Elisabetta, the new Italian concept from Rachel Cope, will be the first notable restaurant opening of 2025 in Oklahoma City. Scheduled for January, Elisabetta will represent a few firsts for 84 Hospitality, the company she founded with Empire Slice House in Plaza District in 2014. It will be the first 84 restaurant with DOO Britton Stewart as a partner, and it will be her first working with Austin, Texas based Excelsior Hospitality. Additionally, Chris Pardo, who has designed hotels and restaurants across the country, most notably Arrive Hotels, which he started in Palm Springs, designed the interior. 

Cope has joked that it’s her first “grown up” restaurant, too, and that it’s a reflection of her and her team aging into their 40s. “We can’t eat pizza and cheeseburgers every day anymore,” she said. “I’ve waited for several years to do something like this. Gun was the first concept we did that was closer to fine dining, but it was heavy on the educational component, and then COVID. Elisabetta is a more familiar style of food, but I think with what we’re doing, there aren’t a lot of similar choices.”

Talking about Italian food in OKC is always fraught, since we were mostly raised on fast food and fast casual red-sauce joints from Olive Garden to Zio’s to Fazoli’s, and then we got a good dose of better fare with the coming of Patrono and its culinary cousins. We are not among the cities that can point to longstanding Italian traditions like Kansas City, Chicago and NYC, so we’ve mostly been a mash-up of Americanized and Brooklynized spots without noting that Italy, like every large country, has a diverse, regional menu of dishes, ingredients, and accompanying wines. Saying “Italian food” is much like saying “Mexican food,” because what we typically mean is the kind of food that I like that vaguely or accurately reflects a certain regional cuisine of that country. 

The strategy Cope has decided on captures some of Italy’s great diversity – pasta, of course, chops, seafood, sauces, a proper regard for vegetables, and yes, the right kinds of cheese – but it’s also true that no “Italian” spot can capture all of it, much like no so-called American restaurant can cover the full spectrum of American food. Last year when she was planning an Italian spot, she decided that leaning on one chef to do everything wasn’t the best formula for long-term success, especially when it comes to menu formation. 

“We expect an executive chef to be good at everything in the chef-driven model,” she said. “The chef is supposed to do pasta, chops, baking, desserts, sauces, everything, and it just seems you’d do better to pick a team of chefs to focus on sections of the menu based on their expertise.”

From that idea came her relationship with Excelsior Hospitality, the Austin company founded by Chef Nic Yanes and restaurateur Michael Covey. The two partnered on Juniper and Uncle Nicky’s, and Yanes’s resume also includes the Uchi restaurants. Cope developed a friendship with the team over the past couple years, and she asked them to come alongside to develop Elisabetta’s menu in conversation with members of her team, including Britton Stewart and Chef Brianna Shear. 

“The team approach, and it includes Dallas chef Junior Borges, takes the pressure off one person to be good at everything, and we’ll be going to Austin so Excelsior can train our leads on the system, and then they will help with menu changes, vendor and product sourcing, and problem solving going forward. Nic thinks about restaurants comprehensively. He owns restaurants; he understands them,” Cope said.

Elisabetta will be at 7300 N. Western. The Nichols Hills adjacent strip from NW 63rd to Wilshire has long been a restaurant destination, anchored by The Metro Wine Bar & Bistro. “I love the spot,” Cope said. “It checks a lot of boxes for us – location, visibility, accessibility, second gen, etc.” 

84 Hospitality has never been a wine-centric restaurant group, leaning more heavily on beer at Empire, whiskey at Burger Punk, highballs and sake at Gun and Goro, but Italian food needs Italian wine, so to create the list, Cope called on Stewart. “He worked for Pete Holloway at Boulevard, where he was GM, so he has a ton of experience with fine dining and wine,” she said. “We’ll have a full bar with a diverse by-the-glass list, and we’ll keep 50-60 bottles on the menu. We’re still working on a direction for cocktails.” 

The food will be a mixture of familiar and new-to-OKC dishes that look to hit a perfect balance between elegant and comfort food, including a half dozen pasta dishes, like lobster ravioli and spicy cavatelli, steak, short rib, swordfish, crab claws, swordfish with salsa verde, meatballs, and a signature chopped salad. I’m happy to report that an early version of the menu includes a budino for dessert, and here’s hoping it makes the final cut. 

The name comes from Cope’s middle name, Elizabeth, and she said Elisabetta represents the evolution of 84 as a group. “It’s more intentional, and more intentionally slowed down to a leisure pace of dining.”