What is it that Guy Fieri has that I don’t?
For me, there is no better way to spend the day than just driving to someplace in Oklahoma you’ve never been before and pulling off the side of the road at the first interesting place you see around dinnertime or so. While I may not be all that “camera-friendly,” surely my mildly likable personality would translate to, at the very least, a weekly three-minute segment on Discover Oklahoma, right?
This past Friday, I was able to score press passes to see one of my favorite bands, Styx, at the Seven Clans First Council Casino and Hotel outside Newkirk, a town I had never heard of near the Kansas border. The drive up I-35 was pretty uneventful, but when we made the right turn into the backroads around Blackwell, that’s where at least you got to drive through a small succession of wonderfully rural towns, all loaded with Hunt Brothers pizza franchises and otherworldly gas stations called Jiffy Trips.
As the sun started to come down over the Oklahoma plains, my partner and I had reckoned that it was time to find some dinner, eating at the casino café before the show being a last resort. Driving through Newkirk, were just about to give up after counting about 30 different Subways when we happened upon a rustic little joint called Stagecoach BBQ, located at 400 W. South Street.
There are few things better in life than barbecue joints in small Oklahoma towns. Unrelentingly unpretentious dining at its finest, nine times out of ten these side-of-the-road Godsends will have some of what you swear is the best barbecue you’ve ever had in your life…until you hit the road again and stop at the next one, of course.