Carletti’s
1226 NE 63rd Street
405-286-1594
carletties.com
The building at 1226 NE 63rd Street has already lived several lives. Carletti’s opens not as a reinvention, but as a revelation. The restored Kentucky Club—once a Prohibition-era speakeasy, later a neighborhood landmark—now holds an Italian restaurant built on memory, migration and meals that have survived more than a century. Where some Italian restaurants manufacture nostalgia, Carletti’s has it in spades, tucked into every well-appointed corner.
The Kentucky Club first opened in 1939, operating as an infamous speakeasy during Prohibition. The project’s ownership team—historic preservationists Gina Foxhoven, Chip Fudge and Larry Davis—approached the building as something to be listened to, not overwritten. Their goal was not to stage a themed experience, but to let multiple histories exist at once: the Kentucky Club’s role as a social refuge, the building’s working-class past and the immigrant story that Carletti’s brings into focus.
That story begins far from Oklahoma City, in two Italian villages. Giovanni Carletti arrived in the United States in the late 1800s, eventually settling in Hartshorne and later Haileyville, Oklahoma, where he worked in coal mines before opening a grocery and boarding house. Around the same time, Roberto Ravaioli left Italy after learning to cook while working at his village church—skills passed down by priests who saw promise in him. He, too, landed in Oklahoma, eventually boarding with the Carlettis.
The families’ histories intertwine not just through marriage—Palma Carletti and Antonio “Tony” Ravaioli wed in 1925—but through shared labor and shared tables. In 1929, Tony joined Palma’s brother to open C&R Grocery & Meat Market, a community anchor where neighbors lingered and food served as both sustenance and social glue. That spirit—practical, generous, deeply relational—runs through Carletti’s today.
For Gina Foxhoven, that lineage is not abstract. She is the great-granddaughter of the restaurant’s namesake. Foxhoven has built a career around restoring forgotten buildings and reintegrating them into contemporary life. But, this project carries a different weight. It is the merging of her professional calling with her family’s story, of making sure treasured recipes aren’t lost with her generation.
While those recipes were a part of day-to-day life for the Carletti and Ravaioli families, extensive research and development turned them into something that could be placed on the menu. Foxhoven and her family spent countless hours working to translate recipes and perfect them into something that could be executed perfectly, time and time again.
The team made a smart choice in bringing on consulting chef Chris Becker, founder of Della Terra Pasta. Becker brings a technical precision and a deep respect for tradition to the kitchen. He applies that attention to detail to a singular task: bringing the sacred recipes of the Carletti family together with the highest-quality ingredients and the best possible execution.
Even in these early days, that execution is on point.
The antipasti set the tone. Arancini arrive crisp and golden, resting on marinara rather than swimming in it. Giovanni’s Meatball—large, tender, and slow-simmered—is unapologetically traditional. Calamari are lightly fried, brightened with banana peppers and capers rather than buried under batter. Nonna’s antipasti board is antithetical to the Instagram charcuterie board—simple, straightforward, and intentionally unshowy.
Salads skew classic Italian-American, a choice that feels purposeful. Iceberg lettuce, black olives and Italian vinaigrette make no attempt to masquerade as something trendier. Caesar Classico is crisp and creamy, while the Italian Chop adds chickpeas, mozzarella, roasted peppers, salami and pepperoncini for heft.
Pasta is where Carletti’s speaks most clearly. Nonna’s Lasagna—layered with fresh pasta, whipped cottage cheese and ricotta, and slow-simmered beef-and-pork bolognese—is presented not as a signature dish but as an heirloom. The recipe dates back to the 1800s, and it tastes like something designed to feed many people well, rather than impress a few.
The Ravaioli Bolognese—handmade ravioli filled with seasoned beef and finished in rich sauce—leans fully into its lineage, offering a dish that feels both specific and deeply familiar. Other pastas fill out the table with balance: fusilli al pesto with toasted almonds, bucatini alla carbonara folded with pancetta and pecorino, and spicy rigatoni with meatballs in tomato cream.
Secondi offerings continue the theme of Italian-American comfort. Chicken Piccata arrives finished in lemon-caper butter. Steak Florentine features a prime ribeye, grilled and sliced, served simply with rosemary frites or vegetables. The Boarding House Burger, topped with provolone, roasted mushrooms and lemon-garlic aioli, offers a quiet nod to the grocery and boarding house that started it all.
Desserts complete the narrative. The Derby Torta, whiskey-soaked and finished with caramel glaze, ties back to the Kentucky Club’s horse-racing history. For the indecisive, a spoon-of-sugar option is available: order one spoonful of anything sweet for $3. Or, spring for the quartet, a tasting flight of the four signature desserts for $10. The footnote reads: “Because choosing just one never ran in our family.” Here, abundance is an expression of care.
As I finished my meal in a comfortable booth with a sweeping view of downtown Oklahoma City, the road from 1860s Italy to to a stunning view of the Devon Tower in a former speakeasy seemed implausibly wild, and, in that boomtown sort of way, exactly what we have come to expect as Oklahomans.
Today’s would-be similar stories of immigration are now being unwritten—erased, deported, disappeared. I could not keep from thinking of families being torn apart rather than brought together. What will these chapters say about us? It is worth spending time thinking about the restaurants that will not be opened, the recipes that will not be shared or passed down. These 50 states will surely be missing a few brilliant great-granddaughters 115 years from now. We don’t have the arithmetic to measure that loss.
On the brighter side, if your time at Carletti’s inspires you to spend more time gathered around your own hearth, you are in luck. A small C&R Grocery is tucked into a corner, honoring the beginning of it all. The experience makes you want to buy some bucatini, host a dinner party and drink too much Chianti with the people who make up your own story.
Finally: for a city that has grown as at such a clip, the bar scene has not scaled as successfully. The reimagined Kentucky Club, the on-premise bar and lounge, aims to help correct that deficit. During Carletti’s operating hours, access to the Kentucky Club is available via the restaurant, but after 10:00 p.m. you’ll have to go speakeasy on that deal, entering through a separate door. To be sure, this is no longer a clandestine situation. But if you suspend your disbelief, ever so slightly, you might just catch a glimpse of what it might have been like to go here during Prohibition. By all indications, it will become one of the places to see and be seen.
Carletti’s does not ask diners to understand every reference or trace every lineage. It simply invites them to sit at the table. In doing so, it proves that preservation is not only about saving buildings or recipes, but about continuing to use them, to gather around them and to let them keep doing their work of bringing us together.