Local Flavor

Left: A variety of ice cream sandwiches can be found at Big Dipper, including ones made with peanut butter cookies and dark chocolate ice cream.

Below: The old fashioned milkshake includes ‘Walk at the Fair’ cotton candy-flavored ice cream.

“ at’s my husband,” explains Sami. “Brian gave up a career as a surveyor in order to partner with me in this.” eir marriage has been a great adventure. In 2012, they left Tulsa for Oregon, where they worked on a chestnut farm. Was it there that Sami learned the value of fresh, locally farmed ingredients? No, she explains. at was later, in Morocco.

“We lived in Rabat for a year,” she explains. “ at’s where I cut my teeth cooking. We were surrounded with wonderful markets, packed with color and avor.”

But didn’t she learn to cook earlier, during her two years in Vietnam?

“Oh no,” she replies. “Why would anyone ever cook in Vietnam? Oh, the restaurants there ... best food of my life!”

Brian and Sami returned to Tulsa in 2017. Sami, who had taught in Vietnam and Morocco, continued to teach kindergarten. And then, suddenly, the thought popped into her head of making ice cream “just for fun.” Before you know it, she’d gotten a huge freezer and set it up in the spare bedroom of her dad’s rent house.

She then attended Kitchen 66 – the Lobeck Taylor Foundation’s program to train and help up-and-coming food businesses. She started selling ice cream sandwiches at football games, and later got a space at Mother Road Market. And then, just a few months ago, she and Brian opened their second location, the Sand Springs store. ( e Mother Road stand remains open.)

A visit to either store promises pleasant surprises. You’ll always see the lavender and the butter cake, but there are seasonal and experimental avors.

“I love to forage,” says Sami. “Every year, we make a wild sumac sorbet. Sometimes I make persimmon jam. e persimmons grow wild around Sand Springs, but you gotta get to them before the deer do.”

Lately she’s been featuring sweet potato with marshmallow ice cream, with the potatoes fresh from a farm. She’s also added butter roll ice cream, made with Macy’s Hawaiian dinner rolls, frosted with vanilla glaze and put into salted sweet cream. You’d think these avors would taste, well, weird. But they don’t. ey taste sweet, rich and good. Even seemingly ordinary avors like vanilla are enriched with real vanilla beans from Madagascar.

“ e beans from Tahiti are too sweet,” says Sami. “ e Madagascar beans have a rich, smoky taste I love.” Sami’s journey seems to have come full circle. “I grew up in Sand Springs,” she says. “My dad owned the Crescent Cafe in Prattville, and I started working there at 14. I became friends with the regulars, they became like family to me, and some I even invited to our wedding. Crescent was a real community place. I want to do the same here. I want to make this the space that, no matter how much stress and pain is outside, gives you ten minutes of joy.” BRIAN SCHWARTZ

RED CUP

It has been almost five years since chef Patrick Clark at The Red Cup decided to go vegan and, in turn, evolved the menu at the Oklahoma City staple to follow suit. Though eggs and cheese are available by request, the menu, on its face, is a haven for vegan patrons to order with abandon, knowing that their selection is entirely plant-based ... and delicious to boot.

Chef Clark has worked at the Red Cup (est. 1995) since he was just 15 years old, and acquired his first share of ownership at 20. He grew up at the restaurant, having spent nearly half of his life there, and the menu has grown up with him.

Known to many as “chef Beave,” he is passionate about food and the industry, including some serious knife skills that few chefs I know could even try to rival.

Breakfast is served until their kitchen closes for the day at 2:30 p.m. Sandwiches, salads, soups, wraps, burgers, locallysourced pasta and hearty entrées ensure an option for every appetite. For a visual journey, follow them on Instagram at @ thercinokc.

AMANDA JANE SIMCOE

Photos courtesy Red Cup