Sheamus Feeley’s career has taken him from California to Peru and Monaco, and finally (and fortunately for us) to Oklahoma. He and Chef Marco Herrera made Noche the best restaurant in Tulsa when they were associated with the modern Mexican concept. Feeley partnered with Elliott Nelson to create Malfi Enoteca, with locations in Tulsa and Midtown Oklahoma City. The newest project pairs him up with Chef Marco again in an upscale casual Japanese concept called Little Belly in Tulsa’s Brookside neighborhood.

A talented chef in his own right, Feeley now prefers the restaurateur role, and we have hopes that he’ll eventually do something else in OKC. We had him on the show to talk about all that, but the main topic is food criticism, based on a late night text conversation we had after a self-styled “food critic” from Tulsa took a couple of unjustified shots at OKC concepts. In a world that features millions of “food critics” via Yelp, Open Table, Google, TikTok, etc. the idea that a so-called professional critic remains a necessity is cute – in the condescending sense – wishful thinking. Feeley exhibits some of the state’s best critical and complex thinking about restaurants and hospitality, and I suspect this will be only the first of a few conversations we have about this subject.