Detroit style pizza is somewhat new to Oklahoma but is taking off quickly. One of the newest places to offer this style of pizza is Woodward Pizza at the Icehouse Project in Edmond.
We visited on a quiet Saturday morning right before the lunch crowd showed up. We started with spicy cheese curds. These deep-fried cheese curds have plenty of heat with them, they do come with ranch to put the fire out. If you have someone with you who might not like spicy, this definitely isn’t for them. As for the pizza, we ordered the trippple XXXtra pepperoni. This pizza is really good. Nice flavor to the deep-dish crust. The cheese and pepperoni were piled high with crispy cheese burnt around the edge. The red sauce goes on last and it was good (to tell the truth I’m not a red sauce fan). Now for a brief history of Detroit style pizza, it was of course developed in Detroit. The square shape comes from using automotive drip pans to bake the pizza. It’s been a thing in Detroit for many years but only recently has spread through the country.
I really enjoyed our first visit to Woodward Pizza and ready to go back. The service was great as well, the employees very friendly. They told me that the menu will most likely grow in the future. This is part of the new Icehouse Project, there will be more restaurants in this space. I’m giving them 5 strips of bacon.
Update March 22, 2022: The Edmond location is closed. I have heard there might be 2 other locations, 1 in Nicoma Park and the other in Lawton. I haven’t been to either so can’t confirm.
When I travel I like to find foods that are unique to that area, I like to try new foods. Unfortunately I haven’t been to Philadelphia yet to try a real Philly so Philly Homa is as close as I can get for now.
Located in a strip mall on Second street in Edmond, Philly Homa is the best place in town for a sandwich. Now they are done “Philly” style, with thinly sliced steak, fried with onions and peppers, served on a soft roll with your choice of cheese. At Philly Homa you have different sizes, from a manageable 6 inch, an 8 inch, 12 inch, and a huge 24 inch. Then they have all kinds of cheesesteak sandwiches from an original Philly to a Western Philly or try a Southwest Philly, you can even get a sandwich with mac and cheese or hot Cheetos. There is also a choice of cheeses- traditional provolone or Cheese Whiz to a queso that is so good it should be served on tap. I have tried several of their different versions with a different cheese every time and have yet to be disappointed. Each cheesesteak sandwich is served hot and fresh, I usually have to wait about 5 minutes before I can eat. The bread is warm and fresh, with lots of thin sliced steak stuffed inside. All are good no matter what cheese you choose but my favorite is an original Philly with provolone. They also have some awesome starters, my favorite being the Philly Queso Fries. You have that same thin sliced steak over a bed of perfectly fried waffle fries, then that wonderful white queso poured on top of it all. I mentioned the queso earlier, it is a white queso, thick with just enough spice to give it a kick. Their gouda mac and cheese bites are amazing as well, with the gouda giving it a different taste that you just don’t get with regular mac and cheese bites. They also have homemade cinnamon rolls that are good and big.
The service here is great, friendly employees that serve the food. Lots of pics of Edmond around the restaurant. My only downside is the space is small, so it can get packed quickly during the lunch and dinner rush. So all around I will give them 5 strips of bacon, with a splash of that queso.
As I’ve mentioned before, my husband works in Edmond which gives him many opportunities to try the new restaurants in town. So a few weeks ago while driving down Edmond Road he noticed a new burger place had opened in a small strip mall that had just been built east of Kelly. Called The Fixx, he stopped to have lunch there and deciding it was acceptable for me, we went a week later.
It wasn’t busy yet for a Friday night, so we got seated quickly and ordered. I tried the Bella and Bleu, a burger with bacon, grilled portabella mushrooms, onions with blue cheese crumbles and a vinaigrette dressing. It was just the way I like my burgers- big, greasy, and good. The bacon had been cooked just right, not too crisp and the onions were grilled to perfection. All burgers come with your choice of house fries or Fixx chips, I got the fries. They were fresh cut and most were pretty long. My husband got the Chili Cheddar burger. He loved it and there was so much chili I couldn’t see the burger. Now Mae just had to be different and got a hot dog with no chili (I know, the kid isn’t right). She had no complaints, which is unusual.
