Any given weekday around 11:00 a.m., a very large truck weaves its way through the narrow streets of Tulsa’s Arts District and stops outside Amelia’s. There, the driver unloads heaps of cartons containing meat and produce for the restaurant. Myssie Stockton, chef de cuisine of Amelia’s, sorts through the huge food haul and stores it in the walk-in. Then she starts on prep.
Beef tenderloin, halibut, antelope – all of it to be cut into portion sizes for that day’s hungry diners. Vegetables need washing and slicing. After that, she washes any dirty dishes. Yes, she could leave it for the dishwashing crew, but she was a dishwasher herself when she started out, so she helps.
That completed, she plans the next day’s needs (meats, cheeses, plastic containers, produce) and orders them from the suppliers. By now it’s 3:00 p.m., and the line cooks begin arriving. She goes to each, seeing if there’s anything she can do to help them prep. Then she begins cooking the family meal – a meal for staff working that evening. By now diners are starting to arrive, and, after six hours of work, Stockton steps to the expo station, from where she orchestrates dinner service, and her day really begins.
Stockton never planned to be a chef. For her entire childhood, starting at age six, her all-consuming passion was figure skating.
“I was in love with gliding on ice,” she recalls. “I liked the discipline. I traveled to competitions in Texas, Missouri and Colorado, and for me, that was a big adventure.”
But all that ended with high school. When she was 18, she was living with friends who lived for music festivals. A lot of fun, but it cost money. So Stockton found work washing dishes and cleaning houses.
“I got really good at cleaning and organizing,” she says. Washing dishes at restaurants, she watched the cooks and was captivated by the art of food preparation. So she found work at Whole Foods cooking for their to-go counters.
“That’s where I learned knife skills,” she remembers. “I was fast, I enjoyed it. After a year, they made me kitchen manager. That’s where I decided to work in restaurants. That’s where it began.”
Her first restaurant job was with Ian van Anglen, a noted Tulsa chef who ran the kitchen at Tulsa’s restaurant/bar/coffee shop hybrid, Hodges Bend. There she learned how to read order tickets, how to sauté, in fact how to do everything since she was often the only worker there. Later, she worked at Duet, at Bird and Bottle, at a variety of other spots.
“I was just trying to find my place,” she says. “I found it at Amelia’s.”
She also found Andrew Donovan, the restaurant’s executive chef. Experienced, kind, energetic and James Beard nominated, Donovan was the perfect mentor.
“His knowledge, so fascinating! I’ve learned a lot from him,” says Stockton. “We make a good team.”
Four times a year the menu changes at Amelia’s.
“Usually, we collaborate,” says Stockton. “I write a full menu on my own, and Andrew does too – after soliciting ideas from the line cooks – and then he combines both into the final menu. Usually it’s half his, half mine, and we think so alike that sometimes we come up with the same dishes.”
One example is the salmon dish she created for the current menu. Perfectly cooked, the salmon sits atop a cake made of hearts of palm and artichokes. Around it is a ring of flavorful red cream sauce made with sundried tomatoes, and around that is a sprightly lemon pistou that brings hints of citrus and springtime. Like everything Stockton creates, it’s a dish you’ll remember.
