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The mind behind Della Terra Pasta and Carletti's menu.

Chef BethAnn Lyon is one of only three women to graduate from the Coach House apprenticeship program, along with Chefs Anna Banda and Mackenize Bentley. Over the course of her career, she has worked in every aspect of restaurants, including owner (Black Cat food truck and one of the original The Collective tenants).

Chef-owner Stefanie Embree opened OKC Sweets in 2020, after working as a home baker since 2018. We met in late 2020 while judging a spiked hot chocolate competition for Halloween. I stopped by her Western Avenue bakery shortly after, and was immediately impressed with her products, the thought and creativity that went into the displays, and of course, how damn cute all the specialty items are.

At this point in 2026, it seems obvious that Le Parisien is our best new restaurant, and one of the overall best in the city period. The combination of an incredibly talented team, remarkable food, excellent wine list, solid cocktail program, and beautiful buildout has made the Midtown French bistro a favorite for date night, special events, casual dining, and happy hour. Much of their success is due to Executive Chef Bryant Gallegos and operating partner Alain Jeu, both industry veterans, mainly in California, where Jeu worked at the famous/infamous Chateau Marmont for many years, and before that, he worked in San Francisco, where he met and worked with the great Kermit Lynch, a pioneer in the modern wine trade.

Jonas Favela is the executive chef at Vast, a job that includes overseeing lunch, dinner, tasting menus, banquets, Nova Lounge, and a crew of dozens. The Las Vegas native has been an Okie most of his life, and he's spent a good chunk of his career in some of OKC's best restaurants, including The Metro, The Ranch, and now Vast. He had his own spot a couple times, including Graffiti in The Parlor, the spot where I first had his red curry salmon, a dish that has been added to the Vast tasting menu and one for which I waited seven years to have again since the closing of Graffiti. Favela joined Vast after moving over from The National, both Coury Hospitality food programs.

Chef Gabriel Lewis made his MasterChef debut when only 19, moving from fast-casual "Mexican" food to one of the best stories in the Gordon Ramsay corpus of television cooking shows. Not because he won, but because all of us who watched remember the emotional moment when Ramsay, clearly taken with something sincere and promising in Lewis, said after the elimination that he would finance Lewis's culinary education.

Chef Caleb Stangroom is currently executive sous at The National, where oversees culinary operations at Tellers, Gilded Acorn, and The Vault for Coury Hospitality. The New Hampshire native grew up in southern Missouri, and he's been cooking as long as he can remember. While working at various spots around the metro, he's been refining a concept that one day will move from pop-up to brick and mortar, if we're lucky. Tiger Style is the brand,

Sheamus Feeley is an acclaimed executive chef and restaurateur based in Oklahoma. His restaurant Little Belly in Tulsa is turning heads.

John and Mark Hunnell founded Levity Breakfast House in Norman in 2024. The brothers are Cleveland, Ohio natives but came to OKC via Portland, where John worked for Apple and Mark learned all about coffee at Stumptown Coffee, one of the third wave pioneers in the bean business. Their spot on Peters just off Main is in a converted house, and the homey vibes contribute to a feeling of sitting down to breakfast at your friend's house, but only if your friend cooks as well as executive chef Luke Fry.

Chef Jessie Gomez was running the kitchen at Birdie's until last month, when he made the move to Vast, where he's running the Daily Table, Vast's lunch program. The Edmond native is the kind of chef and person that makes people sound like grandfathers when they describe him; to wit, when our very own James Frazier said, "He's a very impressive young man." Yup, that sounds real old.

Enoon Cafe is one of the latest additions to the rapidly developing Capitol Hill District, or, as it's been known for years, Calle Dos Cinco. We were naturally intrigued to hear about a new coffee shop that was leaning into Mexican flavors and aesthetic -- including a revisioned Diego Rivera-esque mural on the east wall, but really, I went for the horchata latte, and along the way discovered the banana licuado.

Tamashii Ramen House opened in the original Midtown location in June 2015, and they were immediately busy. That year was pivotal for OKC's food scene, especially in terms of Asian food, because while the Sebachers were opening Tamashii, Chef Jeff Chanchaleune and 84 Hospitality founder Rachel Cope were rolling out Project Slurp in the Plaza District, a series of pop-up ramen dinners that were wildly popular, and were the basis for what would become Goro Ramen. Restaurant quality ramen was rare before 2015, but as the Sebachers were to learn, OKC was ready for it.

Behind every great meal is a beard that created the recipes. This beard has created some of the best meals in OKC for a long time and now he's launching something new.

Courtney Mankin is president of and partner in The Social Order Dining Collective, the company that includes The Jones Assembly and Spark, as well as franchise locations of Fuzzy's, and Dave's Hot Chicken. For the past two years, she's participated in a Leadership OKC hospitality panel at Jones, and in both cases, I've been uber impressed by her grasp of the issues and her ability to articulate complex ideas clearly. I asked her to come on the episode to talk about the numbers that matter in restaurants, which we get to in the second half, but her story is interesting enough that we barely got to the ostensible main point, which is completely my fault, and honestly, completely fine given the conversation.

Cody Wilson is the former owner of George's Liquor and current co-owner of Modern Liquor, but for this episode, he's the guy who is the new brand ambassador for Prairie With Love, the line of Delta 9 beverages from Prairie Artisan Ales.