Juniper

The Restaurant

Juniper opened in 2011 at 324 East 3rd Street as the senior farm-to-table project of the Justin Thompson Restaurant Group - the same Tulsa hospitality company that operates the PRHYME steakhouse two blocks to the west. The restaurant occupies a restored early-twentieth-century commercial building on the southern edge of the East Village district, a five-block walk south of the Cain's Ballroom and three blocks east of the BOK Center. The dining room seats approximately seventy across an intentionally intimate interior of warm wood, deep-green banquettes, exposed brick and a careful selected display of Oklahoma artisan craft - the visual register reads as a contemporary American farm-to-table room of the Blue Hill at Stone Barns generation, deliberately scaled to a chef-driven downtown environment.

Chef Justin Thompson's kitchen programme is the city's most consistently inventive seasonal menu: Juniper has produced more than two thousand different dishes across its specials rotation in the thirteen years since opening, with weekly chef's specials menus that adjust to the rhythm of the Green Country growing season. The menu's structural anchor runs a careful chef-driven small-plates section (the house-made charcuterie board, the pan-seared scallops with cauliflower puree, the cured Oklahoma duck breast with seasonal preserves), a serious entree section (the seasonal fish preparation, the braised lamb shank with creamy polenta, the dry-aged duck with seasonal jus), and a careful pasta-and-grain section (the hand-rolled gnocchi with seasonal vegetables, the carrot-and-fennel risotto, the seasonal grain salad). Saveur magazine named Juniper to its Saveur 100 list of America's most-considered chef-driven restaurants in 2013, the only Oklahoma restaurant to receive that recognition.

The bar programme is the room's structural co-star: Juniper's house-infused spirits programme - cucumber-infused gin, juniper-infused vodka, rosemary-infused tequila, vanilla-bourbon and seasonal flavoured spirits - anchors a deliberately careful craft-cocktail list of about twenty references. The wine programme runs about two hundred references with deliberate weight on natural French, Italian and Oregon Pinot bottlings - a careful match for the menu's vegetable-forward and seasonal register. The careful staff training and the deliberately personal hospitality have produced an unusually loyal regular clientele: the room runs an estimated forty per cent repeat-guest rate, and the careful reservation lead times reflect the room's status as the senior downtown chef-driven destination.