Restaurants in Chickasha

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.

Cooking was always LaDonna Andeel's passion, but when she opened LD's Specialties & Gourmet Cafe in January 2009, it became her business as well. Now, she spends her days doing what she loves: baking fresh quiche, crafting gourmet sandwiches to pair with pots of fragrant tea, and getting to know the patrons who stop by. She also bakes specialty desserts for private events held in her café or at offsite locations. For children's parties, LaDonna brings out a castle backdrop, pintsize tables draped with shimmering pink or powder-blue tablecloths, and other whimsical decorations.

Cooks bustle about the kitchens of Tulio's Mexican Restaurant, stuffing flautas with juicy morsels of skinless white-meat chicken and marinating strips of sirloin steak. The beef soaks in its bath of spices for a full 24 hours before it’s deemed ready for fajitas al carbon and mexican steak-tip dinners, a slow but necessary process that typifies the restaurant’s concern for getting traditional Mexican recipes right.

Though they share certain ingredients in common, there’s no mistaking the difference between a giant burrito—stuffed with up to five pounds of meat or piñata candy—and light entrees such as veggie fajitas with steamed rice and ranchera beans. Whether sautéing peppers or deep-frying chimichangas, the cooks keep an eye on heart health and use only 100% vegetable oil. Fresh produce goes into dishes such as the Cancun chicken, whose sweet bell peppers and guacamole-celery hot sauce make for more green than a bank vault filled with lime jello.

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.

Staffers match their dish suggestions to each diner’s unique palate at China Wok, an eatery serving up Chinese cuisine in entrees, family-style dinners, and bottomless buffets. The kitchen crafts staple entrees such as sweet-and-sour pork, lemon chicken, and moo-shu shrimp, served with four savory pancakes. Family-style three-course meals of soup, appetizers, and one entree per person can be shared among groups or fed exclusively to the smartest child at the table. Alternatively, a range of steaming main courses, salad options, and ice creams fleshes out the bottomless lunch and dinner buffets, which fuse into an all-day super-buffet on Sundays.