Outside of county music, Reba McEntire has found success on stage and screen in starring roles in "Annie Get Your Gun" and the sitcom that bears her name. Now, the singer and actor is adding a new title to her resume: restaurateur.
The Grammy Award winner recently opened Reba's Place in the city of Atoka in her home state of Oklahoma. While not her first foray into the food world (remember those Colonel Sanders ads?), this is McEntire's first restaurant. Housed in a former Masonic Temple, Reba's Place "showcases a restored antique bar that is more than 100 years old," according to the venue's official website. It goes without saying that the three-story establishment would have felt incomplete without its own live music venue.
Anna Lazarus Caplan and Alex Apatoff reported for People that Reba's Place features a special family heirloom in the third-floor library: books from the personal archives of McEntire's mom, who passed away during the pandemic. According to Choctaw Nation, the collection is called "Jac's Library," a nod to her name Jacqueline. Reba's Place is also home to a "large collection of costumes, gold and platinum album awards, photographs" and more objects and memorabilia from McEntire's storied career.
McEntire told Garden & Gun that "Atoka is a very small town, but it's right there on the highway between Tulsa and Dallas. I was raised 12 miles north, on a working cattle ranch in Chockie."
After her mom passed in March 2020, McEntire spent an extended amount of time in Oklahoma as the pandemic spread. "I stayed in Oklahoma to help settle up the estate and clean up mom and daddy's house," McEntire said to People. "I got myself reacquainted with everyone in the state and the love that I have for the state of Oklahoma."
Shortly thereafter, she was approached about a potential restaurant. The rest, as they say, is history.
For the menu, McEntire collaborated with chef Kurtess Mortensen, even contributing her own smashed potato recipe to the line-up, complete with caramelized onions and garlic.
"You got to have great iced tea. Great bread," McEntire recalled telling Mortensen. "I want chicken fried steak. Chicken fried chicken. I want beans and cornbread."
But one particularly interesting item on the menu is the charcuterie board, which takes an uber-popular appetizer option, modernizes it and roots it in Southern comfort food traditions. The Reba's Place menu describes the item as featuring "shaved country ham, spicy sausage, pimento cheese, beer cheese, boiled peanut hummus, homemade pickles, crackers and crusty bread."
This appetizer doesn't skimp on Southern classics, but it's the boiled peanut hummus that truly piques my interest, as it swaps the customary chickpeas for a Southern staple.
Currently starring in "Big Sky" with her real-life boyfriend, as well as the Lifetime movie "The Hammer," McEntire has plans to tour and release a book later this year, according to People.
If you're anywhere near Atoka any time soon, stop by Reba's Place. We'd love to hear about your experience, this unique charcuterie board and anything else you think is noteworthy. Of course, we already know the music will be great.
