There’s old Route 66 restaurants, then there’s Ike’s Chili in Tulsa, which is marking its 115th year in business in that city in 2023.
Ike’s opened in downtown Tulsa in 1908, one year after Oklahoma’s statehood. That also is almost 20 years before U.S. 66 was federally commissioned.
According to Tulsa People magazine:
Owner Len Wade says he still has many customers who have been eating at Ike’s for 50, 60, 70 and more years. And yet nearly every day, new customers come in, too. Some are people who googled “best chili in Tulsa,” others just happened by. Some are in Tulsa specifically to explore Route 66. Those travelers are thrilled to find a restaurant on the Mother Road that’s been around well over 100 years.
Ike’s originated in an alleyway of downtown Tulsa, near East Second Street and South Boston Avenue. In 1913, Ike’s moved to 312 S. Main St. Ike’s location has hopped around a few more times over the years, but loyal customers always knew where to find it.
The menu from 1913 shows chili cost 15 cents a bowl. You could order it straight, with beans or with spaghetti. The price has changed, but remarkably, the chili is the same, and people are still ordering it straight, with beans or with spaghetti.
Ike’s now sits at 1503 E. 11th St. (aka Route 66) after moving there about eight years ago. His previous location was on Admiral Place, which was an early alignment of Route 66.
Here’s a good video about the restaurant:
Roadfood.com wrote this about Ike’s:
Jim Oakley, the Tulsan who originally tipped us off to Ike’s, sent us a menu on which is reprinted an article from the 1936 Tulsa Daily World newspaper, noting, “When the original Ike Johnson established his first modest little ‘parlor’ down by the old Frisco depot twenty-five years ago [that would be 1908], there was no lowlier food than chili… It was openly sneered at by the Social Register and the hot dog was much higher up on the social scale.”
While chili may have shed some of its plebeian aura in the last century, Ike’s remains a no-nonsense, paper-napkin diner where you can have a satisfying lunch that costs less than a franchise junk-food meal.
Despite its impressive longevity, Ike’s probably isn’t the oldest restaurant on Route 66.
Maldaner’s in downtown Springfield, Illinois, dates to 1884, and the Sycamore Inn in Rancho Cucamonga, California, started in 1848.
Then there’s La Fonda in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico, which sits at the site of an inn that dates to at least 1607.
(Image of a bowl of Ike’s Chili from its Facebook page)