REVIEWS
A Local Place for Tulsa: Roka is focused on Oklahoma.
By Justin Martino on March 22, 2016
Cozy, comfortable, and local. These three words formed the basis of the concept of Roka, which recently opened at 1615 S. Utica Ave. in Tulsa. While the idea sounds simple, the care and dedication to the concept shows through the restaurant.
Chad Stanger, operating partner for Roka, says almost a year passed between the forming of the idea for Roka and the restaurant’s opening on Feb. 4. The interior of the building was completely torn out and remodeled – the actual construction on the restaurant took four months.
The restaurant features a variety of seating options, including high-backed booths with walls for privacy. The building is dividing into different areas, including two main dining rooms, a bar and two banquet rooms. Every aspect of the restaurant’s design was carefully thought out, including the music being played through 36 speakers divided into 10 different zones. The system allows for a high degree of volume control through the restaurant, Stanger says.
“We wanted clear, crisp music that doesn’t affect conversation,” he says.
The concept used for the design of the building helped inspire Damon Holdeman, executive chef for Roka, when creating the menu.
“We wanted to do a menu that matched the building,” he says. “We wanted a menu that was a chef’s menu and had a lot of skill put into it.
The menu features a large selection of Asian dishes pulled from every Asian culture, Stanger says. Holdeman talked to chefs who specialize in all the styles used to guarantee the authenticity of the menu. Staying with the idea of being a restaurant that focused on being local, many of the dishes are made with ingredients from Oklahoma farms and markets.
The menu includes dishes like rice paper salmon, fire grilled duck breast and bulgogi beef. Everything in the dishes – including the hoisin citrus sauce used in the rice paper salmon and the sweet potato noodles in the bulgogi beef – is made from scratch in the restaurant.
“We spent a lot of time and effort on this menu,” Stanger says. “It was a long process.”
They also spent time and effort on the restaurant’s bar area, named Sami’s Bar in honor of the large sculpture of a samurai that immediately draws a visitor’s attention when entering. The bar has a menu of lighter fare and features specialty craft cocktails created by the Roka staff, including a maple bourbon martini.
“It’s what people are looking for right now,” Holdeman says. “Craft cocktails are on the rise, and people like a little more skill put into their drinks.
The bar also features more than 40 wines and 24 types of beer, with 10 types of beer on tap. The same focus on using local ingredients in the menu was brought to the bar – bartenders make drinks using Prairie Wolf vodka, produced in Guthrie, and Maehs gin, produced in Moore, and eight of the beers served are Oklahoma beers. Even Sami, the samurai statue, is a local product created by Oklahoma chainsaw artist Clayton Coss.
No matter how full the bar is, noise-reducing panels prevent the sound from traveling into the restaurant. Stanger says despite a lively crowd during the Super Bowl, it was possible to step into the restaurant and not hear any of the bar noise.
Whether you’re looking for lunch, dinner or a drink or two for happy hour, the staff of Roka have worked hard to create an atmosphere that matches their concept: cozy, comfortably and local.
Originally Posted on Oklahoma Magazine by Justin Martino
Second Helpings: Roka
By Scott Cherry
Food: 4.5 STARS
Atmosphere: 5 STARS
Service: 4.5 STARS
(on a scale of 0 to 5 stars)
11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday; accepts all major credit cards; gluten-free, vegetarian available.
We shared two sushi rolls — the Philly ($6.50) and Swan Lake ($8). The Philly had the traditional mix of salmon, cream cheese and avocado, and the Swan Lake included tempura shrimp, avocado, spinach and sambal aioli. The chili peppers in the sambal aioli gave the basic aioli sauce a good kick.
For our entrees, we ordered Korean beef short ribs ($16), grilled and glazed salmon ($17) and steamed Chilean sea bass ($24).
The bone-in short ribs were sliced thin and cooked in a sweet-tart marinade that charred the surface of the ribs, in a good way. It was served with sauteed carrots and onions, plus a pineapple fruit salsa.
Both fish dishes were excellent. The nice-sized salmon fillet had a pleasing texture and a light honey glaze. It came with asparagus topped with a sweet miso sauce and button mushrooms.
The sauce for the steamed sea bass had a pleasant, mildly fishy flavor and mixed in with the sides of bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, green onion whites and celery.