The restaurant is small but the service was great, everything was clean and had a nice atmosphere. I know the Oklahoma City metro has a lot of good burger places to the point it’s almost saturated but I also like the competition and the challenge for a new restaurant to be better than the others. So I am highly recommending this locally owned newcomer with five strips of bacon.
Address: 644 West Edmond Road, Edmond. South side of the road about 2 blocks east of Kelly, in a newly built strip mall.
Second Update- October 2019- Bigheads has been reborn as Zac’s Cajun Kitchen in NW Oklahoma City. Still have the same great po’boys. Review to come soon.
UPDATE- As of December 2016 Bigheads is gone. Not sure what happened but they are no longer in business. Sad to see them go, really loved their fried shrimp po’boys, not sure where I’m going to get them now.
So I said a few weeks ago I wasn’t a fan of Cajun food but my husband reminded me that my favorite restaurant in Edmond has Cajun food. I forgot but for some reason I just don’t consider it Cajun even if the Po’boy was invented in Louisiana. Bigheads on Broadway in Edmond has been serving up the best Po’boys in the metro since 2012.
Of course, he had gone first to try it out, then he took me. I had never had a po’boy, why would you put perfectly good fried shrimp on bread like a sub. But wow, was I wrong. This was the best sub type sandwich I had ever eaten. That’s why after going there for the past three years, I’ve only had the shrimp po’boy. It’s too good for me to try anything else. The bread is a baguette type cut down the side just like most sub sandwiches, then they pile some of the best fried shrimp in town onto it along with lettuce, tomatoes, and a mayo based spread on top. It’s rather messy to eat and the shrimp can fall out, but when they do, I call it a special treat. I’ve had lots of fried shrimp in my lifetime, from lots of different places and they have the best by far. Don’t know what they are doing to make it so good but I love it. The French fries that come with your po’boy are also the best- none of those limp, flavorless fries you get at the chain restaurants. No these have been fried to perfection, crispy on the outside, mashed potato like on the inside.
My husband has tried a few other items on the menu and has liked them all. But me and Mae stick with our po’boys. Now the service is always good as well, we’ve been there so many times the employees know us. The décor gives a fun feel of New Orleans, lots of Mardi Gras style masks on the walls, zydeco music in the air. Like I said, it’s my favorite restaurant in Edmond and of course I give it five strips of bacon. If you’re lucky, you might see me there, I’ll be the one with a shrimp po’boy.
Address: 617 South Broadway, Edmond, OK. In a strip mall on the east side of the road.
So everyone knows that the intersection of Broadway and 33rd Street in Edmond is bad. Poor design, too much traffic, and lights that never seem to change. I hate that intersection and try to avoid it at all costs but when I do get stuck there, I wonder if the traffic troubles in the area are a ghostly legacy of the two men buried near there. What? What do you mean? There isn’t a cemetery near there, can’t be any graves. Well that is where you are wrong, they aren’t easy to get to but yes, there are two graves just northwest of the intersection along the railroad tracks.
Let’s go back to 1886, surveyors for the Southern Kansas Railway (later part of the Santa Fe Railway) picked a location at mile marker 103 (it means one hundred and three miles south of Arkansas City, Kansas) for a coaling station on the rail line. A few months later in September the crews came through to “scrape” the land and prepare the grade for the rail line to be laid. On September 17th, two members of this crew, Frank Mosier and Willie Davis were killed in a fight and then buried along the rail line just a few miles south of marker 103. What was the fight about? Did they kill each other? Was there really a fight? Did they die of something else, disease or heat exhaustion maybe? Many historians have tried to uncover the truth but what really happened to these two men is lost in time. All we really know is that the two men were buried along the railroad right of way, side by side.
