A World of Experience

After Months of Preparation, Chef David Gilbert Delivers

They haven’t let Chef David Gilbert out of the hotel much. “I’m cooking twenty-five pounds of Spanish octopus a day,” he said through a spotty phone connection. After arriving in Oklahoma City in the first week of January to helm the new Omni Hotel nestled at the foot of Scissortail Park, Chef David got to work. He wasn’t building a menu for just one restaurant. He was crafting distinct culinary experiences for seven food and drink concepts and building a system that could quickly provide unique in-room dining for over 600 rooms.

Canandian by birth but Texas raised, Chef David is familiar with unfamiliar surroundings. After learning the basics of the kitchen in a Tex-Mex restaurant post high-school, he then moved from Texas to Charleston, South Carolina to attend the prestigious Johnson and Wales University where he learned to take food and its study seriously under chefs like Matt Broussard. He then cooked at Amsterdam’s Michelin starred Vermeer as well as Belmond’s Inn at Perry Cabin property in St. Michael’s, Maryland plus multiple high end Ritz Carlton and Hilton locations. Chef David has a history of supporting local food producers through his time at Dallas restaurants Luqa and Lazare in the 2000s. He spent time at the beginning of the last decade travelling throughout China and southeast Asia, cooking along the way. More recently, he explored what he learned in those travels through San Antonio’s Tuk Tuk Tap Room. During these journeys, he garnered multiple awards, including a James Beard Foundation nomination for Best Chef: Southwest. From a review of his resume and travel log, Oklahoma City is benefiting from the culmination of over two decades worth of global cooking experience.

“I’ve got a heavy hand towards Vietnamese and Thai food that I’ve developed over the years. I spent a lot of time living and traveling in Southeast Asia and China, so I picked up quite a bit.” That experience is manifested in dishes like the tamarind ribs. The flavor comes in part from the sweet and sour bean pods found on the tamarind tree native to Africa, popular in Latin America and India, and now found in almost every part of the tropical world. Chef David adds the in-house tamarind barbeque sauce to ribs covered in a spice mix specific to northern Thailand. Those ribs have been marinated overnight and slow cooked the following day. Topped with Thai basil and peanuts, the dish provides not only complex and complimentary flavors but also dynamic textures that evolve throughout the bite. From big dishes like ribs to small touches like perfectly steamed rice under an omelet at Seltzer’s modern diner or Thai tea popsicles, Moroccan grilled chicken, and flatbread by the rooftop pool, Chef David is bringing elements of his travel and time living abroad to plates and palates downtown.

Concepts within the Omni Hotel include a cocktail bar (Basin Bar), a high-end entertainment venue and sports bar (OKC Tap House), a modern bistro/diner (Seltzer’s), a walk-up burger bar (Double Double), a poolside bar with small plates (Catbird Seat), a steakhouse (Bob’s Steak & Chop House), and finally a a third-wave espresso and gelato bar (Park Grounds).

Developing all of these moving pieces during a global pandemic hasn’t been easy. “We’ve had to do a lot of tweaking,” Chef David reflects. “Being able to tweak and pivot with something of this magnitude has been a challenge, but we’ve been really proud of the team working on this. We’ve been working to source as much local stuff as we can get our hands on. When I was a little younger I’d stress out about it a lot more. Living in China for a while, learning logistics and the business and how to take a step back to work through it instead of freaking out. One thing I will say about Oklahoma, and I say it about five times a day, is how nice everybody is and how genuinely they want to help. That’s a really nice and refreshing situation to be in. In other cities the conversation would be shorter and an expletive might be thrown in.”

Producing plates of this complexity also requires some capacity building. “A lot of the products we’re bringing in are not commonplace in the market, so we’re working with the vendors and we’re training and teaching as much as they’re helping. In the bigger picture, Omni can help build that bridge so that smaller food service operations can have a wider range of products available to them, which helps everybody. A big part of the Omni mantra is to help bring up the community. There’s been success stories in helping small businesses grow to where they’re distributing nationally now.” One of the local partnerships that Chef David has developed is with EdibleOKC’s last cover and feature, Benjamin Lee Bison, from Sayre, OK.

After four months of living in the hotel, Chef David has finally found a place of his own near Helm Farm. “I got a Green Egg!” he exclaims. “I found a repurposed fire pit. Got a rick of half pecan and half oak, burned some of the wood, and used the coals to start smoking in the backyard.” He sounds like many of us who have re-emerged after a long winter, with a mix of joy and relief. “The neighbors are great. They love it!”

> Omni Oklahoma City Hotel, 100 Oklahoma City Blvd, Oklahoma City; (405) 438-6500; omnihotels.com/hotels/oklahoma-city/dining