“You want to make a béchamel, you need to have butter, flour, make a roux, then you add milk. That’s what a béchamel is,” says executive chef Patrick Hart at OKC’s The Jones Assembly at 901 W Sheridan Ave. “Okay. Then you can say, what if I want to toast my flour, you know, the way mine tastes might differ slightly from yours.”
Of all the social endeavors known to mankind, the culinary efforts of chefs may be some of the most tirelessly ground-breaking. Masters of cuisine are not simply cooks, but artists who, by meeting a basic human need, foster discussion and camaraderie among people from varied perspectives.
Beginning in 2021 as sous chef, Hart is now the longest tenured chef at The Jones Assembly, being on staff for five of their nine years. Chef Hart comes to The Jones Assembly from Hal Smith Restaurant Group, and completed his formal education in Houston at The Culinary Institute Lenotre, where his focus was on French cuisine.
Hart returned to Oklahoma, starting Guyutes, an elevated street food restaurant in Oklahoma City’s 23rd District.
“I helped them open, design the kitchen, menu layout, and all that,” Hart said. “And then, after Guyutes, I worked at a place called Green Goodies, which was mostly vegan.”
When I asked chef Hart about misinformation circling about him on the internet – that he had been educated in Rhode Island and North Carolina at Johnson and Wales University, where dishes like “Bread in a Can” are regional staples – he responded light-hearted humor.
“That’s so funny,” he says. “I’m actually working on a BLT salad right now.”
Hart’s love of the culinary arts comes from cooking with family.
“I think most people that fall into cooking grow up with either a guardian or a neighbor cooking with you,” he says. “Mine was my grandma.”
The menu at The Jones Assembly, a music venue as well as a bar and restaurant, changes every six months, but items like the Jones Burger and the famous dips and spreads the establishment are known for will remain.
“We put rigatoni on the menu in 2022, and Cacio e Pepe has been on the menu since day one,” he shares.
When speaking of locally sourcing ingredients for his recipes, Hart say, “we get as much stuff as we can from local farms. We have a company that we work with called Farm Hub. For the longest time, you had to build up these relationships with each individual farm to get their product. One resource has taken that hard work out for us. They partner with local farms, creating a database or like, a catalog. I can order fresh tomatoes, and Farm Hub with deliver them to us.”
To put it lightly, Hart stays busy at The Jones: he prepares meals for, on average, two-hundred guests each weeknight and one thousand guests on the weekends.
“I was talking to a farmer about red potatoes. I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, great. I would love to get some red potatoes from you. Can you do two-hundred pounds a month, or a week?’”
Chef Hart’s Shishito Vin
- Total Yield: 1 qt
- 50g Dill
- 50g Parsley
- 45g SHISHITO
- 8oz-fl Lemon
- 50g Ricotta Cheese
- 65g Honey
- 16oz Grapeseed Oil
- 10g Salt
Prep Method
- Add dill, parsley, shishito peppers and lemon juice to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth
- Next, add ricotta and honey to help emulsify (blend just enough to mix) with blender running slowly add grapeseed oil (can sub another neutral oil if needed).
- Season with salt (can adjust spice level by adding more or less shishito)
