The story of Tulsa’s El Rancho Grande restaurant

Mark Brown at This Land Press wrote a long piece about the history and amazing consistency of Tulsa’s first Mexican restaurant, El Rancho Grande, which still serves customers on 11th Street (aka Route 66) more than 60 years after it opened.

The whole thing is worth reading, but here are a few nuggets from it:

• Former attorney Chris Rhodes, 81, has been eating at the restaurant at least weekly for virtually all of his adult life.
• The cheese enchiladas are El Rancho Grande’s biggest seller — and the key reason Rhodes returns.
• The restaurant opened in 1951 on Boulder Avenue, across from the Catholic church. It moved to its current Route 66 digs two years later.
• The rapid growth of Tulsa’s Mexican population is thought as a fairly new phenomenon. But the city saw a previous boom in Mexican residents during the 1920s, when they worked in the city’s coal mines. The Great Depression flattened those numbers.
• The restaurant’s Night Hawk is named by one of the Five Greatest Mexican Meals in the United States by Gustavo Arellano’s book, “Taco USA,” a history of the cuisine. The Night Hawk is two cheese and onion enchiladas covered with chili con carne and cheddar, with one soft cheddar cheese taco topped with chili con queso.
• The owner credits longtime chef Larry Lara, born in San Antonio, for the restaurant’s dishes. “If he wasn’t there, we couldn’t cook the food.” Lara’s methods have been passed along, fortunately.

Most folks stop at El Ranch Grande to snap a photo of its vintage neon sign — and rightfully so. But tourists need to stay a while and check out the food as well. It’s cuisine from another era, too.

(Image of El Rancho Grande’s neon sign by Lost Tulsa, via Flickr)