ELK CITY — The French silk pie served at Country Dove Gifts & Tea Room has garnered worldwide interest among Route 66 travelers from Germany, Sweden, Japan and in Oklahoma, too.
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The pie's nutty crust, dense chocolate filling that's, well, as smooth as silk and the fluffy whipped sweet cream topping dusted with a bit more chocolate has inspired many words of praise, but none more unusual than those of a writer who gushed it was so heavenly, he didn't know whether to eat the pie or slather it on his skin.
That author's glowing words, which have amused the tearoom's owners, appeared in a Route 66 guidebook published 16 years ago. The book became popular among Europeans planning trips along Route 66. Then the worldly tourists started lining up on the front porch of the prairie home along Third Street to sample the pie.
Since that time, Oklahomans and tourists from other states have weighed in on the pie's merits, too. Cookbook author Marian Clark of Tulsa included the pie recipe in "The Route 66 Cookbook" (Council Oak Books, 1993), and that kindled even more interest in the pie and the tearoom itself, with its seating for 40 diners.
"The French silk pie recipe is from a cookbook, I think it was originally from an Arkansas tearoom," said Kay Farmer, co-owner of the Country Dove. "My mother-in-law adapted the pie recipe for us. She came up with the nut crust," she said.
When Farmer and her partner, Glenna Hollis, opened the Country Dove in 1988, Farmer had never baked a pie in her life. Today, she is constantly making piecrusts to fill to meet the customer demand.
"I oversee and make all the food personally here," Farmer said. "I do it. You don't find that very often, but we're particular about the freshness of the food and how it is served."
One of the challenges of operating a tearoom is the amount of work it takes to turn out freshly prepared food daily. "It takes a real team effort, and that's what we have here." The team includes two waitresses, two dishwashers, two who work on the gift side and backup help to call on when emergencies occur. Farmer oversees the kitchen, and Hollis is in charge of gifts and the books.
The tearoom's menu also includes specialties such as the heart-shaped bran muffins, chicken-avocado sandwich, chicken and dressing (think casserole), three homemade soups including the hearty cream of potato, a wonderful New York-style cheesecake with sour cream topping and a mystery "garnish" the owners say contains flavored gelatin. The small chilled squares have a creamy appearance and just a subtle hint of lemon. I've not tasted anything quite like this "garnish," and the co-owners say they decline repeated requests to share the recipe.
Customers also request recipes for the French silk pie, the cheesecake, the soups and the entrees, but Farmer and Hollis say they won't do a cookbook, ever, unless it's after they get out of the business.
While the food is what draws many to the Country Dove, visitors can also shop for candles, gifts for the home as well as inspirational books and a wide selection of Bibles for many different needs.
Hollis and Farmer met in the early 1980s and describe themselves as having different interests yet a common goal to make the Country Dove as inviting and friendly as possible, be it close friends or first-time visitors who walk up the steps to the porch and into the front door.
When Hollis decided the time was right to open a country gift store, she'd already secured the Country Dove name through a vision years earlier. She called on several friends to help her check out the residence that would eventually become the popular stop along Route 66. "Kay was the last one I called to come look at the place," Hollis said.
"Kay told me, ‘You have the ideas. What you need is a working partner. It's going to be a lot of hard work.' So, we became business partners in about 20 minutes. And then we decided we'd better let our husbands in on it. And they thought we were nuts!"
"So we went to market and bought what we liked," she said.
"We didn't buy much, but we got enough to furnish the downstairs rooms," Farmer said.
"Anything that was blue, with a duck on it, we got. Or it had ‘welcome friends' or ‘home is where the heart is', that kind of stuff," Hollis said. The shop occupied the main floor of the house when it opened in fall 1983, focusing on the country gifts. The tearoom followed five years later. In 1990, a local Christian bookstore was going out of business, and Hollis and Farmer absorbed much of that inventory by adding Bibles and inspirational books and gifts. Today, the tearoom and kitchen are on the main floor; one room houses the Bibles, help books and inspirational items; while a gift gallery is concentrated on the second floor and additional gifts are in the dining rooms.
The Country Dove's decor and focus has changed with trends since it opened. Starting with the country gifts, it gradually offered items with a Victorian feel. It then changed to offer items with an English hunt look, then to the colors and feel of Tuscany and contemporary items.
"Through our 23 years being partners, we've never had disagreements. We think alike and agree on the money issues," Hollis said.
It was a couple from Amarillo, Texas, Bob and Judy Wheeler, who visited the Country Dove early on and urged them to open the tearoom. "They had a tearoom at the time called The Back Porch, and they invited us to come see their tearoom. They offered to give us all the recipes to open a tearoom. She gave us a recipe book, and then they helped us set up the kitchen by locating used equipment," Hollis recalled.
"She said, ‘Don't ever let me see you buying iceberg lettuce. Don't get cheap ingredients; use only the best.'" The advice was helpful; just as soon as the tearoom opened, the owners needed a second dining room to handle the crowds.
"The tearoom couldn't make it without the gifts, and the gifts couldn't make it without the tearoom here. The two complement each other so well," the partners said. "We try to have just a little bit of everything for our customers."
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