Elliot Nelson has to pause for a moment to figure out just how many restaurants he has opened in the past 19 years.
“I think it’s around 15 or 16,” Nelson said, during a conversation in the dining area of Jimmy’s Chophouse, the newest addition to the McNellie’s Group of which Nelson is the founder and CEO.
Named in honor of his father, Jimmy’s Chophouse is something of an homage to flavors and experiences from Tulsa’s culinary past, drawn from Nelson’s memories of visiting steakhouses such as Eddy’s and Jamil’s, the Italian Inn and the Celebrity Club.
The new restaurant is already earning high praise from diners, as well as getting one of the highest ratings of any new restaurant this year from the Tulsa World. But Nelson and the McNellie’s Group are not resting on laurels.
Three new restaurants are in the works and are projected to be open by the summer of 2024.
First up will be City Hall Steak & Cocktail, which is planned for a spring 2024 opening. The restaurant will be at 123 E. Main St. in downtown Jenks, taking over a building that had once served as the town’s city hall.
When the project was announced, the new restaurant was described as having “a blend of modern design and vintage accents that celebrate the building’s unique history. The atmosphere will be ideal for intimate dinners, special occasions, business meetings, gatherings with friends or just a glass of wine at the bar.”
“That one is going to be closer to the traditional steakhouse than Jimmy’s,” Nelson said. “Steaks are certainly a main thing at Jimmy’s, but the menu here has a fairly broad variety of dishes,” Nelson said. “The focus at City Hall will be more on steak.”
City Hall Steak & Cocktail is part of a citizen-led effort to rebrand the city’s historic Main Street as The Ten District, a reference to that particular corner of Main Street being 10 miles from downtown Tulsa, Bixby, Sapulpa and Broken Arrow, and also 10 blocks west of the Arkansas River.
Another project in the works is Maple Ridge Grocery, which will offer breakfast, lunch and dinner in a space near the intersection of 18th Street and Cincinnati Avenue. Nelson said he hopes this restaurant will be open by March of 2024.
“The building used to be a print shop,” Nelson said. “It’s just a block or so away from (Council Oak Elementary) school, and I envision parents dropping off their kids, and then swinging by for a coffee or breakfast. It’s also going to be on my way home from the office, so I can imagine people leaving work and stopping by there.”
The third project is a proposed Italian restaurant that will be part of the Santa Fe Square development at the corner of Second Street and Elgin Avenue downtown, which will likely open in the summer of 2024. Nelson is one of the developers of this multi-use location.
Although a few of the concepts the McNellie’s Group has opened over the years have closed (the Mexican restaurant El Guapo, which had locations downtown and in south Tulsa, for example), the majority of the company’s restaurants are still open.
That includes Nelson’s first endeavor, McNellie’s Pub, which opened in 2004 and has since expanded to three locations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
The original location, at 409 E. First St., is now part of a bustling landscape of restaurants, clubs and other businesses. But that was not the case when Nelson first opened his version of an Irish pub.
“I remember there was a welding shop on one side and a machine shop on the other,” he said, laughing. “It was pretty rough going the first couple of years. I think the thing that really saved us was that we were one of the first places to capitalize on the craft beer trend. It was something that got people to come downtown to an area that, at that time, wasn’t all that inviting.”
One of the McNellie’s Group restaurants plays off the less-than-savory reputation of that neighborhood: Red Light Chicken, which opened last year in the spot that formerly held El Guapo, is named for the fact that one of the city’s most notorious brothels once occupied the building next door (a painting of Pauline Lambert, owner of the May Rooms, adorns one of the walls in the restaurant).
It has been a busy couple of years for the McNellie’s Group. Besides Jimmy’s Chophouse and Red Light Chicken, the company has opened a stand-alone location of its popular Mother Road Market restaurant, Howdy Burger, on 11th Street; Mr. Kim’s, a uniquely personal reinterpretation of the traditional Korean steakhouse; and Bar Serra, an upscale bar and cafe that is the first new restaurant concept to open in Utica Square in nearly a decade.
When asked if opening some 20 restaurants in 20 years, among other projects, is enough, Nelson gave a quiet laugh.
“Well, there are still voids in the Tulsa dining landscape that we can fill,” he said. “But at this, we have so many employees who have been with us for a long time, and who have real ownership in the company. All our restaurants are wholly owned subsidiaries, and this allows us to offer more chances for ownership for them.
“Our employees work so hard, and put so much into the successes we’ve had, and we want to provide as best we can the opportunity for them to retire comfortably,” Nelson said. “We’re just trying to be the best employer we can.”