ella’s
Chicken Palace in Tahlequah is one block
away from Northeastern State University.
This is despite the fact that Mullen subscribes to the philosophy, “If it doesn’t have
red sauce, it’s not officially a pizza.”
Some pies get a little more diverse with
their toppings—like the popular Rock
Island Red, which boasts a layer of ham
drizzled in honey and is topped with sweet
pineapple, onions, and mushrooms—while
others are downright outrageous.
“We sell a lot of Big Sloppy Pies,”
says Mullen.
The name refers to a pizza with a layer of
pepperoni buried under a double helping
of cheese, a stratum of black olives, and
another pepperoni layer. If the description
alone doesn’t sell diners on its enormity,
Mullen has cautionary tales.
“We used to have two football players
from NSU, and they would come at three
o’clock every day,” Mullen says. “They’d
order a large Big Sloppy Pie and say, ‘We’re
not leaving until we eat it all,’ and then
they’d always leave with to-go boxes. They
never, ever succeeded.”
Soon-to-be NSU student Rachael Sanders
suggests the Arti Toast as an appetizer.
“It’s really good,” Sanders says of the
artichoke spinach dip. “It’s baked like garlic
toast, but it’s got the arti dip on top.”
From an inside joke about the name
to mouthwatering pizza, Sam and Ella’s
Chicken Palace boils down to having a
good time.
“If you can’t have fun at Sam and
Ella’s,” Mullen says, “you can’t have fun
anywhere.”
The most popular pizza at Sam and Ella’s is
the Big Sloppy Pie, but customers also enjoy
creating their own pizza masterpieces.
Sam and Ella’s Chicken Palace
is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. 419
North Muskogee Street in Tahlequah. (918)
456-1411.
Everything’s Coming
Out Rose’s
D
may
be surprised by the restaurant’s
atmosphere. Even with all the
trimmings of an upscale Italian eatery—
soft piano music lilting through the
speakers, a counter near the kitchen,
and red leather stools and matching red
booths—visitors have a sense of being
inside someone’s home. More precisely,
they have a sense of being in someone’s
home after the hosts have made pizza
from old family recipes.
For Christine Bianco, her family’s
restaurant was her childhood kitchen.
While visiting her grandmother, Rose
Bianco, who owns Bianco’s, from Dallas, Christine remembers spending days
there with her grandfather and waiting
tables as a teen.
“It was like home,” she says, “like a
second home. A lot of customers have
been there forever. You know the waitresses and customers. Most of the folks in
the kitchen have stayed around. There’s
really low turnover.”
That sense of home at Bianco’s could
be due to the fact that it’s been a Lawton
establishment for fifty-eight years. It
also could be that Rose and her eatery
iners visiting Bianco’s
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Ronald Mitchell shows off his pizzatossing skills in the Sam and Ella’s
kitchen.
have been major parts of her patrons’
lives, the location of wedding proposals
and first dates. And it could be that the
homemade, rustic pizza straight from
the Bianco family cookbook provides a
real sense of comfort.
The story of Bianco’s starts in 1942,
when John Bianco was drafted into the
army and sent to Fort Sill, bringing along
his wife. After serving the entirety of
his three-year army stint in Oklahoma,
John decided they should make Lawton
their home.
“I didn’t want to,” Rose says. “I wanted
to go home, back to upstate New York,
to New Amsterdam. I had a lot of family
there. And at first he promised me we’d
go back, but he came home one day
and said, ‘I want to buy a restaurant.’ I
said, ‘I know, but we’re supposed to go
home.’ He told me, ‘Oh don’t worry,
I’ll sell it.’ And I believed him,” she
says, laughing.
“If you can’t
have fun at Sam
and Ella’s, you
can’t have fun
anywhere.”
—Jack Mullen, Sam and Ella’s
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Bianco’s is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
“Then whatever anybody wants,” Rose
says of the final step of the pizza process.
“Pepperoni, sausage, Canadian bacon,
sometimes ham and pineapple.”
