Restaurants in Ada

Jo's pizzas are always made in house from fresh ingredients, customized to each customer's specifications, and baked in a flaming inferno of fiery pizza-love. Jo's offers four sizes of pizza to satisfy the hunger of rapidly expanding stomach collectives—10 inch, 12 inch, 14 inch, and 16 inch. Choose any of Jo's 27 toppings to play a pizza solo ($8.95, $12.95, $15.95, $19.95), or go straight for one of Jo's famous specials ($11.95, $16.95, $20.95, $25.95). Devour the meatlessly beefy veggie special (olive oil and garlic sauce, spinach, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and mushrooms) or eat an appropriate Sooner (red sauce with bacon, chicken, sausage, hamburger, pepperoni, Italian sausage, and hot-link slices). For a surprise, get the Gift and turn any pizza on the menu or of your imaginative creation into a small, medium, large, or extra-large calzone, proving that you can have your pie and fold it over into a calzone too. Wash it all down, or just pour a soda over your meal beforehand, with a soft drink (kids $1, adults $1.95).

Tin ceilings hover above the weathered plaster and brick walls of Two Olives Café, whose rustic, old-world character is bolstered by exposed ventilation pipes that run the length of the room. The founder of the café, Tricia Henderson, designed the room to reflect the history of the area, mounting black-and-white photographs to offer guests a more explicit glimpse into the past.

In the kitchen, chefs lace fresh chicken salad with apples, grapes, and almonds, giving it a sweet, tart crunch that makes it the most popular sandwich on the menu and the expected winner of next year's prom court. Ham, salami, and olive salad stack the muffaletta sandwich, and housemade chipotle dressing adds a subtle smokiness to the otherwise classic caesar salad.

Inside the sturdy environs of Old Germany Restaurant, visitors are surrounded by German-eatery traditions in everything from the food to the beer steins. NewsOK profiled German transplant Mike Turek and his sister Jutta Wolff, who moved to America in 1974, but have maintained their home country’s customs by masterminding an annual Oktoberfest celebration and greeting each other in the morning with a hearty “Fahrvergnügen!” Their menu is dominated by specialties of pork and veal schnitzel as well as sausages such as cevapcici—housemade beef sausages—bratwurst, and knackwurst.

The restaurant’s authentic trappings include an extensive selection of German wines and beers. Rieslings dominate the wine list, which is divided into five distinct winemaking regions of Germany. On tap are drafts of Bitburger, Hofbräu, and Warsteiner brews, from pilsners to the original König Ludwig Weissbier. Patrons can swig their drinks while bellying up to a stone bar or while sitting at a booth beneath twining faux-grapevines. A new addition to the restaurant known as Turek's Tavern gives sports fans some upscale digs overflowing with beer, wine, spirits, and German food. Televisions display sports games both inside the tavern and out on the patio, where electric shades, a mister system, and heating lamps keep athletic devotees comfortable as the seasons turn.

The cooks at Top Dog Classic Coneys never stray from a family recipe when mixing a batch of chili. Deviating from the original would be risky, since the chili tops not only hot dogs and cheese dogs, but also spaghetti. When customers aren’t devouring the signature chili and dogs, they’re playing classic arcade games or pool or catching games on Top Dog’s big-screen TVs.

NewsOK lauds Cajun King for creating “some of the best fried chicken in town” and blackened pork chops that “disappear so quickly, they’re constantly being refreshed.” Head chef and New Orleans native Ken Mills earns panegyrics by toiling endlessly to whip up authentic Cajun buffets. Throughout the day, affable staffers replenish the smorgasbord’s fresh home-cooked eats, such as crawfish etoufee, seafood gumbo, and the restaurant’s signature fried catfish made from Ken’s own secret recipe. Ken’s dedication to sharing the flavors of his hometown with Oklahomans is evident not only in his toothsome noshes but also in the Cajun music played in the restaurant throughout the day to activate guests’ latent urges to travel everywhere via parade float. Servers bustle about the dining room, delivering baskets of warm beignets to tables as a dulcet prandial epilogue. Cajun King’s purple-and-green walls further bolster the restaurant’s congenial Mardi Gras atmosphere, as do vintage figurines of New Orleans characters. Dangling plants hang next to drooping Mardi Gras beads, just like in the wild.

Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant follows East African culinary customs in its dining room and kitchens, where cooks draw on traditional recipes and spices. During meals, patrons are encouraged to partake in the practice of gursha, a tradition in which diners manually place food in each other's mouths to symbolize the bonds of loyalty and friendship. Traditional unleavened injera bread, forged from self-rising wheat flour and the native Ethiopian grain teff, accompanies all entrees, which chefs load onto one plate designed for sharing among the members of each table. Equipped with the pancake-like accessory, diners can scoop up a panoply of lamb, beef, and chicken stews infused with a flurry of spices that, like outtakes from The Muppets, range from mild to spicy. Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant's chefs shun artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives in all dishes, and vegetarian items arrive uncontaminated by butter, eggs, milk, and disparaging thoughts about Congress.