Stephen Reshetar has been cooking for as long as he can remember. His parents discovered him one day trying to make an omelet … he was five. He honed his knife skills at age ten, learning to dice vegetables by watching Yan Can Cook. He always planned to go to cooking school, but a restaurant job opened just after he graduated high school and he took it, working his way up to sous-chef. He learned as he worked.
“I have shelves and shelves of cookbooks,” he says.
His parents, Bible ministers, moved a lot, from Philadelphia to Colorado and back to Pennsylvania, where he became sous-chef. Finally, they landed in Clovis, New Mexico. There, he scraped together enough money to open Clovis’ only high-end Italian restaurant. He visited a friend in Tulsa, loved the town, and when Clint McKinney offered him the job of running his new restaurant, Reshetar took it.
McKinney has been in the business for decades. He owned a restaurant in Independence, Kansas, worked for big restaurant supply companies, then moved to Tulsa and bought Toast, the breakfast restaurant in Broken Arrow. He moved it to sleek new digs in a bright, glass-walled apartment building on Main Street and decided a dinner restaurant with delicious food, elegant plating and moderate prices was just what Broken Arrow needed. It was.
Diners come back again and again for the tender, glistening beef short rib, the pork chop prepared Saltimbocca style with prosciutto and fresh sage leaves, and of course, the hearty pasta dishes that Reshetar cooks.
“It’s the first restaurant I’ve wanted to put my name on,” says McKinney. It’s certainly worthy.
305 N. Main St., Broken Arrow; mckinneysmoderndining.com