Despite the chicken Alfredo pizza on
the menu, visitors won’t see many outof-the-ordinary pizza options, as Bianco’s
stays pretty traditional in the toppings
department.
It’s that same simplicity that lends Bianco’s pizza a taste of rustic charm with old
family recipes and a touch of home.
September/October 2010
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Bianco’s pizza is known for crust
that is a delicious medley of soft
and crispy.
Monday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m.
to 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed
john jernigan
Rose Bianco’s restaurant, Bianco’s in
Lawton, opened in 1952 and was one of the
first Oklahoma restaurants to serve pizza.
john jernigan
“My husband had
Hideaway Pizza is one of Oklahoma’s
most popular restaurant chains, and
the original Stillwater location boasts
a 53-year dedication to pizza-making.
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romy owens
“We’ve added queso, which we make
in-house,” says Jeanna. “We added a
pork roast sandwich. We make our own
picante sauce and our own guacamole,
which is very popular.”
Much like the taco pizza, High Street
Pizza is something of a hodgepodge of
styles and tastes. Even with the borderinspired options, the restaurant opened
in 1982 as a pizza place with Italian
specialties, and the Dales, upon taking
ownership in March 2009, have stayed
true to that tradition.
some recipes, but
I was raised with
the Italian food.”
—Rose Bianco, Bianco’s
Sunday. 113 North Second Street in Lawton.
(580) 353-9543.
Pie-High
I
rebekah workman
The making of a Bianco’s pizza starts
with various recipes, all of which were
cooked up by Rose and John, who died
twenty-seven years ago.
“My husband had some [recipes], but
I was raised with the Italian food,” says
Rose, who was born in Naples, of their
creative process. “John would have the
recipe, and I would look over his shoulder
and tell him to add this or that.”
The end result was a pizza that, start to
finish, was made with a touch of the old
country completely from scratch.
“We make our Italian sausage,” says
Rose. “We make our dough, we make
our sauce, we make it all.”
That tradition still is going strong. Fresh
dough is rolled out by hand, a process
Rose is particular about.
“It’s more New York than Chicago,”
she says of her pizza crust. “The Chicago
way is way heavy, too much dough. Why
not just get some bread, put some sauce
on it, and eat it?”
Bianco’s keeps its pies lighter on the
carbs, with a bread base that retains a
light texture through the baking process
and walks a middle ground between too
thin and too thick.
A generous touch of marinara comes
next, with herbal notes that gently punctuate the scattering of mild mozzarella
standard on all of Bianco’s pies.
that can derail pizza
night: Someone in the group insists
on Mexican food. Rather than
making one diner unhappy, High Street
Pizza owners Guy and Jeanna Dale offer a compromise. Diners scanning the
pizza section will notice an option that
marries Italian and Tex-Mex cuisine: the
taco pizza.
“What we do is roll out our dough,
then we put down our refried beans,
and we have picante sauce. We mix that
together, and that’s like our pizza sauce,”
says Jeanna.
After the ample application of this
signature sauce, the pie is topped with
roast beef seasoned to perfection, diced
sweet onions, black olives, and cheddar.
Fresh out of the oven, the pie gets the
final touches of crisp lettuce, tomatoes,
sour cream, and the optional dash of
jalapeños for an extra kick that blends
together for a flavorful sensation of
spicy pop that will please any die-hard
Mexican food fan.
While the taco pizza was created by
one of High Street’s original owners,
Viva Barney, the Dales have put other
Tex-Mex touches on the menu.
t’s a dilemma
O k l a h o m a To d a y. c o m
“We pretty much kept everything,” says
Jeanna, and that means everything from
the salvaged bowling alley floor serving
as tabletops and floorboards to the deck
ovens to the quirky names for calzones and
subs—Freds and Ethels, respectively.
