Theta's secret to taking New York is in the sauce

The arrival of Oklahoma's second-most popular burger to the Big Apple completes the slowest viral campaign in history

When author, historian and now-restaurateur George Motz visited Oklahoma last year, he called it “the buckle of the burger belt.” At that time, he was still six months from opening Hamburger America and filming a cross-country burger series for First We Feast.

Motz’s faith in Oklahoma burger prowess is such that when he opened the restaurant in New York City last fall, the Oklahoma-style onion burger became it’s darling. The No. 1 seller, according to The Tasting Table. Good news, Motz came by his recipe honestly.

The restaurant is named for Motz’s best-selling 2018 book Motz called Hamburger America. In researching the book that highlights 200 regional burgers, he came to know Marty Hall, founder of Sid’s Diner in El Reno. Marty mentored the author through the gospel of onion-burger construction. Motz has since become the fried-onion burgers greatest evangelist, triggering nationwide interest.

But Hamburger America celebrates all the country’s regional burger traditions. It opened with a small menu, but Motz said from the start he would bring in guest chefs to serve specialty burgers from around the country, true to the burger-scholarship brand. He proved it a few months later when he welcomed Glenn Fieber of Solly’s Grille of Milwaukee in to make the Butter Burgers Wisconsin craves for Gothamites. Next came the Olive Burger from Weston’s Kewpee in Lansing, Mich., before Motz turned to the Buckle of the Burger Belt for help.

When Motz was in town last year, he and his burger gang made stops at three Oklahoma burger locales: The Meers Store in Meers, Sid’s Diner in El Reno, and the Britton Road location of Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler for a Theta.

Now, he’s brought the Theta to New York, and with it he brings a secret sauce that started in Middle America, worked its way southeast then back through the Midwest on its way to California. With Johnnie’s Theta arriving in New York last week, the sauce we know here by a couple names has covered the entire nation.

Motz chose Johnnie’s because it was oldest surviving restaurant with original Theta lineage. A lineage that stretches back to World War II. The burger was born in Norman at Ralph Geist’s Town Tavern, which opened in 1932 on Buchanan. However, the Theta wasn’t born until after Geist moved to Varsity Corner (now Campus Corner) in 1937.

What is a Theta? Simply put: It’s a Hickory Burger with shredded American cheese, pickles and mayonnaise but absolutely no onions. The Theta is slathered in a special “Hickory” sauce often mistaken for barbecue sauce. However, even those who know the difference between Hickory Sauce and barbecue sauce might not know that the Hickory Sauce originally used at the Town Tavern was also known in this market as Kum-Bac Sauce. That’s what the folks who shared the recipe with Geist called it at The Dolores Restaurant in Oklahoma City, which opened in 1930.

Now that the Theta has made it all the way to Broadway from the humble Town Tavern with the Split-T, Charcoal Oven and burger counters across Oklahoma in between, its journey is dwarfed by the sauce that made it famous.

Barbecue sauce is based on ketchup, but neither Hickory, Johnnie’s nor Kum-Bac sauces include ketchup. What they do include is tomatoes, onion, butter and a surprising amount of ground celery seed.

The sauce’s journey winds long as any epic tale a hobbit, pilgrim or cowardly lion ever took. From the Oklahoma perspective, it started near Mark Twain’s birthplace. That’s where another Ralph, in this case Stephens, and his wife Amanda first put a rich, buttery tomato sauce to work that would end up supporting seven different restaurants across five states.

Amanda and Ralph Stephens operated The Dolores Restaurants for more than 40 years, but before that things were a struggle. Ralph came to Oklahoma City from Kansas City and failed twice as a restaurateur, eventually moving the family to Dallas where he went to work for the Pig Stand company. Offered a chance to expand Pig Stands into Little Rock, Stephens took it.

Pig Stands were home to the famous Pig Sandwich, a blend of chopped pit-roasted pork and tangy sauce topped with sour pickle relish and served on a special bun.

However, the Stephens family needed a reset, and they went to Amanda’s nearby hometown of Hannibal, Mo., to get one. They moved in with her parents,, Jesse and Katie Ogle, and decided to open their own version of a Pig Stand in the interim. They opened Goody-Goody in June of 1925 in Hannibal. Before that, Amanda went on a trip to Quincy, Ill., and came back with a sauce recipe that changed their lives.

Whether burgers, or sandwiches, the Stephens smothered everything from Goody Goody in what they would eventually call Kum-Bac Sauce, and it proved a smash – until winter. Alas, Ralph had read about a real estate boom in Tampa, Fla. No winters to worry about in the Sunshine State, and he reckoned folks there  got plenty hungry.

“We closed, and being sort of soldiers in fortune, we took off for Florida,” Ralph Stephens told The Daily Oklahoman in 1968.

The next year, Stephens partnered with Bill Reid who’d come from Dayton, Ohio, with similar dreams. They opened Goody-Goody Barbecue together,  then Goody-Goody Sandwiches. The partnership was short but profoundly sweet. Reid returned to Ohio in 1927, where he and his wife would open a lunch counter, offering much of what they'd learned in Tampa, including butterscotch pie and the rich, buttery secret sauce they served on their hamburgers.

The Stephens family left Tampa three years later. Ralph and Amanda sold Goody Goody to a man named Bill Stayer, who’d run a classified ad in a local paper that read “Have $10,000 to invest, would like to buy a small business.”

