Denver restaurateur Kelly Whitaker is getting back to his roots.
The Oklahoma native announced this week that he has purchased Nonesuch, a 22-seat chef’s counter restaurant in Oklahoma City. Bon Appétit named the fine-dining spot the No. 1 best new restaurant in America in 2018.
“If this restaurant were in New York or anywhere else, it would hold up on its own,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker founded Denver-based Id Est Hospitality Group, which owns Michelin-starred BRUTØ and The Wolf’s Tailor among other concepts. His restaurants are known for their emphasis on sustainability through fermentation, in-house grain milling and hyper-local sourcing.
Nonesuch shares similar environmentally-friendly values, using locally sourced and foraged ingredients from the surrounding Oklahoman landscape to create a rotating 10-course tasting menu.
“I grew up there and didn’t even consider that type of food was happening there,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker was impressed with their techniques in such an unassuming town and invited Nonesuch executive chef Garrett Hare to The Wolf’s Tailor for a pop-up dinner experience right before the pandemic. After COVID, Nonesuch “just didn’t have the same energy,” Whitaker said. Reservations were slow and the restaurant was struggling to break even, he explained.
Nonesuch general manager Chad Luman was previously a server at Whitaker’s Basta in Boulder and approached Whitaker about taking over operations. After walking away from the deal a few times, Whitaker ultimately decided to shake hands with former owner Todd Woodruff.
“We’re not necessarily trying to expand our group, but our impact,” Whitaker said. “But we were blown away by the team and their product. We think it’s an important restaurant for Oklahoma and the country in general. Our group is very focused on grain and agriculture, and they kept checking our boxes.”
Whitaker wants to breathe new life into Nonesuch by dramatically increasing its focus on regenerative agriculture and grains. They hooked up a wooden grain mill from Austria, which originally sat in Basta, to a trailer and drove it to the restaurant. And he’s bringing the Nonesuch team to Denver to shadow Mara King, the hospitality group’s director of fermentation, as well as executive chefs Byron Gomez at BRUTØ and Taylor Stark at The Wolf’s Tailor.
“We have work to do, but the heartbeat is completely there,” he said. “It really does have all the pieces to be something special.”
Nonesuch’s 22-seat chef’s counter, open for dinner service Thursday through Saturday, will largely remain the same under chef Hare. But Whitaker’s group has transformed a former private dining space into The Den, a six-seat dining area for walk-ins and reservations where the kitchen staff can experiment with new creations at a more approachable price point for adventurous diners.
With these enhancements, Whitaker is hoping Nonesuch will join the national conversation once again.
“It’s 22 seats, and BRUTØ is 18 seats,” he said. “BRUTØ is a Michelin and green-star restaurant, and Nonesuch is right there. Michelin isn’t going to Oklahoma, but we were never in Colorado to receive Michelin recognition either.”
Whitaker’s grandma, who’s about to turn 100 years old, still lives in Oklahoma, along with his parents and plenty of friends. It’s an added bonus that his latest venture comes with a side of hometown reunions.
“If this were Detroit or Kentucky, it wouldn’t have mattered,” he said. “This restaurant that we love and respect just happens to be in my home state.”