The Dales recently added to the tradition with the Lil’ Ricky pizza. Perfect
for those looking for a pie lighter on the
calories and the wallet, the Lil’ Ricky
comes in one size, large, and offers a
crust rolled out thinner and baked up
crispy. The homemade marinara is spread
sparingly, and the fresh mozzarella—220
pounds of which Jeanna estimates they
burn through per week—is meticulously
applied. Diners choose one of eighteen
toppings ranging from crispy bacon to
pineapple, tender mushrooms to crumbled
hamburger meat. The mix of eclectic flavors has kept
High Street hopping by not only throwing Mexican into the mix but by offering
pies like the BLT pizza with an option to
substitute sour cream for marinara and
the Cheeseburger and Fry Pizza, full of
pickles and golden fries. Misty Madbull, a
chef at High Street for almost seven years,
says the popularity of the pies keeps the
oven firing during the lunch rush.
“We bake anywhere from fifty to sixty
pizzas every lunch,” she says.
High Street Pizza in Antlers is the gateway
restaurant to southeastern Oklahoma
and the Beavers Bend area. While diners
are able to choose from seven specialty
pizzas, they can also create their own.
“It gives it a little different twist,” Jeanna
says of their menu of seven specialty pies,
options enough for the pickiest diner in
any party.
High Street Pizza is open from 11
a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. 226 North High Street
in Antlers. (580) 298-5511.
Pizza U.
T
here are pizza places, and there
are pizza institutions. The original
Hideaway Pizza in Stillwater is
an example of the latter. Known for its
original pizza crust perfectly balanced
between lightness and crunchy density,
top-shelf ingredients—from spicy pep-
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peroni generously applied to peppery
artichoke hearts—and a comical cartoon
mascot, it is the godfather of Oklahoma
pizza eateries, one of the first in the
state. That distinction comes with a lot
of clout.
In Tulsa, Joe Momma’s owner Blake
Ewing has considered branching out, but
there’s one town he won’t hit.
“I’m not going to Stillwater,” Ewing says. “I’m not going to Hideaway’s
backyard. Throwing down the gauntlet
would be audacious.”
The beloved pizzeria began as the fifth store
in a Lawrence, Kansas-based chain called
Campus Hideaway that opened in 1957,
during current owner Richard Dermer’s senior
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“We were a college student hippie latenight hangout.”
Joe Momma’s is located in Tulsa’s historic
Blue Dome District.
Joe Momma’s server and shift leader
Danielle Stewart
Besides specialty pizzas, Joe Momma’s also
serves all six varieties of brewed-in-Tulsa
Marshall beer.
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There’s plenty going on at Joe Momma’s.
Tuesday night is $5 Pizza Night, Thursday is
trivia night, and every month the restaurant
showcases new work from a local artist.
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— Richard Dermer, Hideaway
year of high school. He and his future wife
Marti had their first pizza there.
“He said, ‘Let’s go to this pizza place,’”
Marti says. “He explained what it was
and said, ‘It’s going to be more popular
than hamburgers.’ I said, ‘Dermer, you’re
insane.’”
Richard started as a Campus Hideaway
pizza delivery boy his freshman year at OSU,
and three years later, he made a fateful move
in the annals of Oklahoma pizza history:
He bought the Stillwater location.
“I thought I could do a better job than
my boss had been doing,” Richard says.
Upon taking ownership, he made immediate changes. Whereas the previous
owners had been stingy, Richard and Marti
got generous with the toppings, a practice
that continues today. They began piling
on heaps of cheese blends and stopped
counting out pepperoni slices. Back in the
day, the bulk of Hideaway’s business was
between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., after all the
bars had closed.
“We were a college student hippie latenight hangout,” Richard says.
Today, Hideaway keeps earlier hours and
is just a block from the OSU campus after
a move in 1980. The flaky signature dough
still is made from scratch every day with
fresh ingredients and then baked in deck
ovens until they’re golden brown.
The pies, per the Dermer standard, are
quality stuff. Favorites like the barbecue
pizza and the Hideaway Special, in which
every slice is different, originated at the
Stillwater Hideaway.
It’s tantalizing options like this that
have led to Hideaway locations in Tulsa,
Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Norman.
While the Dermers don’t own the new
locations, they’re in the good hands of
dozens of managers and employees trained
in Stillwater.
“We’re proud of the way they’re still
honoring the tradition; they’re still buying
good products for their pizza and their
food,” Marti says.
