Italian cuisine with Oklahoma ingredients makes a Tulsa destination

Photography by Valerie Wei-Haas

After the fire last year at Farm Bar in Tulsa, owners Linda Ford and Chef Lisa Becklund watched anxiously as the target date to reopen kept receding into the distance. The damage was too great to do a quick turnaround, and so the couple — they are married — opted to pivot for three important reasons.

“We wanted to retain our staff and ensure they were compensated, keep a little revenue coming in for ourselves, and we eventually grew enamored of the space,” Ford says.

The space she is referencing is now Il Seme (pronounced eel saymay), but at the time it was a de-funct restaurant that had been left with all equipment and fixtures intact by a previous owner who couldn’t make it work.

“We were looking at what was essentially a turnkey situation,” Ford says. “Lisa and I realized we’d never be able to get a new restaurant at the same price, so we said yes.”

Becklund and Ford also own Living Kitchen Farm & Dairy in Depew, Oklahoma, which received a James Beard nomination for Outstanding Restaurant in 2022. Becklund was nominated for Best Chef — Southwest in 2023 by the same organization, but her career until Living Kitchen was largely centered in Italian restaurants. With Il Seme, the couple had a chance to do something unique in Oklahoma: regional Italian food.

“Most of what you see in Oklahoma is the New York City-Americanized style where the focus is on the sauces, not the taste and texture of the pasta,” Ford said. “By regional, though, we don’t mean Italian regions; we mean our region.”

Il Seme imports pasta flour and tomato sauces from Italy, but roughly 70% of its ingredients are sourced in Oklahoma. Proteins, for example, come from BF Farms (Enid), Grassroots Ranch (Por-ter) and Prairie Creek Farm (Kellyville). Produce comes from its own farm, as well as producers like Resilient Growers in Skiatook.

The pastas, with rare exceptions (gluten-free, for example) are made in house, and the menu is overseen by Chef Jordan Hawley. Becklund sets the tone and style, as well as some of the recipes like marinara and bolognese, but Hawley is free to tweak as necessary. The menu is heavy on pas-ta, but these are not necessarily heavy dishes. In fact, it has a wide selection of antipasti and salads, as well as 10-inch pizzas, and daily specials featuring beef, pork and fish. It’s a compact menu that changes hyper-seasonally.

“We have a base menu, but the ingredients in it change based on seasonal availability,” Ford says. “Not just the four big seasonal changes, but the month or few-week period when something is ready for harvest. So the gnocchi will be on the menu regularly, but the mushrooms in the dish will change.”

The approach, along with an excellent selection of Italian wines from small producers, makes each trip to Il Seme a new adventure. The dishes are comfortable and familiar, but their compositions vary slightly, so pairings change, and the flavor profile shifts a bit. Farmers like Becklund and Ford wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We’re looking to expand into the space next door,” Ford says. “It will allow us to expand our bar program, and give us space to buy new equipment to make some of the more complex pastas in-house.”

For diners, the expansion means more delicious choices, and even more adventures in learning how farming and food pair beautifully irrespective of the cuisine.