Diners in Oklahoma
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At Smokey’s BBQ and Diner, owners Matt Webb and James Hutzenbiler utilize their more than 29 years of combined restaurant experience to serve a meaty, smoky, saporous menu, crafted using homemade sauces and dry rubs. An array of succulent sandwiches reigns supreme, such as the hand-pulled pork ($3.99), brisket ($5.50), and barbecue-rib ($5.99), all starring slow-smoked meats, which are cooked over a combination of pecan and hickory chips. For appetites that cannot be contained within a kaiser roll, a half ($9.99) or full ($18.95) slab of ribs arrives covered in the diner’s choice of mild, hot, or Carolina-style barbecue sauces, while a chicken-fried steak dinner fills stomach tanks with mashed potatoes, white-pepper gravy, green beans, and a delicious oxymoron ($8.99). Carnivores having trouble choosing just one tangy taste can sample a trio of meats with the barbecue sampler ($12.95), or quiet a barking stomach with the all-you-can-eat catfish ($9.95). Mac 'n' cheese, shoestring fries, and coleslaw represent just a fraction of the 12 available sides, promising diners platters as personalized as a wedding gown covered in barbecue sauce.
Shiloh's Restaurant's homestyle fare is born of the love and dedication of several generations of restaurateurs. The Hermann and Rodgers families have more than 50 years' experience in the kitchen, and although they're retired, entrepreneurial pros Grandma Ethel and Great-Grandma Gladys still oversee the recipe book to ensure quality.
Following these thoroughly scrutinized instructions, chefs cook up a well-rounded menu of all-day country breakfasts, meaty sandwiches, and pan-fried country steak. At tables, Shiloh's signature housemade rolls are always on hand to sop up leftover homestyle gravy and goulash. And to ensure that no mouth is left unfed, chefs also serve up their piping-hot comfort food to offices, parties, and the hungry families of vacationing grandmothers.
The first IHOP?the dream of founders Al and Jerry Lapin?opened in 1958 in Toluca Lake, California, and was originally dubbed the International House of Pancakes. Since then, rapid expansion has led to myriad milestones across the company's colorful history, from introducing its modern IHOP acronym in 1973 to its 1,000th restaurant opening in Layton, Utah, in 2001. Today, the company stands strong with around 1,500 locations across North and Central America, each one an enthusiastic dispenser of pancakes, french toast, and tables constructed entirely out of bacon. Though IHOP is known as a bastion of breakfast, it also stays open during the day and into the evening, delivering lunch and dinner as well.
The old-fashioned diner counter, brown tiled floor, green booths, and homemade pies in the display case harkens back to the 1950s when Bill and Daryl Bowen first opened this hamburger joint. The menu is still spelled out with movable letters on white boards behind the counter, tempting customers with homemade root beer and double cheese burgers hot off the griddle. In the mornings, their chefs fry modest breakfasts of eggs, bacon, and toast, and throughout the day they ladle bowls full of navy beans with ham and complement meals with sides of fried okra and anonymous love letters. Watching the staff scoop dollops of vanilla ice cream into tall glasses of root beer for floats and carve out generous chunks of butterscotch pie to go along with steaming cups of coffee makes it hard for full bellies to turn down dessert.
Forks and knives chatter onto plates at Duffy’s as patrons exhale slowly after feasting on classic American-diner fare. All-day breakfast dishes include Duffy’s omelet, a massive tribute to egg-based envelopes, and french toast flanked by bacon and eggs. Crackling oil in the kitchen hints at chicken-fried steak, and the roast-beef dinner lets patrons linger at the table for a long time, enjoying conversation or the excuse to pretend they didn’t accidentally glue themselves to chairs.