Chris and LaVeryl Lower, owners of The Metro Wine Bar & Bistro, announced yesterday that they had sold controlling interest in their Nichols Hills adjacent restaurant to longtime friends and regulars Phil G. Busey, Sr. and Cathy Busey, bringing to an end a nearly 38-year run at one of the city’s premier restaurants. Founded in 1988 by Chris Lower and Chef Kurt Fleischfresser, The Metro in its first incarnation was a sister restaurant to The Coach House, but over the years went through a few transitions, including Fleischfresser’s departure in 2007 when he sold his interest to the Lowers to focus on The Coach House and Western Concepts, the hospitality group launched by Carl Milam in 1997. In its 38-year history, The Metro developed the reputation as one of OKC’s best special occasion restaurants, also garnering a huge group of regulars and a very distinguished lunch crowd. For decades, LaVeryl’s wine list has been the gold standard in the city, which is where our paths first crossed when I was a newbie wine writer, and she was a patient, kind and knowledgable mentor, who just happened to have one of the great palates in the state.
LaVeryl Lower confirmed the close of the sale via text yesterday, saying, “It’s all true. It’s time for our next chapter, and we’re looking forward to it.” The announcement provoked a slew of social media posts relating stories, wishing them well, and laments for the end of a delicious chapter in OKC’s culinary history. From a personal perspective, I started celebrating birthday at The Metro since 1997, and have made a birthday week appearance there nearly every year after. Her dining room was a gathering place for wine (and food) nerds, and generations of wine reps have learned very valuable lessons around the Lowers’ tables. The biggest question that emerged yesterday was what will happen going forward, but the Lowers and everyone else we talked to assured us that the restaurant is in great hands and great shape going forward.
“We’ve been investors for quite a while, and friends with Chris and LaVeryl from almost the beginning,” Phil Busey, Sr., said via phone from the family’s home in Carmel, California. They have a residence here, too, and the company they founded, Delaware Resource Group, is headquartered off W. Memorial on the city’s northern edge. “When they told us they were looking to sell, we offered to buy. It’s been our special occasion restaurant, and they’ve catered so many of our personal and professional events over the years that we wanted to keep the traditions alive and strong. It’s an iconic restaurant, and we only mean to make small changes in areas we think could use improvement.”
Busey noted that DRG’s focus is aerospace defense, and so they are not operators. To that end, they’ve reached out to Chef Kurt Fleischfresser to help guide The Metro through the transition. “We know he’s going to be involved; we’re just not sure what it looks like yet,” Busey said. “I admire Kurt’s work so much, and even more, I admire the man he is. We were going to The Coach House in 1980s, so we’ve been familiar with is work for decades, and we trust him to shepherd The Metro’s legacy.”
According to Busey and Fleischfresser, there will be no major changes right away, more a “knocking the dust off” approach (Fleischfresser) and ordering and updating kitchen equipment and dealing with accessibility issues at the main entrance (Busey). For the accessibility issues, the Buseys have asked architect and landlord Ken Howell for assistance. “Ken has some good ideas on how to deal with the accessibility without negatively impacting the overall ambience,” Busey said.
For his part, Fleischfresser also noted the incredible team the Lowers built at The Metro, most or all of whom will remain. The Metro is one of the rare restaurants with employee tenures running into the 20-plus-year range, including LeAnn Marshall, who has been there since the doors opened. “Chris and LaVeryl are great operators, and the crew is great,” Fleischfresser said. “I’ll be working with Chef Sara Howard, and we’ve worked together off and on over the years. Every restaurant needs the occasional tweak or change, but what will not change is the great food and quality of service guests have come to expect.”
Fleischfresser, like the Lowers, possesses an extraordinary wine palate, so wine nerds can relax about that aspect of the menu. As for the food, Fleischfresser said The Metro began as a French bistro, and while some of the original menu items still remain, he’ll be moving the cuisine toward a more decidedly French focus, his specialty and area of award-winning expertise. “We’re also going to focus on a little more of a ‘let your hair down’ kind of feel,” he said. “We also will keep the strong wine focus with its appeal to fans of more esoteric wines without losing its broad accessibility to all our guests.”
Operations will continue as normal at The Metro with no interruption in the regular schedule and operating hours for now. Both Busey and Fleischfresser emphasized that it’s too early in process to say anything definitively.
I’d like to take the unusual step of closing this one out by saying a massive thank you to the Lowers, who were instrumental in me developing a voice in the local wine scene when I was a green wine writer for the OK Gazette in the mid ’00s. Through them, I met so many winemakers, winery owners, spirits industry reps and brand ambassadors, and I will always remember fondly the days tasting wines around the table with Ian Clarke, Ian Bennett, Alex Kroblin, Cat Aur, Clayton Bahr, Christie Luna, Bruce Upthegrove, Brittany Cast, Laura Brinlee, Ashley Tarver, and so many others. LaVeryl has long been a champion and sympathetic listener to women navigating the often good-ol-boy labyrinth of hospitality industry realities. Many times I took fresh-faced wine reps to meet her, knowing that she would be endlessly patient and kind while she helped them wrap their brains around how big the wine world really is and how no one will ever know everything about it, all while issuing gentle nos and yeses to the wines they brought for her to try. I’m confident the transition will go smoothly, but I’m also confident the city is losing one of its most luminous personalities and a damn fine human being.
Republished by EatingOKC
