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Lillie-Beth Brinkman
A new restaurant that opened over the weekend in northeast Oklahoma City blends local history, personal family stories from Italy and the family’s roots and recipes that began in Oklahoma about a century ago.
The restaurant, Carletti’s, is a labor of love for Gina Foxhoven, who drew on her family’s Italian heritage in Oklahoma, and her partners Chip Fudge and Larry Davis, longtime Oklahoma City developers.
“We are historic preservationists at heart,” Foxhoven said on a tour of the newly renovated space that opened originally in 1937 as a speakeasy and horse stables. “This whole place is built on a love story.”
Foxhoven also noted that the entire concept began with her own family’s Italian love story between the Carlettis and the Ravaiolis and continued with their love for Oklahoma City history.
The Italian history is what is driving the restaurant concept, the recipes and the small C&R Grocery market that’s located inside the new restaurant. The Oklahoma City history and its beginnings as the Kentucky Club in 1937 helped drive the renovations.
The Carlettis owned a boarding house in Haileyville in southeast Oklahoma, and Roberto Ravaioli stayed there after traveling from Italy in 1909 to the state to work in the coal mines, she said. Ravaioli eventually brought his family from Italy to settle in Oklahoma, and the two families became close. When his kids grew up, Tony Ravaioli, Roberto’s son, married his best childhood friend, Pama Carletti. Tony went into business with Palma’s brother, opening C&R Grocery in Haileyville in 1929.
The restaurateurs dug deep into all of to develop Carletti’s. During renovations, contractors also found trap doors, hidden staircases and old photos from the Kentucky Club. Family photos line the walls. The Ravaioli recipes are on the menu. Foxhoven’s uncle Tony, who died this year, helped with the storytelling. The C&R market will sell Italian meats, pastas and more, some of it from Lovera’s in southeast Oklahoma and some of it from consulting Chef Chris Becker, who has his own artisan pasta line – Della Terra – made locally.
The menu includes a 100-year-old pasta sauce from the Ravaioli family, as well as craft cocktails that pay tribute to some of this history. After the restaurant closes at night, the cozy bar will stay open as the Kentucky Club; that speakeasy overlooks downtown Oklahoma City skyline – with a great view of our sunset, and it will have its own entrance.
I grew up eating in the building when it was County Line Barbecue and loved the semi-private rooms that line the edges of the restaurant. They’re still there, and this week, I learned those were the original horse stables.
Carletti’s is near the Oklahoma City Zoo, Remington Park and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
It’s a beautiful spot, and the developers took painstaking care with all of the details. Carletti’s is now taking reservations. Learn more online at carlettis.com.
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Dining and Cooking