Palo Santo

Palo Santo, a craft cocktail bar in the OKC Farmers Market District, will share its second birthday this March with a far less popular anniversary.

“We were silly enough to open on Friday the 13th,” recalls Brian Butler, who owns and operates the now-beloved bar with his wife, Bailey. “We thought, ‘nothing could go wrong.’”

Four days later, the whole city shut down in response to the newly declared pandemic. When they were allowed to open again five weeks later, they were a crew of two: Brian ran the kitchen and Bailey ran the front-of-house, teaching herself new and unglamorous skills, like programming the point of sale.

This wasn’t what the couple had in mind when they relocated from LA to finally own their own space, but their new roles became them. Brian, formerly a front-of-house guy, focused simply on making food he would want to eat: a Ceasar salad with chicken chicharrones in place of croutons; wings that are confited for six hours, then flash-fried.

Bailey now holds court over a staff of fourteen, a backbar that includes twenty house-made syrups, and a diverse crowd of customers that range, in Brian’s words, “from age twenty-one to eighty.”

“In LA, I introduced Bailey to people, and everyone knew her as ‘Brian’s wife,’” he says. “Now I’m definitely ‘Bailey’s husband.’ She’s the boss around here.”

One of her boss moves is to keep a notebook, now seventy pages deep, with customers’ names and drink orders so that she and other staff can greet them like old friends on their second visit. Add some complimentary popcorn seasoned with coconut oil and street corn spices, and you might as well be in a friend’s living room, but with much better booze.

For Bailey and Brian, the sense of home is compounded by the deeply personal space. Bailey’s mom tends to the prolific plants, which cascade down the length of the bar’s huge southern window, and her father is responsible for the rest.

“My dad built almost everything in here … the benches, the bar, the booths, all of this ironwork,” Bailey says. “Sometimes I stop and think, ‘it’s a really, really pretty bar.’”

> Palo Santo, 1203 SW 2nd Street, Oklahoma City; (405) 594-3676; palosantobar.com