In a weird bit of serendipity, my friend Lacey texted me a photo from a years-ago dinner at Nonesuch. Her friend Sasha was coming back from a decade abroad and wanted to see what had become of Oklahoma City in her time away. I was overjoyed to send them to Nonesuch, then on the cusp of being named Bon Appetit's best new restaurant in America, and ended up joining them for dinner.

I had an unforgettable meal that night, which has become something of de rigueur for Nonesuch, which is a restaurant that specializes in the unforgettable.

What made the text so serendipitous was my dinner plans for the weekend, which included my first visit to the restaurant since it became part of the Id Est Hospitality family (which is otherwise based solely in Colorado). My goal, other than enjoying a top-class meal, was to see how OKC's premiere tasting menu restaurant had changed since the takeover.

Well, the phrase "the more things change, the more they stay the same" comes to mind. Because Nonesuch is both very much the same celebrated restaurant it has been since opening in 2017, but it has also softened and become more welcoming in some ways.

For anyone who hasn't experienced such a thing yet, a tasting menu restaurant is a place where you buy a ticket and take the ride. Nonesuch had a set menu and you purchased a seat at the U-shaped bar to enjoy exactly what they'd planned for the evening, often with a wine pairing.

The benefits of such a place are simple: by giving the chefs room to experiment and hone their craft without having to sell individually marketed dishes, the restaurant broadened the palates of diners and the chops of the kitchen staff. How often am I going to order pork loin, or braised turnips, or a piece of sushi stuff with raw bison meat? Almost never. But I've enjoyed all of those and more at Nonesuch.

The prix fixe tasting menu format worked for me, but I know it doesn't work for everyone. In a perfect world, it wouldn't have to. Nonesuch would have its customers and other restaurants would have theirs and we'd all go about our merry lives. But things are far from perfect (gestures broadly at everything around us) and Nonesuch has changed to become less rigid in its operations.

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Now when you visit, you can order anything. Anything! (Well, anything on the menu.) Do you want 17 of that appetizer? If they've got enough of it, you can have it. Do you only have time for a salad and an entree? Come on in! Nonesuch is accepting walk-ins for the first time in forever and that includes folks who want a glass of wine, a bite of something specific, or a build-it-yourself meal.

And for those of us who loved the old ways, there's still a prix fixe menu, though it's not quite the same. Diners get all the appetizers, all the sides, all the desserts, and their choice of an entree. Do I miss getting a little taste of everything? Yeah. But I also understand why that's not the way it is anymore. It's economics. If they make this change to accommodate new diners, they can't afford to run things the same way for everyone else.

The food quality is as high as it ever was, if not higher. Executive Chef Garrett Hare and his team took my wife and I on a culinary tour of our own taste buds with some wild dishes like the roasted turnip, pressed apple, and lovage "salad" in an apple hollandaise, the grilled oyster covered in processed greens and a hint of citrusy yuzu.

Hare is a mushroom ninja and the way he prepared the matsutakes in the soup had me spinning my spoon, trying to fathom how he drew out the flavors and textures in such a dish. The soy milk/tofu topper elicited such buttery notes I could scarcely believe it came from a soybean.

The sides come out all at once, along with the entree, which is larger and more filling than previous Nonesuch iterations. It made it feel more like a whole meal, in a way.

We noshed on pickled daikon, pear, and kimchi, slurped up tender-crisp bok choy, and swooned for soft milk bread rolls with savory umeboshi butter.

For entrees, my lovely bride chose the catfish (with added caviar, which is THE move here) and I got the . . . we'll get to it. I can't talk about it just yet. It's too much.

So, the catfish. It arrived as two large medallions covered in a creamy whey sauce and studded with a ton of savory, salty caviar. The meat of the fish was unearthly. Firm to the touch, but soft and tender on the tongue. There was not a hint of the muddiness sometimes found in catfish, which is why the caviar, with its juicy, briny popping texture, really added a lot to the dish.

Folks, I got an entree I never ever in a million years thought I would be eating at Nonesuch. I have ordered it nearly everywhere else, because it is both a personal favorite and so ingrained in Oklahoman life that it's part of our state meal: the chicken-fried steak.

If you're worried that a Nonesuch chicken-fried steak will come out in a cloud of foam, suspended mid-air, blown into your mouth with a bellows, worry not. This is a chicken-fried steak through and through, but the touches Hare and his team made are the kind that will live on in my memory for decades to come.

A smoked mussel and bonito gravy? Do any of those words even go together? A month ago, I would have said no. Today, I cannot think of anything but that amazingly savory, umami-rich gravy that clung to the crispy breading of the chicken-fried steak. I can't say there wasn't a hint of fish flavor in that gravy, because it tasted like...everything. It wasn't overwhelmingly fishy or creamy or beefy or any other taste, it was just the absolute platonic ideal of that particular chicken-fried steak.

Oh, and there was salmon roe on top. Ikura. Red caviar. And it didn't taste fishy, either.

I should mention here that the chicken-fried steak is meant for the entire table (it's $50 a la carte or you can order it as part of your prix fixe for an additional $25, and, baby, it is WORTH it). Did I share it? No, sir. No, I did not. I mean, sure, I gave my wife a bite or two, but I put a hurt on that massive beast all on my own because I couldn't bear to stop. It was so absolutely perfect and so perplexingly different that I had to keep eating because my palate demanded it. The fact that I stopped before I finished it all was more about self-preservation than anything. I would have gladly eaten it all and maybe even half of a second one because my brain wanted to figure out why it was so good.

Nonesuch is a special place to me. My wife and I have shared so many amazing meals there over the last several years that we find ourselves comparing notes and talking about dishes long-since retired from the menu as if we were tasting them anew. With the new Id Est ownership, I'll admit, I was a bit antsy. Not that they didn't have all the bona fides in the world, but because when someone new takes over something you love, you're never sure what will become of it.

So I'm overjoyed to tell you that Nonesuch is still Nonesuch. And my hope is that all those people who come in for a nibble, for a bite, end up looking around at the people slurping down sunchoke soup or savoring a chawanmushi and decide that, next time, they're getting the prix fixe menu themselves.