Back in Oklahoma City, Ralph and Amanda decided they were done with sandwich stands. Instead of a Goody Goody, they opened The Dolores, named for their youngest child, at 33 NE 23 in 1930. The Dolores wasn’t a barbecue stand but offered barbecue. Neither was it a drive-in, but it had both parking stalls for folks who didn't want to leave the car and inside seating. The menu included had the same that made Goody-Goody work, but also offered steaks, pork cutlets, fried chicken and a slice of pie for every palate. Su-Z-Q potatoes arrived in 1938.

Stephens reported $52,000 in gross sales in his first year, but the secret to their success was the sauce.

“We never closed our doors when the Depression hit, but we were selling hamburgers and malts for a dime each to stay open,” Stephens said in the Jan. 21, 1968, interview with The Daily Oklahoman.

Ralph Geist was friends with Ralph and Amanda Stephens with similar designs on the food-service industry. He came to Ralph and Amanda looking for ideas for his new place in Norman and came back with Hickory Sauce. When Geist opened his Town Tavern the menu included a Hickory Burger smothered in Amanda’s sauce. Once the girls from the Theta Sorority got a taste of it, a legend was born.

Geist moved to Varsity Corner (now Campus Corner) in 1937 for its proximity to a popular dance hall. Fraternities and sororities subsequently kept Geist's telephone so busy he could hardly write the orders fast enough. Members of the Theta house had a special request giving him a specific headache. They had a penchant for Hickory Burger and pickles were fine, but none of them wanted onions (for potential necking purposes) – but maybe some cheese, and a little mayo?

Stephens got tired of the custom orders and informed the girls he required uniformity, and the “Theta Special” was born.

Geist expanded Town Tavern into Oklahoma City but would eventually switch from burgers to cafeterias. He first opened the Classen Cafeteria on the corner of Classen Boulevard and NW 23, then the Lady Classen on N May Avenue. And yes, the Lady Classen served the sauce during the entirety of its 40-year run.

So how did Thetas grow after Town Tavern closed? Ralph and Amanda’s middle child, Vince.

With his folks off in California, the brash Vince Stephens was a student at the University of Oklahoma and member of the RUFNEKs, affording him an intimate view of coach Bud Wilkinson's split-t offense. While at the annual Red River Rivalry game in Dallas, Vince was asked by a pretty Texas co-ed what he did for a living. The story goes that Vince told her he owned a restaurant called the Split-T back in Oklahoma City. It was a lie when he said it, but in 1953 he turned the fib into fact where Western Avenue meets NW 57th Street. The T-Bar was where their folks hung out next door.

The Theta had become standard fare at local drive-ins, so of course Stephens had a Theta Burger on his menu. The Split-T became a second home to teens from Bishop McGuinness, John Marshall, Harding, Casady and other local high schools.

Vince Stephens did two things that made the Split-T work: 1. Theta burgers 2. His first management hire: A recently discharged Army cook who'd been working at the airport's Sky Chef restaurant named David Nathaniel Haynes, who went by his father's name — Johnnie.

Johnnie Haynes ran the Split-T for close to 20 years before leaving to open the first Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler, including the Theta.

But the sauce, while similar, wasn't exactly the same.

Chad O'Neill and Brad Vincent, who were running the Split-T when it finally closed in 2000, told me once that Vince Stephens told them he never allowed anyone to make the sauce from beginning to end — to protect the recipe.

"We're the only ones who have it," I remember both assuring me.

Rick Haynes even confirmed that Johnnie's isn't an exact match to the original. "Ours is better!" he said.

Of course, Billy Allen over at Charcoal Oven has his own version of Hickory Sauce.

With Theta burgers taking New York, you might want to enjoy one, too. Johnnie’s is my go-to for a true Theta but New State Burgers, Burger Punk, and the original S&B Burger Joint on NW 59^th and May are made with love.

I really like the Theta-Onion burger mashup Sun Cattle Company offers. They’ve contracted with O’Neill and Vincent to provide original Hickory Sauce.

It’s surprising that chef Russ Johnson and staff were the first to smash Oklahoma’s two most iconic burgers into one. I doubt they will be the last.

Neither will Rick Haynes be the last link to the Buckle of the Burger Belt take New York City. Motz brought Oklahoma fried-onion burgers to The Big Apple when he opened, I can’t imagine he won’t get the OG Marty Hall out there once he figures out a way to lure him.

For now, we’ll have to settle for raising a toast to the secret sauce that knitted together the nation, leaving long-standing businesses everywhere it landed:

• The first Goody-Goody Barbecue stand Ralph and Amanda Stephens opened withg the Ogle family operated until 1962.

• Bill Stayer's purchase of Goody-Goody for $10K in 1929 proved wise. It would stay open another 20 years evolving from an oyster bar to burger joint until it finally became Goody Goody Drive-In. And that’s what it would stay until 2005. In October 2014, a longtime patron named Richard Gonzmart announced plans to resurrect Goody Goody Burgers in Tampa, which he did in 2015. It remains open today.

• Let's not forget about Bill Reid. He and his wife, Jessie, returned to Dayton and opened a lunch counter. After Bill’s death in 1935, Jessie renamed the restaurant Goody-Goody Sandwiches, featuring a secret sauce on the burger. Jessie remarried and moved to Santa Monica, California, with her new husband to bring the Goody Goody Drive-In to Wilshire Boulevard in 1949. There, it would serve the secret sauce on its burgers until 1977.

• When she arrived, Ralph and Amanda Stephens had taken over a Simon’s Drive-In four years before and turned into a Dolores Drive-In on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Oldest son Bob Stephens followed his parents to California in 1956 and took over operations there in 1961. Bob even operated the Reid's Goody-Goody in Santa Monica for a short time in the late 1960s.

• The Dolores name endured in Los Angeles. The last of the remaining Dolores Restaurants in West Los Angeles burned down on Christmas 2012.