Restaurants in Del City

Fans of stale sandwiches or day-old donuts should steer clear of Ground Floor Cafe, as nearly every single item on the café's breakfast and lunch menus is made fresh in-house every day. Specialties include homemade tuna and chicken salad tossed with a blend of secret spices and served as an entree, side, or sandwiched betwixt slices of whole wheat or marble rye. Espressos and cappuccinos help bleary-eyed diners wake up in time to dunk warm glazed donuts or dig into an all-American breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast, while the café's ovens spend all day churning out piping hot twice-baked potatoes, bacon-cheddar quiches, and chicken pot pies. European tastes also permeate the diverse menu with options that include a baked croque-monsieur sandwich and sweet creme horns that play "La Marseillaise" when blown.

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.

Calling upon flavorful recipes passed down from their mothers and grandmothers, the chefs at Inca Trail Peruvian Restaurant reflect the tradition and multiplicity of Peruvian fare, which is known for incorporating styles from Spain, Africa, China, and Japan. The menu boasts vibrant dishes prepared with grilled seafood, steak, veggies, or chicken accompanied by green rice, beans, and a list of excuses for loosening your belt post-meal. The Oklahoman recommends the pollo a la brasa, raving, "After one bite of the rotisserie chicken, we all immediately regretted not ordering four chickens and calling it a day. Put simply: Wow." Contrasting the eatery's savory, saucy, and spicy dishes is a collection of house-made desserts, and the Oklahoma Gazette says, "Don't miss the fruit flan."

Drawing on skills he refined at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Scottsdale, Benvenuti's Ristorante's executive chef, Anthony Compagni, deftly incorporates contemporary touches into the menu's traditional, Old-World recipes. Hints of saffron lend a twist to the lobster ravioli, and herb-crusted lamb chops appear alongside sautéed watercress and greek yogurt. Although he imports handmade pastas from Abruzzo, Italy, Compagni also makes mozzarella in-house and sources local, organically grown produce whenever possible.

Wooden cube shelves dominate the dining room's brick walls and display a selection of wines from the restaurant's 150-bottle-strong wine list, which includes representative tipples from countries around the world. A rolling, library-style ladder allows servers to effortlessly snag a bottle from the higher shelves without the hassle of welding spare corkscrews into a jetpack.

Papa Dio's owner and head chef Bill Bonadio is a strong believer in tradition. His restaurant has spanned three generations of Bonadios, who have carefully crafted hearty Italian cuisine served on tables across two dining rooms. Boasting a sprawling list of more than 160 items, the menu runs the epicurean gamut through classic spaghetti and meatballs to Dio's original fried pizzas. At the wine bar, tables draped in crisp white linens surround a horseshoe-shaped bar that was made with wood salvaged from an 18th-century home in Louisiana and a horseshoe salvaged from an 18th-century giant horse.

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.