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Posts tagged ‘Norman’

Food Friday: The Mont

As a little girl growing up in Norman, we would pass the newly opened restaurant called The Mont all the time.  I could see the glow of lights coming through the stained glass windows and wanted to go inside.  My mother would tell me, decent people don’t go there, so my hopes of visiting were dashed.  Later as a student at OU in the early 1990’s, I still wanted to go but it seemed like a party place.  Even though it had that reputation, I also knew members of the Norman police department gathered there every Saturday to drink.  I really then just forgot about it until recently with my own daughter a student at OU.  Finally, back in December we stopped, it was so good I wish I had gone earlier.

The architecture of the building is what gets your attention first, a low Spanish style building with lots of stained-glass windows.  A patio out front gives diners a chance to enjoy the nice weather, or you can enter through a medieval looking wooden door to the main dining room.  Their menu ranges from burgers and sandwiches to Tex-Mex.  We ordered a couple of things to start with, the fried cheese and fried mushrooms. They were both good. I got the Mont burger with bacon and cheese. Not a bad burger, had a great taste with lots of fresh veggies. Mae got a French dip with a side of mac and cheese (of course). She loved the sandwich but the baked mac and cheese really won her over. A melty cheese top with creamy cheese inside, I had a bite and it was really good. Big K had the green Chile burrito that comes with beans, rice and chips. He really loved the burrito, lots of queso over it. He said the beans and rice were good. I had a couple of the chips, they were light and crispy. Now it was the afternoon, so I didn’t try the famous Sooner Swirl but I will.

The Mont has been a staple in Norman since it opened on Halloween of 1976. The building is much older, of course. The first business I found mentioned is the Monterrey Restaurant. This operated from 1943- 1969. A German restaurant called Volkstube occupied the building for a short time then Hacienda Hernandez took over in 1972. This restaurant survived for a couple of years before turning into Joe’s Bar & Grill which only lasted a year. After all these years the Mont is the place to see and be seen. I’ve heard all the drunk stories from friends who had a few too many while enjoying the atmosphere. I’m sure it does still get crazy on game days but it was quiet while we were there. I would like to go again now that the weather is nice, just to enjoy the good food outdoors. So if you are in Norman, give this legendary restaurant a try. I give them 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 1300 Classen Blvd., Norman.

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Food, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

If you want to learn about Oklahoma’s history way before it became a state, take a trip to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Here you can see dinosaurs, get an idea of current animals native to the state, and learn about the history of the natives who lived here before us.

Opened on May 1, 2000, this museum is popular with schools and any parents who have dinosaur loving children. There is so much to learn here as well. Upstairs is the Hall of the People of Oklahoma exhibit, here you can learn about the residents in Oklahoma over the past 36,000 years. There are clovis tools on display along with a map showing where these items were found. Spiro Mounds is also featured prominently in this exhibit, with several items that were unearthed from the mounds in the late 1930’s. There are reproductions of Native homes and transportation as well as artifacts from those who lived here many thousands of years ago.

Another part of the museum is the Hall of Natural Wonders which has taxidermy of animals that are native to Oklahoma. It’s a nice way for kids to get up close to an animal. They have been placed in settings that are natural to their habitat.

Of course, the big draw to the museum are the dinosaurs. The Hall of Ancient Life where you can trace the history of the Earth from formation. You can see the different time periods that dinosaurs roamed the lands. They do have the largest skull on record for the Pentaceratops. You can also get in the elevator and see the Apatosaurus looking at you. Several of the smaller dinosaurs were unearthed in the Tillman County area of southwest Oklahoma. I like to make the joke that some of them were pets that my dad had.

The long history of the museum goes back to 1899 when the territorial legislature created the Department of Geology and Natural History. The first curator of the museum was Dr. Albert Heald Van Fleet, who spent much of his time collecting artifacts. There were 2 fires, the first in 1903, the second in 1918, that damaged much of the collection. But professors at the University of Oklahoma kept collecting and displaying artifacts in buildings around campus. After many attempts to fund a proper museum, this museum found a home in 1947. Housed in former military buildings on Asp Avenue, south of the main campus, it became the Stovall Museum of Science and History. Named after Dr. J Willis Stovall who came to the university in 1930 and helped fight for funding to house the collection. While the collection grew, there was a danger of the artifacts being destroyed by fire or water, so in 1991 the city of Norman passed a bond that helped the state fund the new building. The new building is named after Samuel Noble, an oilman from Ardmore.

