Club Med

Peruse the menu or website of Sapori, a sunny Italian spot on Tulsa’s Cherry Street, and you’ll meet Dee, the restaurant’s olive-crowned illustrated mascot created in tribute to strong women including Grazia Deledda, an Italian writer, and Doris Matthews, proprietor of Tucci’s-—the restaurant that formerly occupied Sapori’s location. She was made to embody the spirit of inspirational women everywhere, and restaurateur Al Hashemi takes her to heart.

Hashemi took over Tucci’s before transforming it into his own concept in September 2024. Sapori is his homecoming to running an Italian restaurant--—his third in the genre. When he closed the previous two in the 2010s, he planned to pursue other endeavors. After all, he didn’t mean to become a Tulsa restaurant magnate.

“I came here in 1974 to go to school,” Hashemi says. “Soon after that, the revolution happened in my country, and I had to try to make my way.”

The crispy chicken piccata with a lemony cream sauce speckled with capers is served on a bed of fettucine noodles. Photo by Valerie Wei-Haas

He came from his native country of Iran to study mechanical engineering at the University of Tulsa, but his pinch-hit restaurant work—starting as a dishwasher and moving up from there—proved lucrative enough to replace his intended career. He took a position with a large restaurant company, traveling across the region until his wife, Laurie Tilley, had to track him down in Texas in the pre-cell phone years to let him know she was pregnant. This brought Hashemi to Tulsa for good—Tilly told him “We have to live in the same city”—and he opened Camerelli’s on Cherry Street, named for his new son Cameron.

Many beloved Italian restaurants are family institutions, but Hashemi’s is not. His menu is packed with tried and true dishes, though. The cuisine followed him from Camerelli’s to downtown Tulsa’s Pomodori’s for a total of sixteen years before he took a much-needed break from the restaurant industy.

“Italian food was always my favorite,” Hashemi says. “I love to cook Italian food, and I worked with Italian chefs who gave me more knowledge about the food, the spices, the cooking style.”

Much of the menu is classic dishes diners might have seen before, but there’s a distinct personality throughout. Daughter Sarah created Dee—along with much of the dining room art—and is a skilled cook, responsible for the standout saffron Aranchi (a village in Iran, a play on arancini). The risotto croquettes are crunchy and rich, served with fluffy labneh and an architectural cucumber and tomato shirazi salad. Like so much of Sapori, it’s mostly Italian but with a hint of Hashemi’s background: Feta, olives, eggplant, and saffron cream sauce expand the geography to the wider Mediterranean. The caesar salad is confidently anchovy-forward, and the seven-layer lasagna uses pork, beef, and sausage to create a decadent plate that could feed two.

Sapori uses bread from Tulsa’s Slate Sourdough, and Hashemi and Tilley make trips to the nearby farmers market to find local produce each week. The ragu is made fresh daily, though Tilley says Hashemi, who works every lunch and dinner shift, is Sapori’s “secret sauce.”

Sapori’s saffron Aranchi is crunchy and cheesy. Photo by Valerie Wei-Haas

He knows his regulars by name, moving across the floor and stopping to chat. He’ll sometimes trade dinners for excess basil. If you’re lucky enough to come in on a night when fresh halibut is on special, Hashemi’s policy of customer-friendship crossover is why. A Sapori regular, a commercial pilot who routinely flies through Alaska, got to know him and now calls Hashemi and offers to bring him fresh Alaskan fish on his way back home.

“He talks to everyone,” says Tilley, who claims no official title but handles social media and other programs, including the restaurant’s monthly donation to a local charity. “It’s his restaurant. I’m happy to be involved.”

Hashemi counters. While he may spend lunch and dinner service endearing himself to the patrons, Tilley is “the real owner.”

“We’ve got more women than men, and they call her ‘Mama,’” he says.

Seven-layer lasagna is sure to satisfy the hungriest diner. Photo by Valerie Wei-Haas

Sapori may be Hashemi’s restaurant, but Dee’s symbolism runs deep. Several more strong women are behind Sapori, including employees who graduated from Tulsa’s Women in Recovery—a part of Tulsa Family & Children’s Services—which attemps to help break the cycle of addiction and incarceration. It’s an intensive outpatient program to help eligible women avoid long prison sentences.

One former Tucci’s employee worked for Hashemi when he took it over, and her recommendations for colleagues in WIR have since brought in a few more.

“I had a second chance when I came to the United States,” Hashemi says. “I want everyone who works here to have a chance. Because they had something in the past that wasn’t so great doesn’t mean that they are not good people.”

The issue of recovery is dear to Hashemi’s heart.

“Our son was an addict. We saw the struggle, and he got clean, and he’s ten years sober. If people want to make a change, they can,” he says. “They’re great people to have work for us. We feel lucky.”

The women of Sapori have worked together to create a support system that Hashemi is proud to have helped grow. A Cherry Street-area resident himself, he wants Sapori to foster community.

On the patio, a reclining image of Dee waves would-be patrons in, exclaiming, “Benvenuto!” or Italian for welcome. That’s an ethos diners and staff can feel—and savor—throughout this pantheon of flavor in Tulsa.

Written By

Becky Carman