For many years the railroad tended to the graves. There were two markers for the men, Willie Davis has a small iron cross and Frank Mosier had a stone with his name carved into it. But as time went on, the graves had become overgrown with weeds and grass. There have been some people who tried to take care of the graves but with the development of Edmond it was hard to keep the location clean. At some point vandals broke Mosier’s stone and scattered the pieces in the field. Some Edmond residents put up a wooden cross and someone has put gravel over the graves. In 1979 the Oklahoma Historical Society put a granite marker at the site and embedded Mosier’s stone into it. The Santa Fe railway still owns the site but has not done a good job tending to it.
This is not an easy place to find. There is really no way to the graves. You can try to park along the businesses that backup to the rail line but there is a very big ditch to get through in order to get to the tracks. The other option is the one I took, park at the business on 33rd Street, then walk the rails around the curve to the site. I will warn you- this is not safe and possibly illegal. It is a blind curve and if you aren’t paying attention the train can come around very quickly. I went to the site on a slow rail traffic afternoon, so I was lucky but it was still scary and any little noise sent me down the rail grade to the ditch. I’m also not going to say the site is haunted, but I just wanted to get out of there, felt very uncomfortable.
So every time you are around the intersection of Broadway and 33rd Street in Edmond, look to the northwest at the railroad track and think about the two men who lost their lives and now reside permanently in that location. Maybe they are “controlling” the traffic flow at that intersection.
The grave marker of Willie Davis, Edmond, Ok, 2015.
The granite marker with Frank Mosier’s headstone embedded next to the grave site, Edmond, OK, 2015.
Edmond, Oklahoma is not my most favorite place in the world- it’s too spread out, some of the people can be rude, and the traffic sucks. But my wonderful husband works there so if I want to visit him for lunch, I have to go to Edmond. I don’t like eating at the major chain restaurants much, so he takes me to different places. And one of those places he introduced me to is Zarate’s Latin Mexican Grill on Broadway.
Now this isn’t the same tex-mex that you get here in Oklahoma, this is a more South American twist on what we know as mexican food. They have the typical enchiladas, tacos and chimichangas but with a different taste than what I’ve had at other restaurants. My personal favorite is the fajita beef chimichanga with sour cream sauce. The beef is spiced differently than what I’ve had before and the sour cream sauce is just wonderful, has more of a sour cream tartness to it than others I’ve tasted. I’ve also tried the enchiladas and quesadillas, the spinach quesadilla is my second favorite item on the menu. Of course it all comes with beans and rice. I will admit, I’ve never had the beans. Because of the food abuse inflicted on me when I was younger by my mother, I can’t stand the smell, sight or taste of beans. So I order double rice instead, it’s also really good- not too sticky with corn and peppers.
My husband has been the more adventurous one, he’s had the Papa Rellenas, ground beef wrapped in mashed potatoes then fried, his personal favorite. He’s also tried the Empanadas and so many of the other offerings that he couldn’t remember them all. This is also where they make the only guacamole in town that he will eat. He loves it and even introduced it to his parents- I hear my father-in-law loved it. Of course you get the normal chips, queso, and salsa with your meal. As good as the entrees are the chips are the best. Wish I could find them this good for at home. I really could eat these chips all day and not feel bad. The salsa was ok and the queso could be improved, needs to have more of the South American spices added. But seriously the chips are killer.
Opened in 2007 by Jorge Zarate, who is a native of Peru, he brings a mix of Brazilian, Jamaican, Peruvian, Cuban, Mexican and Tex-Mex to Edmond in a small but colorful building. You can often see Mr. Zarate himself seating guests, taking orders or serving food. The wait staff has always been friendly and helpful, service has always been good- no complaints. I give it my personal ranking of 5 strips of bacon.
Address: 706 S. Broadway, Edmond, OK (east side of the road)
The Fat Okie 