"What follows is not a complete accounting of everything worth eating along Oklahoma's 400 miles, but a guide to the places where the road's food history is still alive. And worth the drive. In northeast Oklahoma, Clanton's Cafe in Vinita has not once reinvented itself. Since 1927, four generations of the Clanton family have served the same chicken-fried steak, the same cream gravy, the same crumbly cobbler their great-grandparents put on the menu during the Coolidge administration."
Route 66 in Oklahoma runs about 400 miles as a two-lane highway that helped families flee the Dust Bowl and soldiers return home. Oklahoma became a state in 1907, and the highway arrived nearly 20 years later, aligning the state’s growth with Route 66’s centennial and America’s 250th birthday. Food developed along the road because travelers needed reasons to stop, including pasties sold by a Cornish immigrant and a steakhouse opened by a Lebanese family to feed oil-field workers. The region includes long-running family restaurants and signature dishes such as the fried onion burger from El Reno, which spread beyond Oklahoma. Modern food incubators and marketplaces also support entrepreneurs from many countries, keeping the road’s food history active.
Read at Bon Appetit
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