The landmark El Rancho Grande Mexican Food Restaurant near downtown Tulsa recently marked its 70th anniversary of operation.
El Rancho, located at 1629 E. 11th St. (aka Route 66), remains best known for its well-preserved neon sign and that it is a pioneer in Mexican restaurant food in the United States.
The restaurant marked the occasion last weekend with a joint celebration with Tulsa’s Spotlight Theatre, 1381 Riverside Drive, which also opened in 1953. El Rancho Grande served the food before the regular performance of “The Drunkard.”
The Tulsa World also posted a good history of the restaurant:
El Rancho Grande’s original owner, Ruby Rodriguez, opened her restaurant in downtown Tulsa, but after a short time there relocated to a spot along the portion of Historic Route 66 that wound through Tulsa.
Most of the dishes the restaurant serves are Rodriguez’s recipes, including the popular “Night Hawk,” a platter of two cheese-and-onion enchiladas with a soft cheese taco topped with queso sauce. This dish was chosen as one of the top five Tex-Mex dishes in the country by Gustavo Arellano in his book, “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.”
The restaurant went out of business in about 1982 and was sold in a tax auction in 1984. The Walden family, who owned the building, bought the restaurant and decided to reopen it later that year, hiring cooks and wait staff from the original incarnation to maintain the restaurant’s traditions.
This Land Press about a decade ago published a long history of the restaurant, which you can find summarized here.
(Image of El Rancho Grande’s neon sign by Lost Tulsa, via Flickr)