Time travel to casual dining in Oklahoma

By Steve Lackmeyer

Published: October 1, 2008

Last March, I time traveled with my mom and son. The destination: Steak and Ale.

My family lived in Quail Creek in the 1980s, and Steak and Ale was pretty much considered the nicest fine dining option if the outing involved all of the kids.

The Steak and Ale was really one of the first, if not the first, restaurants to open along the now busy Memorial Road corridor.

Oddly, a lot immediately south of the restaurant was never developed, and then one spot farther south, the same owners of Steak and Ale opened a Bennigan's (I have plenty of college memories of good times and horrible service at that now closed eatery as well — but that's another story).

With its old English architecture, separate dining areas, decent prime ribs and cold plates at the salad bar, Steak and Ale was fancy — but still accommodating to a noisy brood like the Lackmeyer clan.

We would see familiar faces — mostly fellow Quail Creek residents.

But time passes, and my family moved back to New York for a few years while I stayed in Oklahoma City. I never bothered going to Steak and Ale on my own — it just didn't fit the lifestyle of a college student.

My family moved back to Oklahoma City a decade ago, and from time to time my mother mentioned making a return trip to the restaurant. Sure, it was a grab at nostalgia. But I'm a nostalgic guy myself, and so off we went while my wife stayed home with our 3-year-old.

Memorial Road may very well be the busiest restaurant corridor in the city and yet on this vastly different stretch of suburbia, nothing had really changed at Memorial Road and May Avenue.

The restaurant still had a peg board for business cards inside the entryway. Hard candies were still offered from a little bowl at the hostess' stand. Everything was as it was 25 years ago. And it seemed as if all the old Quail Creek folks — with graying hair and some obvious cases of plastic surgery — were still filling the other tables.

I'm not surprised that the Steak and Ale and Bennigan's restaurants closed for good a few weeks back. Surrounded by dozens of similar casual dining chain restaurants, these eateries really should have closed years ago.

This trip back in time was doomed to come to a close.

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