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I didn’t expect Oklahoma to have much vegan food. After all, the official Oklahoma state meal (the only state with an official meal) includes chicken-fried steak, barbecued pork, AND sausage with biscuits and gravy. But Tulsa proved me wrong.
From a super fresh and healthy Thai salad bowl from Pure Food + Juice to vegan donuts at Chimera Café, I ate well in Tulsa. There’s even a secret vegan cinnamon roll shop that you’d never know was egg and dairy-free. Between exploring for four days in April and interviewing Sarah Hyden, founder of the Tulsa Vegan Guide, I got the lowdown on vegan living in what was once called the Oil Capital of the World.
Why Is Tulsa so Vegan Friendly?
Tulsa is vegan-friendly because customers showed restaurants there’s a demand. When Hyden went vegan in 2017, “I had to always ask the kitchen manager what I could have when eating with family at local restaurants, and often they didn’t even know what vegan meant. It made eating out as a vegan a real hassle in Tulsa.”
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One restaurant owner told her that no one ordered their vegan options, so they removed them from the menu. “It hit me then that there were a lot of people eating at home due to a lack of options and a lot of restaurants that would be willing to serve vegan food if only there was a demand for it.”
So Hyden put together a 15-page document listing vegan meals you could get around town. It kept growing and now has 120 fully-detailed vegan menus. “After bringing the supply and the demand together, Tulsa began booming with vegan options that were proving to be successful additions to the menu,” Hyden said.
Coffee and Pastries
My ideal day starts with an oat or soymilk cappuccino and a delicious vegan pastry. This was surprisingly easy to arrange in downtown Tulsa.
I’d heard that Topeca was the best coffee place in town. So I walked from my comfortable digs at Hotel Indigo to its nearest outpost for a soy cappuccino. They also had a vegan peanut butter and jelly cookie.
Another morning, I found a much bigger vegan pastry selection at Chimera Café, including vegan donuts! I ate lunch at Chimera another day, and they have a good variety of creative and healthful vegan bowls, wraps, and appetizers.
Cinnaholic
Okay, Cinnaholic is also coffee and pastries but gets its own section because it’s so intriguing. I’d heard about this chain of vegan cinnamon roll stores and had eagerly wanted to try it out myself.
Cinnaholic is what I think of as secretly vegan. Since they cast a much wider net than vegan customers, they keep “plant-based” in small print. Instead, they go toe-to-toe with the most decadent cinnamon rolls on the market.
The Tulsa Cinnaholic is located in the last place I’d expect to find a vegan restaurant—out in big box store mall land. Or as the locals call it, the Tulsa Hills Shopping Center. It was one of my longer Uber rides in Tulsa to get there.
I was still unsure when I walked in and saw the array of billion-calorie, over-the-top cinnamon rolls. “Uh, is this place vegan?” I asked the server.
“Yeah, but you can’t tell,” she said.
The server takes a freshly cooked, naked roll out of the oven and tops it with a flavor combo off the menu or your own creation. Overwhelmed by choice, I ordered the cinnamon toast combo—not an original choice, but good. The server covered my roll with vanilla frosting and lumps of cookie dough.
Next time I’ll be more adventurous and choose a different one of the 20 frostings, maybe maple or hazelnut. Then there are the 30+ toppings to consider. Yes, this strange chain will require more in-person research.
Dinners Out
Three nights in Tulsa meant three dinners out. All vegan successes.
On my first night, I ate at The Vault, a hip restaurant in an old bank building that had sat vacant for many years. An impressive number of entrees could be made vegan, at least five, plus some appetizers. I had the excellent Korean BBQ tofu sandwich with slaw and chopped grilled pineapples on it. I was also happy to see mocktails on the menu.
Elote Café & Catering was another hit, with many clearly marked vegan choices on the menu and a festive Mexican-inspired atmosphere. You can get jackfruit tacos, Beyond Beef in your burrito, and there’s cashew cheese. Elote offers eleven flavors of salsa, and you can order a salsa flight!
Mother Road Café
On my last night in Tulsa, I ate dinner at Pure Food + Juice inside Mother Road Café. According to Hyden, this restaurant has been a community favorite for a long time, predating much of Tulsa’s current vegan cuisine.
Route 66 runs through Tulsa, and the Mother Road Market food hall celebrates this history. More than a dozen small restaurants serve hungry diners here.
One of the coolest things about the market is its takeover cafes—one a daily popup, the other an extended popup—allowing local chefs to try out new concepts. “Mother Road Market is very vegan-friendly and allows many vegan-friendly businesses to kickstart their businesses using their commercial kitchen,” Hyden told me.
My Thai bowl at Pure Food and Juice was incredibly colorful and flavorful. A huge pile of lettuce with vegan parmesan sat in the middle, surrounded and topped by grated carrots, purple cabbage, pickled onions, cucumber slices, chili cashews, avocado slices, chickpeas and almond dressing.
Vegan Ice Cream
Without vegan ice cream, my life seems incomplete. Fortunately, I found two different places in Tulsa to satisfy this need.
One night, I visited Rock Rose Micro Creamery, located downtown in one of Tulsa’s many fine old buildings. Rock Rose offers a list of traditional standbys—including vegan chocolate—and a changing roster of specialty flavors. When I visited, vegan banana pudding was making a special appearance, so I got a delicious scoop of each.
I was a little leery of my pandan leaf ice cream from Big Dipper, inside the Mother Road Market. It was just so green! But it turned out to taste good, along with a scoop of cookies and cream. This ice cream shop also has a changing roster of flavors, with at least two vegan choices.
A Changing Vegan Scene
Tulsa’s vegan scene is great—and getting better. “Do not underestimate Tulsa, Oklahoma, on your list of cities to try vegan food in,” said Hyden. “We were ranked the tenth most vegan-friendly city in all of America in 2019 by PETA, we broke a record for the Vegan Chef Challenge by having 65 restaurants compete, and we now have 7,000 individuals in our local vegan Facebook group.”
You can visit a vegan-friendly hair or nail salon in Tulsa, hire a vegan personal trainer, or get inked in a vegan tattoo studio. Hyden is proud of Tulsa’s kid-focused vegan happenings, including an annual Halloween event where kids trick or treat for vegan candy and a locally-run plant-based Scouts troop for vegan youth ages 5-18.
Hyden is excited about the Ruby D’s Burger Joint, a new plant-based restaurant planning to open downtown. “They are the ones that debuted the vegan fried egg bacon burger and have been hinting at an all-vegan brunch selection,” she said. Another reason for me to return to Tulsa.
If You Go:
I stayed downtown at Hotel Indigo, which artistically celebrated Tulsa’s oil history in a very walkable area. Some of my favorite Tulsa activities besides eating vegan food were visiting the spectacular local park called Gathering Place, strolling the gardens of the Philbrook Museum of Art and checking out Tulsa’s amazing Art Deco buildings.
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Author Bio: Teresa Bergen is a Portland-based writer who specializes in outdoors, eco, vegan and sober travel. She’s on a mission to paddle in every US state and Canadian province. Teresa is the author of Easy Portland Outdoors and Sober Travel Handbook, and co-author of Historic Cemeteries of Portland, Oregon.
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