Victoria Kemp

In 2008, at age 48, Victoria Kemp found herself waiting tables, certain she was going to die after months working on her feet for 10 hours a day.

Relentless, she plowed through, helping out where she could. Through a light film of sweat, she gave every customer the smile she had turned into a modeling career years ago. Her new boss, the restaurant’s first and only owner, fired her twice — only to rehire her hours or days later. If it happened a third time, she swore, she'd leave for good. Lured back to her hometown to help with family, Victoria was exhausted. If she had expected anything, this wasn't it.

Eventually, Victoria was promoted. Not to a specific role with greater pay but to greater, broader responsibilities: modernize the business. The restaurant only accepted cash. It was run on one woman's sheer will. It had survived on its superb food and the five and a half decades of momentum built by its owner. When Victoria arrived, the business operated as it had when her mother first opened Oklahoma City’s iconic Florence’s Restaurant in 1952.

Victoria installed the café’s first modern Point of Sale system that accepted cards and digital payment. She expanded seating into an adjoining space previously home to a barber shop, and instituted an accounting structure allowing her to track costs and find efficiencies. The food kept its soul. Business boomed.

“My mother didn’t dream big, but she worked hard to make her little dream come to life. She worked even harder to keep it alive.”

For many reasons, Victoria's story has taken a backseat. All of the press surrounding Florence’s focuses on its history or the food — always on its namesake.

Willed into existence by the super-heroic Florence Kemp and powered by a deep-frying Dutch oven, the restaurant bounced around Deep Deuce before finding a permanent home at 1437 NE 23rd Street in 1969. The tiny café has never grown much, but Florence’s resolve and refusal to suffer fools earned the community’s respect. What the restaurant lacked in square footage, it made up for in gravity, driven in part by her perennial soft spots for local clergy and honest folks down on their luck.

“I always knew she didn’t operate her restaurant in a way others ran theirs. She did things like let people keep a tab and pay when they got their paychecks. But maybe that’s why she’s touched so many people,” Victoria says. “Just the other day, there was a man in here who came up to my mother and told her, ‘Ma’am, I came in here hungry without any money and you fed me, and I just wanted to tell you thank you for that.’ A lot of people come in and start telling their story. They’ve all got stories.”

Growing up in Florence’s shadow, Victoria was oblivious to living at the intersection of so many narratives. Born in Oklahoma City in 1960, Victoria was raised in Florence’s Restaurant. It was eight when Victoria was born, and her mother still sought a permanent home around Deep Deuce for it.

“I have a few memories of the restaurant down on 4th Street. I just remember it had one of those swamp coolers,” Victoria recalls. “When she moved here, it was a big deal. My mother had a following. I was too young to understand why — whether it was the way she conducted her business or the flavors of her food — I just remember people were really excited about it. Even though all that was out here was an old lumber yard across the street, the people came.”

Most of Victoria’s recollections of the restaurant involve dishwashing. It became second nature, and Victoria’s salary was the room, board, and three square meals her mother provided. Despite the low wages, demands were constant on Victoria and the brother and sister her mother adopted. Victoria and her siblings recognized the demands the restaurant put on its namesake, who raised Florence’s Restaurant like a fourth child in need of constant attention.

“My mother didn’t dream big, but she worked hard to make her little dream come to life,” Victoria says. “She worked even harder to keep it alive.”

Florence never dreamed her restaurant would endure more than seven decades, but Florence’s Restaurant was nowhere in Victoria’s dreams. Hers were reserved for fashion.

Victoria graduated a year early from Northwest Classen High School in 1977. It took her another seven years to escape the gravitational pull of Florence’s Restaurant to chase that dream in Dallas. She spent 15 years modeling there before opening an event-planning business she found rewarding. Victoria never started a family of her own, but helped raise a niece and a nephew in Texas. Between raising kids and operating a business, Victoria developed the acumen necessary to fortify her mother’s legacy and her future. A future that began to clarify in late 2008.

Florence, a spry 78 at the time, was operating the restaurant alone, cooking every day, and taking care of her 100-year-old father. She needed help. But that was nothing new.

Victoria had spent time in Oklahoma City that year to help her centenarian grandfather vote. Casting it for Barack Obama fulfilled a lifelong dream of voting for an African American for president, which drew press attention that Victoria managed. During that time, she could see Florence needed assistance with the restaurant. The request finally arrived.

“She called me on the phone, and she said she needed my help,” Victoria says. “I knew it was serious if my mother was asking for help.”

After the call, Victoria began a weekly commute between her new hometown and the old one, which continued through the spring of 2011. She didn’t endure the drive harboring a long-hidden attraction to the food-service industry. She did it out of love for her mother and grandfather. She’s stayed because her mother built a legacy that takes the strength of two super-heroic women to manage it.

Fifty-three years after Florence’s Restaurant set roots at NE 23rd and Fonshill, the corner played host to history. In May of 2022, The James Beard Foundation named Florence’s Restaurant to its list of American Classics, making it the first-ever Oklahoma restaurant to win a JBF Award of any kind. Weeks later, a ceremony was held at Florence’s on a breezy afternoon. The patio Victoria installed in front of the restaurant during the pandemic was crowded with people. Victoria helped her mom, dressed in emerald, onto the patio for the presentation. The three-piece band paused its rendition of Stevie Wonder's “As,” while a Foundation representative spoke of Florence and her work. As the award was draped around her mother's neck, Victoria beamed. Basking in goodwill and reflection, the smile that made her a model for 15 years couldn’t be contained.

Even though her mother still gets so mad she tries walking her 92-year-old self home in the dead of summer, Victoria’s smile endures. It was built by the Queen of Oklahoma Restaurants.

“My mother finally admitted she couldn’t have done it without me,” Victoria laughed. “It was for a radio interview — I wish I had it on tape!”