More than pasta
Patrono in downtown offers broad view of Italian cuisine
Two years after it opened, Patrono remains one of downtown's hidden dining gems.
Now under new ownership, the restaurant boasts a welltrained staff under the tutelage of one of the city's top restaurant operators and a chef who specializes in Italian cuisine, making Patrono destination dining.
As of this week, the up-andcoming concept now offers lunch, giving locals more reason to make excuses to run errands on downtown’s west side.
Patrono, 305 N Walker Ave., opened in the summer of 2015 after chef Robert DeCoste moved to Oklahoma City with his wife, Amanda Yaun, a pediatric neurosurgeon from Washington, D.C.
DeCoste saw an occupancy in the local dining landscape for Italian cuisine that didn’t include southern Italian-inspired mounds of pasta smothered in red sauce and filled it more than capably.
But when Yaun got an opportunity to move to New York, where her highly specialized skills would be used to help almost five times as many young patients, DeCoste put the restaurant up for sale.
Lucky for DeCoste, he’d hired Robert Painter a year or so before. Painter is a veteran operator, whose career has taken him through the original Iguana Lounge and two other iterations of the concept, Tommy’s Italian Grill and The Sushi Bar.
But he first came to the restaurant to get away from running things.
“I always loved the food here,” he told me when he took the job. “I just needed a place to call home, wait some tables and make a little extra money.”
But fate had a different plan for his relationship with Patrono.
Not too long after DeCoste made it known he was looking to sell, Painter got a dinner invitation from a couple looking to open a restaurant in Yukon. Gary and Melinda Billings were the prospective restaurateurs, and they wondered if Painter might be available to work for them. He was, and he wasn’t. “So, I invited them to dinner here,” Painter said. “I told them I didn’t really fancy the idea of driving to Yukon for work every day, but this place was for sale.”
The Billings loved the idea, but before the deal was consummated, Painter had one more crucial phone call to make.
Chef Jonathan Krell was helping install a Bricktown Brewery in El Paso, Texas, when he saw Robert Painter’s name pop up on his cellphone.
“I was a little surprised at first,” Krell explained. “I love Robert, and we’ve been friends a long time, but it’s not like we call each other all the time.”
Painter told Krell about the pending deal but admitted, “I’m not going to do this without you.” So Krell said yes. Painter’s desperation to wrangle the Philadelphia-born chef was based on what Krell had done in his time at Stella Modern Italian, which was tighten and elevate an already excellent restaurant’s menu.
Krell was intrigued by DeCoste’s approach at Patrono, and initially spent his time in the kitchen getting to know it better. But as he draws closer to one year on the job, Krell has made the menu his own. The fall/winter menu is in full effect, and the foods he’s pumping out are an inspiration.
Krell, who also ran the kitchen at Park House during its time in the Myriad Botanical Gardens, offers artistic flavor-first plates. While some chefs present plates channeling a painter’s approach, Krell’s offerings are more like a sculptor’s. Because he studied and successfully held a career as a sound engineer in the live music world, it’s no surprise his food has amplitude.
The grilled pork porterhouse is a tour de force of flavor, juicy and tender and with all the heft that will satisfy the hardiest appetites. Same goes for the steak frites, served with a clever potato stack rather than fries, and the palatepampering lamb shank.
The new menu includes seared diver scallops, which arrive to the table charred to perfection but still sweet and moist in the center.
Pasta doesn’t dominate the menu, but enthusiasts will find the ultra-decadent carbonara impossible to resist. Topped with an egg yolk to be mixed in while the pasta is still hot, the bacon is presented in thick, meaty cubes with a pleasing contingency of fresh green peas.
Starting a meal at Patrono is fraught with peril. The broiled Caciocavera with pepper relish using Lovera’s cheese from Krebs is a crowd-pleaser, but how do you skip the telefono al suppli? You don’t. Because when someone goes to the trouble of batterfrying risotto with a mozzarella center, you order it. And then there’s the white anchovies and grilled octopus to consider. Did I mention carpaccio and charcuterie?
Oh, and for the new menu Krell has a lovely habit of featuring aggressively delicious toppings for toast like green-lipped mussels with tomato sauce or wild mushrooms with a poached egg. Try a bite and see if you can stop, I dare you.
Needless to say, you can be stuffed like a Christmas goose if you’re not careful before salad arrives. Solution? Make it a party of six, plan to dine for a couple of hours and take it slow over a couple bottles of wine. And save room for dessert.
Patrono introduced lunch service this week. Krell said he wanted to keep it simple with a focus on getting guests fed quickly and efficiently. His menu includes a handful of sandwiches, a trio of salads, soup, some slimmed-down pasta options, including a new take on the orecchiette with a salsa verde, and a breakfast-centric special of English toast topped with scrambled eggs and capicola.
The new lunch service starts at 10:30 a.m. and runs until 2 p.m. The bar, which specializes in Italian wines, will be open during lunch. Dinner service runs from 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, closing at 11 p.m. Saturdays and 9 p.m. on Sundays. Service does fluctuate on evenings the Thunder play or when the Civic Center is presenting a show. The restaurant is closed Mondays.
For more information and reservations, call 702-7660, or go online to patronookc.com