I always enjoyed the Stovall Museum and now enjoy this new museum as well. I encourage all to visit if they are in Norman. It is a fun way to learn about the early history of Oklahoma.

Address: 2401 Chautauqua Ave., Norman.

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Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma

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Food Friday: The Hive

So I mentioned in my review of The Bookmark Cafe that my daughter, Mae, worked here on her first semester at OU. The Hive is a small cafe in a larger complex called Cross Village. In this same building is Acre Provisions, a grocery store just for college kids, and Basic Knead, a walk-up restaurant that serves pizza and pasta. All 3 spaces run together on the ground floor with apartment-like dorm rooms above.

The Hive is set up the same way The Bookmark Cafe is- they serve different coffee drinks along with light snacks. There is plenty of space to sit, not only indoors but in the outdoors area as well. They are also in Starbucks “We Proudly Serve” program, so you will get drinks like you find at Starbucks. You will also find students working here as well. All of the times we stopped by in the fall of 2021, we had great service and the drinks were always good. I will also give them 5 strips of bacon. They are located south of Lindsay Street on Asp in the Cross Village complex (southeast of the towers). Can’t really see it from the road, if you find Acre Provisions, it’s around the corner.

Now a bit of the history behind The Hive- Cross Village was opened in the fall of 2018. It was a new concept at OU, the dorm apartments were on the top floors while the ground level was just for restaurants, shops, and other businesses. This was originally to cater to upper-class students at OU. Cross Village is further south of the well-known dorm buildings Walker, Adams, and Couch, so the older students weren’t as close to the younger freshmen. Cross Village took the place of the original Cross Center, “The Men’s Quadrangle” dormitory built in 1952. Cross Center had fallen into disrepair and was mostly used as storage, so then a plan was developed in 2016 to replace the older buildings. Cross Village was supposed to be a public-private collaboration but by the end of the first full school year there were clear problems. Cross Village never filled to full occupancy with only 30 percent of the units rented out to students. With a legal dispute now on the horizon, all restaurants and shops were closed on July 30, 2019. Over the next two school years, there was plenty of legal wrangling and by May 2021 a new entity stepped up to help the university run Cross Village. To get the occupancy up, freshmen were now allowed to move into the new complex. After a two-year absence, all restaurants and shops were able to reopen. The Hive has stayed busy throughout this time, catering to students who live on campus. (If you want a full run down on all the legal and financial information, just Google it. I could write a book with all that went down in the building of Cross Village.)

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Food, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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Food Friday: The Bookmark Cafe

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you would know that my contributing writer Mae has been absent. Well, she had to get through a rigorous high school schedule and now that she has graduated (PC Pirate class of ’21) she is studying at the great University of Oklahoma (proud 3rd generation Sooner). To help pay for this new adventure in education, she is working for food services as a barista. Her first semester she spent at The Hive, a coffee shop on south campus (more on it in another post) but now she is at The Bookmark Cafe in the first lower level of Bizzell Memorial Library.

This is just a small coffee shop, very similar to the ones you see in bookstores, where they have coffee, lattes, frappuccinos, along with light sandwiches and pastries. Last Sunday was my first visit and I was impressed, the space that had once been where the newspapers and magazines were kept was transformed into a study lounge with separate rooms for groups. Bookmark Cafe has a large area with tables and booths for group or individual study. They are part of Starbucks “We Proudly Serve” program, where they do serve up the same drinks that you can find at a Starbucks. Many of the pastries are cooked on site with the salads and sandwiches coming from Cow On the Fly. I didn’t get a chance to try any of the food yet, because of the snowstorm the previous week, the food delivery hadn’t come in yet. The double chocolate chip frappuccino that I had was awesome though. The staff is all students, they were all friendly and happy to be at Bookmark.