The newbies even have invented a
specialty pie or two. The popular Pizza of
the Gods—a pie swathed in olive oil and
garlic sauce and topped with mozzarella,
provolone, artichokes, Roma tomatoes, and
mushrooms—is a Tulsa invention adopted
by the Stillwater restaurant.
Whatever the location, Hideaway Pizza
remains Stillwater’s—and Oklahoma’s—
quintessential pizza joint.
Hideaway Pizza is open from 10 a.m.
to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10
a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday through Sunday. 230
South Knoblock Street in Stillwater. (405) 3724777 or hideawaypizza.net.
Momma Knows Best
B
a talented artist,
but his medium isn’t paints or
pencils.
“I love that a restaurant lets you be creative in so many ways,” he says. “You get to
design ads and make menus and decorate
the restaurant. Pizza is that thing you can
kind of go crazy with on a menu; it lets you
be creative and express yourself.”
Ewing certainly has been expressive with
his pizzas. Joe Momma’s pies are edible artistic
endeavors, embracing whatever tastes bold,
unique, and just plain delicious. Like any
painter needs a canvas, the beginning of a
great pizza starts with the basics.
“It really starts with your dough. Everything else is just topping,” Ewing says.
Made fresh daily, Joe Momma’s dough
is tossed by hand—diners walking past the
open kitchen can watch it fly—and finishes
with a crisp bottom that has a soft interior,
thanks to the brick oven. The next step in
the creative process: the pizza sauce.
“Our sauce is not sweet,” says Ewing. “It’s
a little on the garlic side and a little salty.”
Besides marinara sauce, this Blue Dome
District eatery crafts several custom sauces—
pesto, garlic oil, ranch, creamy buffalo, and
garlic Alfredo—from scratch daily. They are
the dressing, so to speak, of the twenty-two
specialty pies, including the California Love,
a vegetarian pizza loaded with red onions,
ripe Roma tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and
a dappling of pine nuts.
lake Ewing is
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Then there’s a pizza called Nathan’s
Unlikely Marriage.
“It’s named after the guy who made it,
Nathan, who married a beautiful young
lady way out of his league,” Ewing says.
“None of us thought it would lead to
marriage. But we named it after him, and
it’s the marriage of two pizzas.”
The eponymous Nathan pairs the
Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza with the
Buffalo Chicken Pizza, a union that gives
the pie a buffalo ranch sauce base doused
with buffalo chicken, bacon, freshly diced
Roma tomatoes, a dusting of cheddar,
and a finishing swirl of ranch.
Joe Momma’s patron Kari Culp of Tulsa
suggests the Natalie Portman pie. This
pizza is a veggie lover’s delight, starting
with traditional red sauce and covered
with a rainbow of bell peppers, tomatoes,
black olives, red onions, mushrooms,
spinach, artichoke hearts, and a swirl of
mild mozzarella and snappy feta. Culp
also suggests something patrons won’t
find on the menu.
“The book club is cool,” Culp says,
referring to one of the many events held
at Joe Momma’s, including trivia and
karaoke nights with proceeds going to
local charities, live shows, and a book
club for parents and their children. Every
month, the restaurant showcases new
works by local artists, and a stage in the
back—built from the old basketball court
at Ewing’s alma mater, Nathan Hale High
School, and decorated with old album
jackets—provides the perfect backdrop
for local musicians.
“We have a really solid history of music
and art in Tulsa, and it kind of gets forgotten,” says Ewing. “Anytime we have the
chance with Joe Momma’s to shine a light
on what’s cool about Tulsa, what’s fun
and unique about its history and what’s
going on that people maybe don’t know
about, we want to do that.”
Whether it’s art on the walls or one
of Ewing’s signature handcrafted pizzas,
Joe Momma’s serves up an art form any
devotee can sink his teeth into.
Joe Momma’s is open from 11 a.m. to
midnight Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m.
to 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to
10 p.m. Sunday. 112 South Elgin Avenue in
Tulsa. (918) 794-6563 or joemommas.com.
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