I was looking at buttered rum bread pudding and banana pastry cream pie for dessert but decided to compromise and take my wife’s choice — the brulee trio ($7). It included three little cups with red tea, candied ginger and coconut brulees. The candied ginger was OK, the coconut tasty and the red tea the most interesting with a hard-to-describe flavor.
Originally Posted on Tulsa World Restaurant Guide by Scott Cherry
Review: Roka classy addition to midtown
By Scott Cherry
Food: 4.5 stars
Atmosphere: 5 stars
Service: 4.5 stars
(on a scale of 0 to 5 stars)
The recently opened Roka shows an impressive amount of forethought and attention to detail. From the food to the ambience and service, all the bases were touched in the planning.
Roka is located in space that formerly held Te Kei’s Chinese Asian Kitchen and has some of the same staff, but it bears only a faint resemblance to the former tenant.
“This is a whole new deal,” said executive chef Damon Holdeman. “I worked six months on the food to make sure every single menu item was perfect.”
The expanded bar area and dining areas are almost totally new. Except for a couple of stone walls and an ornate wall in a private room, “we took it back to the dirt, literally,” Holdeman said. “Even the plumbing under the original floor was replaced.”
New operating partner Chad Stanger, who worked some 13 years with P.F. Chang’s, joined prior to the transition to upgrade the service and general operation.
“We put in mostly high-backed wooden booths and a few stand-alone tables, and all of the artifacts are authentic,” Stanger said. “We also did a lot of work with the acoustics and lighting.”
Another piece to the puzzle was the hiring of James Shrader, chef-proprietor of Palace Cafe, as a consultant.
“I knew when they hired Chad they were serious about this,” Shrader said. “They’ve been great to work with. They are doing things right.”
We dropped by with a daughter recently for dinner to check out the new restaurant.
All of the rich woods, tabletop candles, extensive Asian decorations and slightly subdued lighting from a variety of fixtures made our dining area warm and inviting.
Most of the entrees are priced in the mid teens, but if one adds an appetizer, salad, soup, sushi or dessert, the evening can quickly jump into fine-dining territory. We took the jump, and I’m glad we did.
We started with a shared appetizer of avocado tempura, which included eight or nine slices of avocado, dipped in a tempura batter and lightly fried. They came with a sweet chili-mint vinaigrette sauce that was mellow overall and mildly minty.
Our excellent server, Rebecca, also mixed together two items on our table — sweetened sake soy sauce and house sriracha — for an additional sauce. I liked both but tended to go back to the minty one.
We shared two sushi rolls — the Philly ($6.50) and Swan Lake ($8). The Philly had the traditional mix of salmon, cream cheese and avocado, and the Swan Lake included tempura shrimp, avocado, spinach and sambal aioli. The chili peppers in the sambal aioli gave the basic aioli sauce a good kick.
For our entrees, we ordered Korean beef short ribs ($16), grilled and glazed salmon ($17) and steamed Chilean sea bass ($24).
The bone-in short ribs were sliced thin and cooked in a sweet-tart marinade that charred the surface of the ribs, in a good way. It was served with sauteed carrots and onions, plus a pineapple fruit salsa.
Both fish dishes were excellent. The nice-sized salmon fillet had a pleasing texture and a light honey glaze. It came with asparagus topped with a sweet miso sauce and button mushrooms.
The sauce for the steamed sea bass had a pleasant, mildly fishy flavor and mixed in with the sides of bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, green onion whites and celery.
Each entree came with a choice of brown rice, jasmine rice or fried rice. We had all three, and each was fine.
I was looking at buttered rum bread pudding and banana pastry cream pie for dessert but decided to compromise and take my wife’s choice — the brulee trio ($7). It included three little cups with red tea, candied ginger and coconut brulees. The candied ginger was OK, the coconut tasty and the red tea the most interesting with a hard-to-describe flavor.
The beverage list includes 43 wines, 24 beers and 15 specialty cocktails, prepared behind the dark-wood horseshoe bar with brass foot rail.
Rebecca was first-rate. She had command of the menu, was informed on the various sauces and ingredients and showed good knowledge of the wine list.
In addition to Asian artifacts, Roka features local chalkboard art by Scott Taylor of Colorpop Art and Design and locally made pottery used for some drinks and food items.
One private room has an 80-inch television and seats 50, while another has a large drop-down screen and seats 25.
Originally Posted on Tulsa World Restaurant Guide by Scott Cherry