Mahogany has been open for about five years now, and I was aware of it when I used to live in Tulsa but for various reasons never made it in. Today it's the original flagship restaurant for a small chain with branches in Omaha and, as of earlier this year, Oklahoma City. Their specialty is prime aged beef.
Steak is something Tulsans take seriously. After all, the mainstay of the local economy is oil and cattle. Tulsa has had a checkered history, though, when it comes to fine dining with steak. Certainly there are a number of decent, basic, mid-range steak restaurants, but high end places have been limited. It wasn't all that long ago that when visitors came to town and wanted a big steak dinner, when they asked for the name of the best steakhouse in town, if they didn't have reciprocal private club privileges that would get them admitted to the Summit Club or the Petroleum Club, I would have to recommend the Outback Steakhouse chain! In the mid-20th century, several top places opened with restauranteurs from the local Lebanese community, so diners got not only steaks marinaded in Middle Eastern seasonings but tabouli, stuffed cabbage rolls, and barbecued bologna. A couple of them are still in existence, though they are just a shadow of their former glory. About five years ago, Tulsa got Mahogany and the high-end national franchise steakhouse Fleming's.
Since then, Mahogany has developed a reputation for high quality steaks, lobster, and wines at high, high prices. I know several people in Tulsa who swear by Mahogany and say that it's the best restaurant by far in town. So, it was with that background and reputation that Tony and I anticipated our visit.
The evening began auspiciously, with a couple of friendly hostesses saying we could have a table in about fifteen minutes. So, we decided to sit at the bar and wait. On the bar in lieu of the usual peanuts and bar mix were bowls of cashews and in-shell pistachios with large serving spoons in each. But what really caused me to drool were the countertop bottles behind the bar. They had literally thousands of dollars of ultra premium liquors sitting out, including Louis XIII cognac and a fifty-year old MacAllan scotch in a $1,200 Lalique crystal bottle which our bartender Clayton kindly displayed for us.
While Tony had a Sapphire and tonic, I sipped a glass of Casa Lapostolle Chilean sauvignon blanc. No sooner had we gotten our drinks, though, did our waiter come to fetch us to our table. There, we were presented with two large lists of very expensive wines and our menus, which were short and simple and printed on simple white card stock, then laminated. This is where the first chinks in their armor started to appear. First, we had a long wait for our waiter to reappear and take our orders. Then, after he took the orders, he had to come back again and confirm what we had told him. In addition, he had introduced himself as the restaurant's wine expert, but when I queried him a bit, not being a stranger to the finer points of wine myself, I discovered that his "expertise" was limited to California wines and he eventually admitted he knew nothing about French or New World wines.
I was still looking forward to an hour's drive back to my parents' house, so I continued to nurse my sauvignon blanc for the evening, but I selected for Tony an Italian Tiefenbrunner pinot grigio for his first courses and then an Australian Penfold's Bin 2 shiraz-mourvèdre blend for his beef course. He loved the pinot grigio pairing, especially once the food arrived, but the Penfold's was a bit sweeter and more port-like than I'd expected, so it wasn't as ideal for the meat.
We started with a shrimp cocktail. Shrimp cocktails have been a steakhouse specialty for decades, so I thought trying theirs would be fun. Instead of the expected stemmed bowl on ice, the shrimp arrived on a small plate atop a little bit of shredded lettuce and accompanied by cups of cocktail sauce and a mustard cream sauce. I wasn't a fan of their cocktail sauce—it was redolent with diced red pepper and that wasn't a flavor I wanted. I was also surprised to find the shrimp terribly ordinary. They were large, not jumbo, and I thought the six tail-on crustaceans were slightly overcooked. Not exactly what I expected for an $11.99 appetizer in Tulsa, America.In between courses, Tony took the opportunity to explore the men's room. He came back to report on its faux-luxury, complete with terry cloth fingertip towels by the lavatories and a flat-panel television set to ESPN over the urinals.
For our next course, Tony had the lobster bisque and I had an iceberg lettuce "wedge" salad. Tony used to work for the local daily newspaper, so in consulting his former colleague the food reviewer's column on Mahogany, we found that he highly recommended the "silky" soup. Of course, I've never respected that reviewer's columns, but I was trying to be polite. What Tony was served was a little crock of a thick, brown potage he described as being like potato soup with no lobster flavor, and when I sampled a little taste of it I found it to be overwhelmingly seasoned with black pepper. As he reached the bottom of his bowl, he finally discovered quite a number of little chunks of lobster meat.
My course was somewhat more successful. Wedge salads are another steakhouse tradition, usually a simple quarter-head of lettuce on a plate with blue cheese dressing and occasionally a slice of ripe, red tomato. I got the traditional wedge (though somewhat drowned in excess dressing), but it was extraneously supplemented with long scallions, shreds of carrot, and crumbled bacon.
Our steaks arrived with a little procession of our waiter plus two servers bearing the smokingly-hot plates. After the plates were placed before us and we received the usual hot plate warnings, Tony was particularly chagrined when the two servers whipped out little miniature flashlights to shine upon the meat as they witnessed the diner cutting into the steak and confirming that it was cooked "correctly." Even though he later confessed that his steak was more medium than medium rare, he was too surprised by the flashlights and all the attention to give a truthful answer. The parade seemed somewhat disappointed when I declined to cut into the meat under their observation. Next, our waiter appeared with a plate of asparagus, thinking that we'd ordered it (we hadn't), even though we'd originally had a long conversation about whether or not we could order creamed spinach in light of the national E. coli scare and then he'd come back to confirm our orders. We declined the asparagus.
The steaks were good. I found mine properly cooked and nearly fork-tender. The only problems were the meat was so hot it was dangerous at first to eat and the meat had been heavily doused with melted drawn butter—definitely not kosher. They also had seasoned highly the meat with lots of salt and pepper, too much so for Tony's tastes. I would have liked to have tasted my meat without the butter so I could better appreciate the quality and flavor.
Dessert was the "Nick's bread pudding" with cognac cream sauce and blackberries. Unfortunately, this is when my camera decided to run out of batteries (which also explains the above poor photography), so I wasn't able to capture it for you. We shared a little round bowl filled with bread pudding, topped with sauce, then garnished with two blackberries and a mint leaf. Technically, it was plural blackberries. Once again, the food was treacherously hot, and it was difficult to cool off the bread pudding. The sauce was not to my tastes. The menu described it as a cognac sauce, but I detected the distinct taste of anisette or licorice, a flavor I detest. The waiter confirmed that it included a "drop" of ouzo (a Greek anisette liquor). Yuck.
So, what was my final analysis of Mahogany? Well, it's definitely not the best restaurant in Tulsa. There are at least three places I would rate clearly above them and several others which also could be in the running. Further, they're not the best steakhouse, with Fleming's (a chain) in Utica Square standing head and shoulders above them. It has potential—it wasn't a hideous evening—but they clearly have missed the mark for their aspirations. I also note that while the price tag for the meal wouldn't be all that unusual for a dinner here in the District of Columbia, a $140 pre-tip tab for two is exhorbitantly expensive for Tulsa, especially since we had very little wine or alcohol and we split two of the courses. Thus I expected better—much better.
The evening wasn't a total loss, though, since we accomplished our goal of going somewhere we'd never been and I had a chance to fellowship with my friend Tony. Here's a picture of him in his Kody Pose. Oh, and did I ever mention that it was Tony who introduced me to Kody?
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