Local Italian mainstay Stella recently celebrated its 15th anniversary, but little sister Lorena has been a dream in the making for almost as long. As Stella grew in popularity and set down roots, owner Lori Burson kept her eye on the space next door for over thirteen years. The space was occupied by 1492 New World Latin Cuisine before its owners shifted to focus on its primary location in Casady Square. When they let the landlord know they were leaving, the restauranteur’s phone rang, and the journey to open Lorena began.
The concept for the new space had been in development for much longer — percolating on a back burner in Burson’s mind were all the family recipes she wanted to share from her childhood, alongside other Southern food traditions. If you know Burson, even in passing, it’s little surprise that she hails from a long line of women known for their warm hospitality and their skills in the kitchen. The consummate hostess, she can be seen daily welcoming guests at Stella or moving through the dining rooms at Lorena to visit with regulars and greet newcomers. Lorena was her maternal grandmother, who raised her family in Abilene, Texas, and lived to be 104 years old. With a focus on Southern cuisine and hospitality, the restaurant is a way to carry on these traditions and share them with the community at large.
Those familiar with the original space will notice many changes throughout. Fitzsimmons Architects completely reworked it. The large bar was relocated to maximize dining space near the windows at the front of the building, giving a light and airy feel to what is now the main dining room. A side room features a large bourbon-focused bar; beyond that, a private room sits just off the kitchen, which was also expanded and upgraded. As she gave me a tour of the space, Burson pointed out nostalgic touches.
“Above each booth, a framed cover from a cookbook that belonged to my mother, my grandmother or myself,” she said.
Another element of the new endeavor was decades in the making. Chef Cally Johnson was well-known during her over 20 years in Oklahoma — from stints at Boulevard Steak House and The Park House to co-founding Big Truck Tacos — before returning to her home state of California. Burson’s plan was convincing enough to lure her back to the 405 to serve as the executive chef at Lorena.
With renovations well underway and Chef Johnson on the case, menu development began in earnest. Johnson began working her way through a list of treasured dishes, each a memory from Burson’s childhood. She explained a central tenet of the concept.
“Each menu item is truly a story,” she said. “When we tell the story through food, we can help people access their memories.”
“The food that chef has created, sometimes when people try it, they start tearing up, finding memories of their own families and traditions,” Burson said. “And so this restaurant that honors my grandmother, I think, in so many ways honors everyone’s family and your memories of that connection.”
During recipe development, Burson was hoping for her grandmother’s chicken and dumplings, and the eager chef wanted to deliver. But since her grandmother didn’t always use written recipes, there was no road map. So Johnson started with what Burson could remember and made version after version until she got it right.
“I don’t care if you cook the best chicken and dumplings in the world,” Johnson said. “You’ll never come close to the memory until you hit the perfect note.”
Catfish is a signature dish at Lorena, not only as a Southern staple but also because of Bubba.
“A friend’s mother — she is 90 years old, and everyone calls her Bubba — was telling me all about the catfish from Middendorf’s Restaurant in Louisiana,” Johnson said. “So I started researching the restaurant, and I did a deep dive on everything — every news article, everything.”
The chef is pleased with the thinly sliced catfish, fried to a crispy perfection, but perhaps no one is more thrilled than Bubba, who comes in once or twice a week for the catfish with a side of nostalgia.
Honoring history
Both white women, Burson and Johnson were acutely aware of the issues surrounding cultural appropriation in opening a Southern food restaurant. Southern food is deeply rooted in the experiences, struggles and innovations of Black America, a history that has often been ignored, or rather ignored until it is exploited. Today, Black chefs and restaurant owners face structural racism in the industry: They encounter more difficulty accessing funding, loans and prime locations; receive lower media visibility; and face greater scrutiny from critics.
Johnson and Burson both said it had been a chief concern, and they had gone into the project with open eyes, minds and hearts. Johnson started with research on Black foodways, from books like Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine by Kelley Fanto Deetz and the acclaimed Netflix series High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America.
“I read, and I read and I read some more,” she said. “I wanted to understand the history and acknowledge the source, the often very painful origin of the food that we wanted to share.”
“I didn’t want to be somebody that came in and just monetized a period of time that is such a shameful chapter of our history,” Burson said. “But it’s fundamental to American food culture. I wanted to help tell these stories, and I believe we can do it in a way that is respectful.”
For example, one dish uses middlins, broken pieces of Carolina rice. The rice is a historic heirloom variety that originated in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, Johnson explained.
“[Middlins are] grains of rice that get broken in the milling process,” she said. “Whole grains of Carolina rice went to the slave owners, and the broken pieces, the middlins, went to the slaves. We serve pimento cheese middlins with our catfish, and we source the middlins from Carolina rice.”
The chef also sources Camellia Brand beans from Louisiana, ham from Benton’s Bacon & Country Ham in Tennessee and Duke’s mayo.
Many Southern staples found their way onto the menu, including grits, fried green tomatoes, crab cakes, deviled eggs, fried chicken and more. Lorena’s tagline is “Southern Twist,” and that seems right. Blessedly, no one is talking about “elevating” or “refining” Southern food. As we wrapped up our visit, Chef Johnson opened up further.
“The only thing that I can do is to go into it with the kindest heart and with the best intentions as I did this,” she said. “And my prayer was that the menu and the spirit in which it’s cooked would show honor and respect.”
Lorena definitely doesn’t feel like your grandmother’s house, but it is warm and welcoming, as intended. It might also be a high-end time machine. You can imagine someone tunneling into a long-lost memory after a bite of a handcrafted BLT on Pullman white. You can picture teleporting back into a day long past after that first taste of juicy fried chicken.
And what if you could return, for just a moment, to a big table with your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, a pitcher of iced tea sweating on the flour-sack tablecloth? Could you take a step back into one of those long summer afternoons, where a cake cooled on a counter as your mom let you help make the icing? Can a simple banana pudding take you all the way back to the sun-soaked back garden at your great-grandmothers’ house? At Lorena, it’s not a longshot; it’s just lunch.
Visit lorena-okc.com.
This article appears in Best of OKC 2025.