The Palace Cafe, 1301 E. 15th St., and its sister restaurant, Prairie Fire Pie, 1303 E. 15th St., will close following service on Saturday, Dec. 23.
Brooke Shrader, co-owner of the two restaurants with her husband, chef James Shrader, said the decision to close the restaurants was one toward which they had been working for some time.
In 2024, there will be another venue for concerts and events in downtown Tulsa, and it it's in a former church building.
"We've been at this location for 23 years," she said. "And James is at a point where he's been feeling...'burn out' is a little too strong a term, but he certainly hasn't been feeling the same passion for the restaurant business as he's had in the past.
"It was time to step back from the day-to-day grind of running a couple of restaurants and explore some new things," Shrader said.
James Shrader came to Tulsa in the 1990s from Seattle, working first at Back Street Bistro in Jenks and the cabaret-restaurant Finales in downtown Tulsa. He also spent time studying with chef Tim Inman at Stonehorse Cafe before deciding to open his own restaurant.
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In the summer of 2002, the Shraders noticed the business at the northeast corner of 15th Street and Peoria Avenue had closed.
"When I saw that this place came available," Shrader said in a 2008 Tulsa World interview, "I just stopped the car — I went for it. I had been looking at properties, but I could envision the final product when I saw this restaurant. I could see it working in this location."
In a November 2002 review, the Tulsa World wrote that "The food shows creative flair with traditional French accents, and the atmosphere has a quirky trendiness that blends perfectly with the restaurant's Cherry Street neighbors," and awarded the restaurant four stars (at that time, the paper's highest rating for restaurants). A subsequent review in 2016, after the restaurant underwent a major renovation, raised the rating to four and a half stars.
Prairie Fire Pie opened in 2017, offering West Coast-style pizzas with innovative toppings. It earned a spot on the World's Best New Restaurant List for that year.
Brooke Shrader said her husband plans to continue doing private catering and that chef Tyler Whitson, who has worked at Palace Cafe for several years, "will become the public face of our catering operation, with our support."
She added that both the Palace Cafe and Prairie Fire properties have been sold, but was not in a position to say who had bought them, or to what use the spaces will be put.
"I can say that it was a win-win situation, and we all are happy about it," she said.
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December 21, 2023 at 06:15AM
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Palace Cafe, Prairie Fire Pie to close Saturday - Tulsa World
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