Some of the most exciting and creative dishes in Oklahoma are coming out of a small, spotless kitchen in a west Tulsa restaurant you probably haven’t heard of yet. These plates are being lovingly and carefully prepared – some dishes take hours – by a team of young chefs led by Tyler Whitson.
Ask Whitson and he’ll tell you that he doesn’t have any glamorous childhood food memories, like eating in fancy restaurants or watching his wise grandmother prepare fabulous Sunday dinners. But, he allows, there was that summer when he was twelve – and he and his cousin ate nothing but squirrel.
They’d get up early, get lost in the woods around his Ochelata home, where they hunted, skinned and brined. Each day, with no training whatsoever, they’d invent a new way to cook their prey. A few months later – he was just thirteen – Whitson was watching a TV documentary about candies when he suddenly got up and said “I want to be a chef!” He’s spent the rest of his life chasing that dream.
It took him through cooking school in Bartlesville (Tri-County Tech), Montana Mike’s steakhouse, a country club and a butcher shop. (“I learned to break down animals from my grandfather,” he says. “He was a butcher for fifty years.”)
Then, he went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York. After graduation, he got a job with chef James Shrader at Tulsa’s Palace Cafe. He worked there for years, interrupted by a stint teaching the art of cooking in Enid. His wife was pursuing a graduate degree nearby and he wanted to be close to her.
Today, you can drive west from midtown and, after about ten minutes, the little houses of west Tulsa give way to a delightful wooded area with a rambling stone building constructed like an old farmhouse. That’s the Silo Event Center, and it’s also the site of Copper Dom. After Shrader retired, Whitson wanted to start his own restaurant. He and two other talented chefs who worked at Palace, Robert Brassfield and Nathaniel Christenson, as well as mixologist Spencer Barrett, set up shop there, with an opening in September 2024.
“We’re far away from everything,” says Whitson, “so we have to have unique appeal. We focus on locality, seasonality and sustainability. And we’re multi-experience.”
Thursday is cocktail night, with small plates. They plan to introduce Bento boxes, Palace’s beloved small-bites feature. On Friday and Saturday, there’s an 8-course tasting menu, with a la carte options, too.
“We can have fun with this,” he says. “We can take chances. It’s our cream of the crop menu.”
There’s also a lot of work involved. Some dishes, such as the duck roulade, take hundreds of words just to describe the cooking process – words like skin, scrape, debone, grind, dice, sous-vide, bake, smoke – and hours to make. The chefs use a lot of techniques from French fine dining. A sweet potato “risotto” features vegetables so finely diced by hand you can barely see the pieces.
The dinner is expensive, but worth it.
“I want people to spend $90 and leave thinking, ‘I sure got my money’s worth,” Whitson says.
Sunday is totally different; all you can eat for $28.
“I know my generation,” he observes. “I know how much millennials can spend and what they want. They want a lot of food, they want it served immediately, a set menu, so no decisions, and they want to share with friends.”
Sunday themes vary, but it’s always good. And why is the food always so excellent?
“We’re not working for others,” Whitson answers. “Finally, we get to do what we want.”
Chef Whitson’s Grainless Sweet Potato Risotto
- 1 large sweet potato, about 12-14 oz.
- 2 tsp. minced shallot
- 2 tbsp. white wine
- 1 tbsp. carrot juice
- 1 tbsp. mascarpone
- 3 tbsp. grana padano or Parma reggiano (microplane needed for that fine shred)
- 1 tbsp. English butter
- 4 cups of vegetable stock
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Any amount of cheese at the end; we like to spoil the plate with it.
1. Add a light amount of oil to an 8-inch saute pan. Let it come up to medium heat, then add the shallots.
2. Sweat the shallots until translucent, not browned. Turn down the heat if need be. Once they are sweated, add the wine and burn off the alcohol.
3. Add the sweet potatoes and a pinch of S&P, this allows the salt to cook into your vegetables, not too much or you won’t keep control for the ending. Then add 4oz of vegetable stock.
4. Let the liquid come to a high simmer, not boil, and reduce the liquid until it is almost dry in the pan. Next, add the carrot juice (this helps with keeping it bright and shiny orange and adds more vegetable flavor) and another 4oz of vegetable stock and repeat process.
5. At this point if you cut the sweet potatoes brunoise size you should only need about 2-3oz of stock it is larger than 1/8inx1/8inx1/8in you’ll need to repeat the stock process till the potatoes are tender but nut mushy, the potatoes should have a soft bite to them.
6. If they are “al dente” add the mascarpone and just a touch of stock, a splash, and melt the mascarpone until it is fully dissolved. Next add the finely shredded cheese. Melt till dissolved and thickened.
7. Finish with butter and to taste with the S&P. Add some more cheese if you want it thicker consistency.
8. Plate up and go Olive Garden with the cheese till it piles high or just a bit of cheese if you want. The potatoes are good by themselves, I just love cheese.