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Mystery Solved — The Helen To Take Over Former Wildflower Café Space Soon

We got the skinny on the new dining spot planned for 11th & Peoria.

10:23 AM CDT on April 14, 2026

The Helen will open soon inside the old Wildflower Café spot at 11th & Peoria.

|Ryan McGahan

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On a busy stretch of Route 66 where Tulsa’s vintage revival keeps getting shinier, stranger, and more alive, a new restaurant is getting ready to move into one of the city’s most recognizable brunch spaces.

The Helen, set to open later this month in the former Wildflower Café space in the Meadow Gold District, won’t be another café concept or retro-themed nostalgia trap. At least, that’s not the plan. Restaurateur Tim Rucker—a Tulsa native with decades of hospitality experience in New York and Austin—describes it more simply: breakfast and lunch.

“It’s going to be lunch. Breakfast and lunch to start,” Rucker said. “And then eventually, once we get our sea legs, we’re going to start with dinner parties once a week.”

“I want people to come in and have what a really good restaurant breakfast and lunch tastes like,” he said. “It’s different, but it’s not pretentious.”