Lua Mediterranean - Lua Gets Back
The Long and Winding Road From The Pritchard to Lúa
Everybody had a hard year.
There was a time, a before-time, that can be referred to as such because things were different back then. In the before-time, everyone could come and go as they pleased without worry of a plague that haunted their steps like a slasher lurking in the hallway, a masked and uninvited visitor with a knife larger than a carving utensil.
If you’re unaware of this villain, there is a dog-eared, yellowed copy of a newspaper from a couple years ago announcing the arrival of COVID-19 that you can read. It has likely reached your friends and family, made some of them sick or worse, and put a slowdown on the economy like a hair clog in the bathtub.
It’s come for you, it’s come for me, it’s come for everybody. This lurking hand, secretly reaching across the doorframe, has attacked the restaurant industry as well.
Everybody had a good time.
The Pritchard was founded six years ago in the Plaza District. With a focus on small plates and good wine, it seemed like a slugger. The neighborhood was hungry for new concepts and moveable feasts. But, this was at a point when so many new joints were opening that wallets and schedules became stretched, and the restaurant, like many others, was struggling to keep its head above water.
Enter: a reinvention. Aimee Ahpeatone, a 25 year service industry veteran and founder of The Pritchard, flipped a coin and changed the restaurant into a new concept: Lúa.
The food would be prepared at the same high standards, but the space more casual with a Mediterranean focus. Riley Marshall, the tall and slim denim-clad and cowboy-hatted gentleman owner of Bar Arbolada, who prepares what celebrity chef and author Alton Brown considers the best double- cheeseburger in America, stepped in to help Lúa open the doors. [NOTE: I’ve worked at B’Arby’s, Riley is a friend, and that man makes my favorite cheeseburger I’ve ever had, no lie.]
The idea was to turn the spot, using most of the same staff, into an establishment catering to their clientele in a way that was more easy-going. We’re talking about Plaza folks, which can vary from somebody who wants a bottle of respectable pinot noir to a simple can of beer. As of the time of writing, they have a bottle of good Spanish wine priced around $30 for a litre, which is very fair for restaurant pricing.
Lúa launched in spring of 2020, which was the exact same time that...guess what happened? Can we draw this pause out longer? If you guessed the release of the McRib, you’re terribly mistaken. It was the first release of COVID, dropped like a mid-00’s Lil’ Wayne mixtape.
Everybody pulled their socks up.
There was panic on the streets of London, Oklahoma City, and elsewhere. How the hell can you maintain a bar or restaurant when people can’t gather without a sizable likelihood of catching something or infecting others? Now in the public domain, there is a 1968 movie called Night Of The Living Dead that deals directly with the concept of viral mutants that disrupt and destroy civilization. That ain’t a good time to open a business. This wasn’t either.
Lúa kept their patio open until October 2020 (which sounds like a hundred-thousand- million-years-ago in kind-a-somewhat-after-before-time years) and provided food and wine pick-ups for the before-times stragglers. That fall was the proverbial shit-hitting-the-fan moment when none of that was viable anymore. Lúa received some federal stimulus funds to pay their employees.
At that point, the bars and restaurants trying to keep the lights on, the stoves hot, and the beer cold found themselves needing to take out federal loans to pay their rent and their employees. A thousand dollars for each hyphen in the previous paragraph would’ve been a drop in the bucket.
The tunnel shows no light, yet the industry must walk through it.
Thankfully, laws became as lax as a grandfather’s loosened belt after a holiday dinner and sins such as selling wine or cocktails to-go from restaurants were forgiven. Lúa briefly changed to a food and booze take-out model, but how far can that stream stretch?
Everybody saw the sunshine.
Guess who’s back? Shady’s back? No, it’s Lúa and other bars and restaurants reaching out like revitalized zombie hands from their graves. After the wrangles of switching concepts during the most life and society-altering changes we’ll hopefully never again see in our lifetimes (get vaccinated and boosted, you have no excuse), this Plaza place is back. Aimee and her team have had to look at their original concept and make difficult decisions. Most restaurants still open have had to largely pivot to take out or delivery, which brings a new set of questions: what food will travel best? What kinds of takeout boxes do we need? How do we staff when we’re completely uncertain how busy it’s going to be?
None of this has been easy for any of us, and new restaurants trying to open right at the time of shutdown is like having to return a book to the library before you got through the first chapter, only with late fees steep enough to consider Chapter 11 proceedings.
Service industry people, not all of them but a lot of them, do it because they love it, now more than ever. Tip well, be nice, and be patient with the changing restaurant industry.
> Lúa Mediterranean & Bottle Shop; 1749 NW 16th St, Oklahoma City; (405) 601-4067; Luaokcplaza.com
