Some 15 years ago, before the Devon Tower rose in the distance and before the Ambassador Hotel breathed new life into dormant Deco, Lori Burson opened Stella Modern Italian Cuisine in once-quiet Midtown, establishing a neighborhood cornerstone that would come to be revered for its oak-fired flatbreads, seasonal pastas and warm hospitality. Today, she’s continuing her legacy as a neighborhood pioneer with the opening of Lorena, another heartfelt passion project from a restaurateur with a proven knack for community.
Located next door to its older sister, Lorena takes those same sentiments that established Stella as an institution, and applies a contemporary Southern sheen. Whereas Stella trades in the kind of Italian food that Burson became transfixed by while studying abroad in Rome, Lorena is an homage that hits closer to home. Billed by Burson as “elevated Southern,” the restaurant is named after her grandmother; and an ode to the dishes they shared together.
Especially for such a homegrown concept, where her grandmother’s handwritten recipe for meringue is framed on the dining room wall, and Burson’s first cookbook from childhood hangs over a booth, timing was everything. “I’ve had this in mind for over 10 years,” she recalled. “I had a Southern gospel brunch in my house about 10 years ago, and my friends loved it — really showcasing the food that I grew up with.”
The food comes courtesy of Cally Johnson, a seasoned chef and native Oklahoman who returned to Oklahoma to work with Burson, and cook up her own legacy. “I didn’t just want to come back,” Johnson said. “I had a mission of coming back and doing my last restaurant; doing something great.”
That sincerity is as integral to her scratch-made recipes as her diligently sourced ingredients, like grits from Marsh Hen Mill in Edisto Island, South Carolina, and ham from Benton’s Country Hams in Madisonville, Tennessee — deployed in dishes like Gulf shrimp and pork belly with pink-hued “Unicorn” grits, Worcestershire butter sauce and blue popcorn; and ham-topped deviled eggs. The rest of the menus read like an earnest love letter to Southern cuisine, from golden-brown fried green tomatoes with verdant garden ranch to fried bologna sandwiches heaped with BBQ chips and creamy pimento cheese — made with two kinds of Tillamook cheese and Duke’s Mayo, no less. It’s the kind of food, Burson said, that has brought guests to tears over chicken & dumplings that reminded them of their own grandmother’s cooking; the kind that inspired guests from the Carolinas to say it reminds them of home.
The space, previously occupied by 1492 New World Latin Cuisine, has been reimagined by Fitzsimmons Architects, leaning into the Mid-Century Modern aesthetic of the building, while the logo — a trifecta of lemons dangling from a tree — was designed by Funnel Design’s Sean Cobb to represent the warm welcome of lemonade on a Southern porch, as well as the three generations of Bursons: herself, her mother and her grandmother Lorena.
“Some people have asked why I want to open another concept, after having one for 15 years, and a big part of it was the incredible staff that I’ve had the honor of working with,” Burson mused, referring to longtime Stella employees like Todd Davis and Kayla Jones De Leon — as well as Lorena’s Emma Ward and Robert Painter — with familial warmth. “I felt like it was time to let them grow.”
Coupled with her passion for Midtown, where she’s been a foundational part of the community for 15 years, Lorena looks to expand an already lustrous legacy — for fellow Southerners nostalgic for home, for a staff that Burson can grow with and for Oklahomans far and wide.
