Some restaurant owners persevere — even expand — during tough times

And then, there’s the reality of a roomful of dirty dishes.

“A couple of Saturdays ago, I had a dishwasher not show up,” Elwell said. “So I spent that night working the wash pit, doing the dishes.

“That’s something I had to learn very quickly,” she said, laughing. “A big part of this job is making sure the work that needs to be done gets done. Even if it means spending several hours washing dishes.”

Elwell recounts this moment as she sits beneath a wall-filling mural of an Alpine scene, with the words “Herzlich Willkommen” (A Sincere Welcome) emblazoned on a banner at its base.

It is a sight that for years has greeted visitors to Margaret’s German Restaurant, which has been serving Tulsans authentic German cuisine for more than 30 years.

The restaurant’s namesake, Margaret Rzepczynski, announced in September that she was planning to retire and was looking for a new owner who would be willing to maintain the menu and traditions she had established.

The restaurant business has always been something of a gamble, subject to the whims of popular tastes, the vagaries of the job market, the fluctuations in the price and availability of essential products.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its shutdowns, social distancing, supply chain crises and similar woes, has only exacerbated the risks of running any sort of restaurant, be it a five-star fine dining establishment or a food truck serving burgers and fries.

In the last two years, a number of Tulsa restaurants have been forced to shut their doors for good. However, many local restaurants have been able not simply to survive the pandemic but to expand their audience and their presence in the Tulsa food scene.

One reason for that success is that these restaurants have been able to adapt to the rapidly changing times brought on by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But another, and perhaps more important reason, is that a lot of Tulsans want to enjoy what these restaurants are cooking up.

All in the pivot

Elwell had absolutely no experience in the restaurant world when she learned that Margaret’s German Restaurant was in search of an owner. She was living and working in Oklahoma City, overseeing properties in the city’s Paseo District, an area known for its art galleries and acclaimed restaurants.

“I’m dating a man who lives in Tulsa, and he sent me the Tulsa World article about Margaret looking for someone to take over this place,” Elwell said. “Her story reminded me a lot of my grandmother, who was also from Poland.

“She was a great cook and instilled in us grandchildren an appreciation of strong flavors,” Elwell said. “She’d pack our lunches for school, and while my fellow students were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I was having liverwurst and spicy mustard on rye. I loved that — and still do.”

Rzepczynski put Elwell through several weeks of training to make certain she would duplicate the recipes that her clientele had grown to love, from the sausages and sauerkraut to the various schnitzel preparations and dishes such as kassler rippchen (smoked pork loin) and leberkaese (baked German bologna).

“Margaret would rap my knuckles — figuratively speaking — if I added too much sage or not enough dill to a dish,” Elwell said. “But I came into this knowing that it was Margaret’s way or the highway.

“And I had absolutely no problem with that,” she said. “One thing that appealed to me about taking this on was that I could tell the restaurant was on a solid foundation. That’s because Margaret understood at the start of the pandemic that she had to pivot from business as usual to doing what was necessary to keep the doors open, her staff employed and her customers happy.

“The risk of taking over the restaurant was, in my mind, not as great as some people might think.”

Frank Willis first took a risk when he set up his Alpha Grill food truck near the intersection of 31st Street and Sheridan Road in 2016 to serve what he terms “Barbecue with a Twist,” mixing Mexican, Cajun and Caribbean foods and flavors with traditional Oklahoma barbecue.

His food made such an impression that he opened a sit-down restaurant in Mall 31, at 5970 E. 31st St., in March 2020, just weeks after the city announced the first COVID-related shutdown.

“Something like that happens, you just have to adapt,” Willis said. “We started doing a lot of online ordering, a lot of carryout, a lot of curbside delivery. We made use of two delivery companies, as well.

“We were able to do pretty well during that time,” he said. “And that’s what makes all this a little bittersweet, because a lot of people we know in the business weren’t able to adapt, and they’re not around anymore. I like to see everybody do well, you know?”

The “all this” to which Willis refers is Alpha Grill’s newest location, at 6670 S. Lewis Ave. It occupies the space that in the past was Helen of Troy and then, briefly, Tandoori Guys Express.

“I really wanted to have a standalone place,” Willis said. “We have our food truck out in front of Mall 31, to let people know where we are. And we’re always having people complain that they went to the food truck and it wasn’t open. We tell them, ‘Just turn around and come inside the mall; we’re inside.’

“But here, we have a sign outside, so anyone coming down Lewis is going to see us,” he said.

Customer loyalty

Another long-lived Tulsa restaurant, Mondo’s Ristorante Italiano, recently reopened in new digs at 3534 S. Peoria Ave., about a block or so from its previous location.

Building a new restaurant in the midst of the pandemic shutdown might seem like a foolhardy venture, but Rob Aloisio said he had no doubts about success.

“Strictly from a real estate perspective, it was the right thing to do,” he said. “The property values in the Brookside area are always going to be high. And as for the restaurant side of things, I was just as confident things would work.”

A large part of that confidence was due to the customer loyalty that Mondo’s has built up over the years. The Aloisio family owned and operated Mondo’s from 1969 to 1997, when the family sold the restaurant. It didn’t last long under those new owners, and in 2012, Rob Aloisio decided to reopen the family restaurant in Brookside’s Center 1.

Not even a global pandemic could keep Mondo’s fans away from the restaurant’s signature clams with linguine, colossal ravioli, homemade sausage and meatballs, wood-fire pizzas, and other classic Italian-American dishes.

“The pandemic really created a new business model,” Aloisio said. “One of the first things I did was order all the takeout containers and pizza boxes we could. We had the restaurant practically filled with those things. Our take-out business tripled during the shutdown, and it has remained strong even after we reopened.”

Aloisio said the federal Paycheck Protection Program also helped the restaurant maintain its staff during the pandemic. “We would divide that equally among our employees, because they’ve been loyal to us and we want to take care of them. I’m proud to say we’ve managed to keep 100% of our staff through all of this.”

Just as important to Aloisio was the generosity of the restaurant’s regular customers.

“We would see people tipping 50, 100% of their checks,” he said. “They knew these were rough times, and they wanted to help us take care of our staff. When everyone was talking about toilet paper shortages, we had one customer hand us a four-pack of toilet paper and a $100 bill. That kind of generosity, it just overwhelms you.”

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