Lucky Peach came to Oklahoma Joe’s to debate American cuisine

• Lucky Peach
• Robert Sietsma and Jonathan Gold attempt to remain anonymous at Oklahoma Joe’s.

If you want a slice of Americana, you might as well get it with a fifty-fifty on the side. In Lucky Peach’s fourth issue (which publisher McSweeney’s says will be on stands next Tuesday), food writers Robert Sietsma and Jonathan Gold discuss the genesis of American cuisine over plates of food at Oklahoma Joe’s, Stroud’s and Winstead’s.

Kansas City was apparently selected because of Calvin Trillin’s repeated assertions that the institutions of his city were the apex of eating. And while Gold, Sietsma and the article’s author Peter Meehan (who co-founded Lucky Peach with Momofuku chef David Chang), are aware that Trillin was often singing the praises of Arthur Bryant’s, it is the ribs at Oklahoma Joe’s that are tucking into as the tape recorder rolls.