Good Eggs: At Home With the Pauls - 405 Magazine
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Good Eggs: At Home With the Pauls

All-star OKC restaurateurs Keith and Heather Paul have turned the former HQ of the Good Egg Group into a fantastically fitting home.

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Maybe you’ve never met Heather and Keith Paul, but, if you live in the 405, odds are good they’ve fed you, and probably more than once. The Pauls are the creators and keepers of a menagerie of unique restaurants around these parts: The Drake, Cheever’s, three Tucker’s Onion Burgers locations, Kitchen 324, Republic Gastropub, Iron Star BBQ and Red Prime Steakhouse are all a part of their enterprise, Good Egg Dining Group.

And they’re not finished yet. There’s a Mexican restaurant percolating in the old Swanson Tires building in downtown Oklahoma City and a second incarnation of Republic Gastropub in Edmond’s Chisholm Creek. And after that? The duo is mulling over the possibility of an upscale sandwichery. Maybe a breakfast joint.

Barstools that easily could pass for Mid-Century vintage, but actually are standouts from West Elm, occupy one side of a massive, marble-topped island. Across the way, the kitchen has a range with some serious chops: a 60” commercial, FiveStar beauty. Cheery blue and white ginger jars and other Japanese vases add pops of clean color to the otherwise gray space.

The pair met when both were salespeople for Ben E. Keith food services in OKC about 20 years ago. Keith had recently moved to town from Ft. Worth, and Heather was from Oklahoma City but had attended college overseas. Love came quickly to the Pauls. “We were very competitive with each other,” Heather says.

They married in 1997, and as they talk about their lives, each often corrects the other about dates and years. It’s clear that once the Pauls found one another, months, years and decades all began to happily (and busily) blur together.

Throughout the home, Heather and Keith have mixed finds from Etsy, Cherish and eBay with treasures from favorite local purveyors including Urbane, Sara Kate Studios and 30A Home. The triptych above the spectacular, hand-painted, 19th century chinoiserie buffet is an eBay score. Beautiful potted orchids add drama, while a collection of glass eggs is a nod to the couple’s Good Egg Dining Group.

They share their unique downtown Oklahoma City home – fittingly a former flavorings and extract factory – with two gigantic dogs, English Mastiffs Tucker and Molly. The house had served as the Good Egg Dining Group’s corporate headquarters for about five years. The couple owns a second lot on the west side of the home, which they had originally bought with the idea of building a new home next to their headquarters.

A massive table sourced from Restoration Hardware loses its anonymity and gains some groovy style with the addition of wooly, comfy sheepskins to its chairs. The brilliant neons on the wall are an installation the couple commissioned from Los Angeles-based artist Katherine Anne Good. Although the room isn’t huge, it gains infinite space and lots of light with a cleverly placed mirrored wall at the end of the table.

Twice they had designs drawn up but just couldn’t quite find a plan that had the “old bones” they’d loved in the historic homes they’d lived in previously. Then the staff outgrew this space, and the former Tull’s Overhead Door building at NW 24th and Walker Avenue, which was the former Kerr’s Department Store, became available.

Here in the master bedroom we see elements borrowed from other rooms in the home, the repetition of which lends a sophisticated visual cohesion to the entire space. Club chairs from the living room are invited in, one in its original size and one that has been reimagined slightly as a settee. Window treatments mirror those in the master bath, and the burnished dark floor is topped with a traditional wool rug.

Good Egg HQ moved to that location, and after nine months of construction overseen in part by the unofficial third egg in their design and renovation omelet, Heather’s mother Tanya Turner, they happily moved in.

 

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