Trade Winds Inn Restaurant

The Trade Winds Inn opened in the 1950s during Route 66's commercial peak — a typical motor-court motel property of the era, built to serve the steady stream of family-vacation and business-traveler traffic that defined the highway through Clinton during the 1950s and 1960s. The inn's architecture, signage, and operating model were entirely conventional for the era; what makes the property historically distinctive is the Elvis Presley patronage during the 1960s.

Elvis stayed at the Trade Winds Inn four separate times during the mid-1960s. The visits occurred during his drives between Graceland in Memphis and his West Coast film commitments — Elvis preferred to drive his own cars between Memphis and Los Angeles rather than fly, and Clinton's position roughly halfway between the two cities along the Route 66 corridor made it a natural overnight stop. Elvis specifically requested Room 215 on each visit — a corner room with relatively private parking access and a comfortable bed for an arriving-at-night, leaving-early road-traveler stay.

The motel has preserved Room 215 as the Elvis Suite. The room is essentially restored to its 1960s configuration — period furniture, vintage Elvis memorabilia, and interpretive material documenting the four visits. The Elvis Suite is bookable as a regular guest room (at a modest premium over standard rooms) for travelers who want to actually sleep in the room Elvis used, and is also occasionally opened to non-guest visitors who want to photograph the space and read the interpretive panels.

Breakfast at Trade Winds is served from the 6am open through mid-morning and is the diner's strongest meal. The menu is classic Oklahoma diner — fried egg plates with bacon or sausage and hash browns, biscuits and gravy with hand-made sausage gravy, omelets with standard fillings, pancakes and French toast, and full breakfast plates that combine eggs, meat, potatoes, and toast for $9 to $13 across the menu. The biscuits and gravy is the standard recommendation and competes directly with Pop Hicks's version for the title of best biscuits-and-gravy in Clinton.

Lunch transitions around 11am to a classic American diner menu — burgers, sandwiches, chicken fried steak (a marquee item), club sandwiches, BLTs, and the daily plate special. The plate specials rotate through standard country comfort items — chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes, country fried chicken with green beans, meatloaf with corn, and Friday fried fish or catfish plates. Lunch prices run $10 to $16 per plate with sides included.

Dinner continues the lunch menu with the addition of a few heartier evening items — larger chicken fried steak portions, country fried chicken dinners, occasional pot roast and ribs plates, and full breakfast available all-day for travelers who want to do breakfast for dinner. The kitchen takes orders until 8:30pm with the dining room closing at 9pm. Pie and dessert are available across all meals; the pie program is smaller than Pop Hicks's but covers the standard chocolate, coconut, and apple options.

The diner's dining room is a single comfortable space attached to the motel's lobby — about 60 seats split between booth seating along the windows and counter seating at a long counter facing the kitchen pass. The aesthetic is classic 1950s motor-court diner with original or period-appropriate furnishings, vintage Route 66 photographs on the walls (including several that document Clinton's stretch of the highway during its commercial peak), and a small display of Elvis memorabilia near the lobby entrance that connects the diner to the inn's most famous guest.

Service is friendly and unhurried in classic small-town diner style. Servers know the regulars by name and the kitchen executes consistent diner-quality food at appropriate diner speed — orders typically arrive within 10-15 minutes of ordering during normal volume, slightly longer during peak Saturday and Sunday breakfast hours. The counter seating is the standard recommendation for solo travelers; the booths work well for families and small groups.

Visitor experience for Route 66 tourists is generally positive. The Elvis connection is genuinely interesting (and the diner does not over-commercialize it — there are no Elvis Burgers or theme-decor excesses), the location directly across from the Route 66 Museum makes the diner an obvious pairing, and the 7-days-a-week hours fill the Sunday gap when Pop Hicks is closed. The combination of authentic Route 66 motor-court history, the Elvis cultural footnote, and serviceable diner food at appropriate prices produces a satisfying stop.

The natural plan combines breakfast or lunch at Trade Winds with a visit to the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum directly across Gary Boulevard. The walk between the two is genuinely under two minutes. The classic itinerary: arrive in Clinton at 8am, breakfast at Trade Winds from 8am to 9am, walk to the museum at 9am open, spend 9am to 12pm at the museum, then return to Trade Winds for lunch — or alternatively walk to Pop Hicks (a few hundred yards east along Gary Boulevard) for the lunch comparison.

For travelers who want to spend the night in Clinton, the Trade Winds Inn motel is one of the better lodging options — modest, comfortable, historically interesting, and walkable to the museum and Pop Hicks. Booking the Elvis Suite (Room 215) is an optional upgrade that runs at a modest premium and produces a genuinely memorable Route 66 overnight. Standard rooms run roughly $80 to $120 per night depending on season.

For travelers continuing west along Route 66, the natural next stop is Elk City — about 25 miles west, with the National Route 66 & Transportation Museum that complements the Clinton museum (the Elk City museum emphasizes vehicles, the Clinton museum emphasizes history). Continuing further west, Texola is the last Oklahoma town before the Texas Panhandle and sits roughly 50 miles west of Clinton; the small Texola ghost-town stretch and the Texas border crossing are typical afternoon destinations for road-trippers who breakfast in Clinton.