Now for some history- there was nothing like this when I was a student at OU in the early 1990’s (BA in Journalism, ’94). The coffee shop craze hadn’t hit Oklahoma yet. I guess there were some around but to me, coffee was just something that my grandparents drank. I had never heard of a frappuchino, latte, or macchiato. Bizzell Memorial Library was built in 1928 for the growing university and expanded, first in 1958, then again in 1982. Lower level 1 is part of the 1982 addition. Like I mentioned earlier, it held the periodicals. I used to sit at the microfilm readers and journey through the past with their newspaper collection. The Bookmark Cafe officially opened for the spring semester 1998 to give students a quiet place to study. The official grand opening was held on February 11, 1998 (I didn’t know this information until Wednesday of this week as I was researching, so the fact I’m publishing this on the same date 24 years later is just a coincidence). In August of 2013 construction began to transform the space into the study area it is now, Bookmark Cafe was temporarily moved but returned to its now larger location in September 2014 with a ceremony held on November 7, 2014, to mark the reopening of the lower level. In March 2020, it closed, not to reopen until January 2022.

Overall I will give them 5 strips of bacon, just for the fact that my child works there, but I would like to try more of their menu items. Project for the rest of the semester. So if you find yourself in Norman and near campus, stop into the historic library and grab a treat.

Advertisement in the OU Daily February 11, 1998.

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Food, National Register of Historic Places, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, Oklahoma history, University of Oklahoma

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Taking 2 Pre-Teens to the Fred Jones Jr. Art Museum

A few weeks ago I decided to do something crazy, I took my daughter, Mae, and her best friend, Bubbles, to the Fred Jones Jr. Art Museum in Norman.  If you don’t know Norman, the museum is located on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, it sits on the southeast corner of Boyd Street and Elm Avenue.  Now my daughter had been there before, a few years ago they had a temporary exhibit of Disney animation but this was Bubbles first visit.

The museum has an interesting mix of art work, from African statues, to Japanese woodblock prints, to American Indian pottery, to the masters like Van Gogh, Renoir and Monet.  On this trip they were also having a limited time showing of the works of Oscar B. Jacobson (more on him later).  The girls at least stopped and looked at most of the exhibits, there were some they liked more than others.  The contemporary art on the lower floor was really what they liked the most, especially the interactive exhibits like the one that you blow into and the art changes.  I was able to have some fun at their expense when I went into the gallery that apparently had a sign saying that the material might not be suitable for younger people.  I didn’t see the sign and was halfway down the gallery when a painting with male parts was right in front of me.  Now the girls had been behind me and one of them let out a gasp, before I knew it they were both running out of the gallery.  I tried and tried to get them to come back (all while laughing at them) but they both had red cheeks from embarrassment.

The best part to me was the glass displays on the main floor as well as the exhibit of Oscar B. Jacobson.  I had heard about him but never had the chance to see his work until this visit.  Why would I have heard of him, I’m no art expert but I am a history lover and I knew he was the first director of the School of Art at the University of Oklahoma.  He took over that position in 1916 and held it until 1954.   He also founded the University of Oklahoma Museum of Art in 1936 in what is now called Jacobson Hall on the North Oval of the campus.  He was a painter who specialized in southwestern landscapes.  I’m no art critic and can only draw stick people on a good day, but his work really stood out to me for his use of brighter colors to showcase the scenery of Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico.  I’m not big on landscapes but these were really nice.

Fred Jones art museum at OU 2

I know that some of you might want to know, why the name changed?  It became the Fred Jones Jr. Memorial Art center in 1971 after Mr. and Mrs. Fred Jones (yeah, the Ford people here in OKC) donated the money for the museum.  It officially became the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in 1992.  In 2005 a new addition, the Lester Wing, named for Howard and Mary Lester, was added and in 2011, the Stuart Wing was opened as well.  So who was Fred Jones Jr.?  He was the son of the aforementioned Jones’s.  He had been killed in a plane crash in Arkansas around Christmas 1950.  He was a senior at OU after serving in World War II.

So what is my recommendation any kid who is interested in art will like this museum, no matter the age.  But I think even then waiting until they are maybe around 8 would be good.  Anything younger than that and they might get bored real quick.  It was a nice, quiet visit.  The staff was very friendly and more than happy to talk about the artwork on display.  Best part of the whole trip was- it’s Free.  That’s right, free.  Thanks to a gift from the OU Athletics Department, it is free for everyone.

 

Address: 555 Elm Avenue, Norman, OK

 

Category:

Art museum, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma

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