The Rock Cafe on old Route 66 in Stroud, Okla., is now featured as a recommended restaurant on Jane and Michael Stern's wonderful Roadfood.com site.
Here is an excerpt from the Sterns' review of Dawn Welch's venerable restaurant:
Among Dawn's menu innovations are a fabulous chicken fried steak she makes out of a pork cutlet rather than a slab of beef. It is thick and juicy and fallapart tender, sheathed in a luxuriously brittle crust. Having been married to a man from Switzerland, she also broadened the menu with spaetzel (topped with melted jack and cheddar cheese) and apple streusel crepes. There are Mexican dishes, stir fries, po-boys, beignets, tall stacks of pancakes, and a short bowl of beans with cornbread on the side.
A cool destination halfway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, the Rock Cafe is a cozy diner with curious booths that remind us of automobile bench seats and a couple of counters with low stools from which customers carry on conversations among themselves and with the kitchen through a large pass-through window. Every inch of cedar-paneled wall is packed with nick-nacks, souvenirs, and silly kitchen homilies. With the menu (which is in the form of a multi-page newspaper), customers are given a guest book to sign. "We are from Oslo," wrote Greta and Stein. "This is the only place between here and there," another customer contributed.
Incidentally, Welch and the Rock Cafe were visited by the Pixar Animation Studios crew a few years ago during its research of Route 66 for its upcoming movie, "Cars." Route 66 author Michael Wallis, a technical adviser for "Cars," has said that Bonnie Hunt's character, Sally, in the film is at least partly based on Welch.