Tailgate Blog: The Tulsa Food Guy

I got a tweet earlier this week from a fellow who called himself the “Tulsa Food Guy” telling me that if I came to his OSU tailgate on Saturday that he would fix me whatever I wanted. His avatar was a cartoon of a dude with a goatee who was wearing big sunglasses and holding a piece of chicken in one hand and a cold one in the other.

Obviously, I was intrigued.

The TFG tailgate was in a car lot owned by Jim Gill, a former OSU wrestler in the 1980s. He told me a couple stories about occasionally running into Barry Sanders on campus and how Sanders was just as unassuming and humble in person as he was on the field. Not that any OSU fan would be surprised to hear that.

This is the poster that greeted me when I pulled into Gill’s lot.

And this is the TFG in the flesh. His real name is Tyson Caldwell.

Caldwell is an OSU grad who moved to back to Oklahoma (Broken Arrow, specifically) from Los Angeles in 2007. When he arrived, he started his site, http://www.tulsafoodguy.com/blog/ , where he finds and reviews the best local food joints to in the Tulsa area. His specialization? Manly food. Also known as food perfect for tailgating.  

What’s on the menu:

Brats, hot links and polish sausage. I had a brat. Very tasty and good flavor.

Wings, wings and more wings. These were still cookin’ when I had to check out and come to the stadium. Bummer.

Much like the group I visited last Thursday, these folks had an OSU-themed canopy. They also had a satellite TV, which sometimes worked and sometimes, well, didn’t. The only real game action I saw during my stay was that Notre Dame was pounding Michigan State early in the fourth quarter.