The Secret to Oxford’s Newest Deli and Bar

On her second visit to Oxford’s newest Uptown addition, senior strategic communication and IMS major Katie Giles claimed to know the secret behind the Secret Elephant.

“We were sitting over there, and it felt like old MIA, and then we were saying that if you turned up the music and made it loud, it could be a club atmosphere. Or it could be like a lounge,” Giles said. “So, that’s the secret to the Secret Elephant — it can be whatever you want it to be.”

Housed at the old Wild Bistro location on 37 E High Street, the Secret Elephant opened its doors on March 24. Owner Desi Durkin planned a soft opening for that day, and she’s waiting to have a grand opening until she can roll out her full lunch and dinner menu.

Durkin is a licensed real estate agent who’s been living in Oxford since 2010. In 2015, she helped a family buy a house for their son in town, and eventually she helped them buy the spot that would become Wild Bistro. When the pandemic hit last year, Durkin said the Chinese restaurant was losing close to $300 a day.

So, in October 2020, the family decided to sell Wild Bistro, but Durkin said the family wasn’t getting any buyers. She recommended that they think about rebranding and offered up several ideas for how they could turn a profit with a new place.

“Rather than selling, they said, ‘It sounds like it should be yours,’ and they invited me to be a partner with them as the financial backers,” Durkin said. “And they were willing to implement all of my ideas, so this is the result.”

The result is a modern, chic interior with gray-painted walls, stone backsplash and multicolored lights that rotate between blue, purple and a host of other colors. Booths line one wall, with tall tables and high chairs scattered throughout the rest of the space and one long bartop running across the middle of the room.

Several students visiting the bar late on a Thursday night complimented the Secret Elephant’s vibes, calling it “modern,” “chill,” and a refreshing change from the bar scene everyone is used to in Oxford. Durkin said she was aiming for a more mature and upscale space, something that would stand out from other places in town but ultimately be welcoming to everybody.

“A place that people can come and feel comfortable in their own skin, enjoy themselves, but also I want a place where, when the students are gone, the locals want to come visit as well,” Durkin said. “I want to be able to provide that same atmosphere for the locals as well, and in the dead season we can all sit and enjoy some adult time.”

The Secret Elephant wasn’t meant to exclusively be a bar scene that students flocked to. But with food supply chain issues still rampant during the pandemic, Durkin has had issues getting enough ingredients to sustain the deli she wants to have open during the day.

“Us being the proverbial new kids on the block, we’re at the bottom of the food supply chain,” Durkin said. “For example, I’ve had to change what french fries I’ve been using to what’s available to me three times already. So next weekend, it could be a different french fry. And that’s a big struggle for me, because I want to be able to provide our customers with consistency.”

Right now, Durkin is serving pub style food on a limited menu. But ultimately, she plans to focus on artisan sandwiches, soups and salads, embodying a Panera vibe but with her own homemade recipes. She’s hoping a big draw will be the sourdough bread bowls, served with her famous jambalaya and loaded broccoli cheddar soups.

“There’s a lot of love that goes into my cooking,” Durkin said.

Another big draw to the Secret Elephant

In the weeks since the Secret Elephant’s been open, owner Desi Durkin has helped out as a bartender, waitress, hostess, cook, cleaner, and everything in between. But at the end of the day, she’s happy to help in any way that she can so her customers are fully satisfied. “I like taking care of people, I love feeding people and I love allowing other people to have a relaxing and good time,” Durkin said.

is the bottoms up beer system. Instead of making room for a beer tap, Durkin stores the kegs under a countertop behind the bar, with tubes directly connecting the kegs to the spout on top of the counter. The bottoms up pouring system comes with special cups with holes in the bottom, which are covered by a magnet. When Durkin or a bartender pushes the cup down on the spout, the magnet pops up and beer pours in. There are five spots for cups, so five beers can be poured in 10 seconds.

“It makes our lives a lot easier and functional, and it’s a perfect pour every time — there’s no waste,” Durkin said. “And it comes out right at 33 degrees, so it’s just under freezing, it’s ice cold.”

Once the beer is gone, patrons can pop out the magnet on the bottom of the cup and keep it. Durkin ordered ones with the Secret Elephant logo on it, so people will take it home, stick it on their fridge and remember to come back for more.

Senior economics major Ryan Glauner plans on doing exactly that. He lives with seven housemates, and when he goes home and sticks his magnet on the fridge, he hopes his housemates will ask him about the new place in town.

Glauner used to love coming to Wild Bistro and was sad to see it close down. But, he’s impressed with how Durkin has turned everything around, and he appreciates all that Durkin does, from helping behind the bar to greeting people at the door to sitting down with patrons and getting to know them.

“She’s great, she’s working hard here, she obviously cares about it a lot,” Glauner said. “She obviously has a plan in mind, she’s got her vision of what she wants this place to be, and I really respect that. If you start something with an end goal in mind and everything else in between, I can’t help but respect it.”

Durkin’s big plan at the moment is to get the deli menu up and running, but eventually she wants to turn the Secret Elephant into a space that welcomes the arts too. She’s planning on having a large stage built to hold open mics, comedy nights and live music performances.

She also wants to decorate the space with artwork for sale from local artists. Durkin already recruited Connor Lawson, owner of Royal 24 Gym, to display some of his abstract work on the walls of the Secret Elephant.

But before she can really explore these artistic endeavors, Durkin wants to focus on sustaining her establishment throughout the summer. With most of her staff and customers being students, Durkin hopes she’ll be able to draw Oxford locals to the Secret Elephant during the dead season. But she said she feels overwhelmed and blessed by the positive reviews from students and the packed hours she gets on weeknights and weekends.

“I am shocked at how fast the word got out and how much business we’ve had in such a short period of time. I’m really excited about it, I didn’t expect this,” Durkin said. “When you open a new place… you expect to be struggling for the first few years, and financially, we still will, because it took a lot of investment to remodel and create what’s there now. But the support is awesome.”

Students keep coming back to the Secret Elephant for more than just the cool lights, immaculate vibes or great drink deals, though.

“I love Desi, I literally love her. She was the main thing that made me wanna come back here,” senior psychology and strategic communication major Victoria Crabtree said. “She’s so nice, and she just made me want to give her my business. Of course I want to give her my business.”

Liz Osborne, a senior media & culture and fashion corporate business co-major agreed that Durkin’s bubbly and friendly persona immediately set the tone for the evening.

“She’s so welcoming. You walk in, she makes sure she gets to know you, she’s talking to you,” Osborne said. “She’s so caring and remembers everything about you. She’s a really good owner.”

Durkin calls the regulars who come to the Secret Elephant her “tribe,” and she said the tribe just keeps growing and growing by the day.

“I have fun with them, I have a great time with them. I feel like I have a whole bunch of children now, and that’s the way they are with me,” Durkin said. “You walk through the door, you’re part of the tribe too.”

Based on Durkin’s relationship with her customers and grand plans for the space, it’s no surprise what the real secret to the Secret Elephant is.

Senior strategic communication and IMS major Francesca Khanga (left) joined her friend Victoria Crabtree (middle) for her first visit to the Secret Elephant. Khanga is already a “die-hard fan” and plans to come back after graduation. She says the addition of a new bar in Oxford is just the kind of spicing up the city needs. “Everyone got used to COVID restrictions and the new fixtures that could happen, and I think that there’s no ‘Wow’ factor anymore. So, a new place was definitely needed,” Khanga said.