Serving it forth

A look at the hard work behind Tulsa's exploding food scene

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Our food and restaurant scene would be unrecognizable to the Tulsans of 10 years ago. It’d be pointless to enumerate each advance and improvement in the quality and availability of what’s to eat in this town. Simply head to any of Tulsa’s food districts; the traffic jams say it all.

This renaissance happens on the backs of our friends and neighbors who are willing to work late nights and early mornings; in the freezing cold and the boiling heat; on their feet and in the driver’s seat, and always for hours on end. We often pay them wages below the nation’s minimum, and then we skimp on the tip because our food didn’t come quick enough or because their smiles weren’t wide enough. More than half of us dine out at least once a week, eating the fruits of the labor of the ones behind the counters, the bars, and the speaker boxes.

In the spirit of knowing from where one’s food comes, we decided to ask local food-service workers – a bartender, a waitress, a delivery driver, and a food-truck operator – about the hard work that goes into what we eat and drink.

*Interviews have been edited and condensed. Some names have been changed to protect anonymity.

Phillip Phillips, Food truck owner
Phillips, a veteran Tulsa chef, opened Lone Wolf Banh Mi in the fall of 2012. His truck’s French-Vietnamese fusion cuisine became an instant sensation. Often outside Soundpony Bar downtown or near Guthrie Green for special events, the mobile restaurant is among the brightest stars of Tulsa’s recent food-truck boom.In my head,

I’d still be working a part-time job for two years, just trying to get our name out. I didn’t think it would be so instantaneously popular. What made us become a legit business immediately is that we started getting good press all over the place.

We’ve been battling through winter, when our sales are down, about one-third of what they normally are. I’ve been praying for spring to come around quickly. But the moment it gets to be 95 degrees or more, you’re just praying for it to be wintertime every second you’re in this truck.

Soon we’ll be wearing soccer shorts and tank tops. Standing in front of that griddle — [right-hand man] Jeff [Crow], after a two-hour shift at Guthrie Green, Jeff has to come over here and wring out his pants, because he’s standing in front of a griddle that’s 300 degrees and a deep fryer that’s 350 degrees.

You’re already in this confined space with a bunch of dudes, and there’s a lot of body heat as well. The whole thing [the truck] is stainless steel. In the wintertime it’s an icebox. In the summertime it’s just radiating heat back at you. This truck was built in California, and it’s meant to be a California food truck. It makes perfect sense to have an open-air truck in California. Here, it’s just brutal. If it’s 110 degrees outside, it’s pushing 130-135 degrees inside the truck. The heat is just inescapable.

Fortunately, we haven’t run into any heat-stroke situations or anything like that. Fortunately. When we first started running the truck out here, September 2012, we felt like we were dying at the end of every shift. We’re constantly drinking water. In the summertime, everybody starts off with four bottles of water at their station and we go through those within two hours.

We’ll fill up this ice chest full of ice, and we’ll get the gel coolers to tie around our necks, and have the cooler full of those. So someone is constantly supplying us with fresh, cold neck wraps.

It’s something you definitely have to take really seriously, because if you pass out in here, that can be a serious situation. There are so many sharp corners on this equipment, you could split your head open. You could fall face-first onto the griddle or into the deep fryer. There’s so much that can happen. It’s terrifying. That’s something we take very seriously, and we take every precaution we can think of.

But, on the other hand, it’s exciting. It’s fun. When we have those giant rushes where we’re going to feed 200 people in two hours’ time — which is just crazy for any restaurant — you get a huge adrenaline rush. “We’re going to crank out a huge chunk of tips in one hour, right now.” You get that big rush. Plus, the shifts are so much quicker with us, because we’ll get those massive lines. It’s not six hours of standing there behind the griddle.

The great thing now is that with winter being slower, it gives us a chance to work out new recipes, experiment, and expand the menu. We started doing [a Thai green curry served over jasmine rice] this winter. We started doing fried rice. Now we’re to the point that if we sell out of banh mi, we still have some options on the menu ready to go, and we can pump out some more food for a couple more hours.

Being downtown at night, robberies and safety issues were on my mind constantly before we started. My wife Danielle and I had plans to get our license to carry [a firearm]. We were going to have a gun in here at all times.  I just knew it. But then we started the business and my perspective of what I needed to have in here for safety completely changed.

We’re right around the corner from the John 3:16 Mission, and some guys will come over and want food. But aside from that being slightly annoying sometimes, it’s really never an issue.

If anyone comes around asking people for money, they’re always nice enough to listen when we say, “Hey, you can’t bug people too much or people are going to stop coming around here.” And everybody’s really cool about it.

[Safety] definitely is always somewhat on my mind. But maybe I’m also naïve.

As far as customers go, people are great for the most part. It would be nice if people wouldn’t use their cell phones while they’re at the window trying to order. It’s pretty funny to hear some of the ways people try to pronounce “kimchi.” We get Kiamichi. I’ve heard Kimmy. Maybe my favorite is Comanche. Comanche is really one of the most popular ways people mispronounce it. [Phillips points at the word “kimchi” painted in marker on the truck window.] Comanche. Co-man-che. Comanche? What?

But probably the worst customer is the one who wants to educate you about your own food. I had a woman recently, I asked if she wanted jalepeños on her banh mi and she wasn’t having it. She said, “They don’t use jalepeños in Vietnam! I should know, I’m from Texas!”