"I’m still a line cook, which surprises people,” says 66-year-old Lucie Slone Meyers, chef-owner of a la Lucie. Her voice is coarse, the product of four decades of smoking and yelling orders over the din of a noisy kitchen, and she wears her hair in a bun. Her visage might not convince anyone that she’s Lexington’s original celebrity chef, but it’s the truth.
“I just like to cook,” Slone Meyers said, “and I’ve done a lot of it.”
Indeed she has, including 30 years of it at her namesake eatery at 159 N. Limestone St. Those decades also included time in the complicated role of co-owner and chef at Roy and Nadine’s, Pacific Pearl and Julep Cup.
“I also opened Rosebud and made some good money there,” she says. “And before that, I helped open Cheapside. I’d go down there on weekends [in 1984] and sell shrimp by the pound. It was fun.”
If things go according to plan, she’ll open just one more restaurant next spring, a la Lucie at The Red Light (780 N. Limestone). Sadly, for this culinary swan song to take shape, it must follow the demise of a la Lucie, which is scheduled to close Nov. 30.
As far as culinary endeavors go, it might seem like she’s already just about done it all, but the fiercely independent Slone Meyers isn’t ready to quit cooking – especially on someone else’s terms. Earlier this year, as the end of her 30-year lease drew near, she learned the building housing a la Lucie was for sale, and she considered buying it. But the price was not only more than she could aff ord, she says the structure also needs substantial modernizing.
She wanted a la Lucie to stay put and operate it for just a few more years, but when she and the new owner couldn’t come to terms on a rent increase, she declined to sign a lease.
“The stress of struggling just to pay that rent would have been too hard, so I just see it as the time to go,” she says. Logically, leaving N. 159 Limestone makes fiscal sense, but the thought brings her to tears. “When you feed people at the same restaurant for 30 years — people who have kids who you watched grow up — it becomes your life.”
A Culinary Mother
When Jonathan Lundy graduated culinary school in 1993, he didn’t aim for a particular restaurant at which to work – he laser targeted the tutelage of Lucie Slone Meyers.
“Lexington, from a restaurant perspective, was her town,” says Lundy, executive chef at Coba Cocina in Chevy Chase and the namesake of the bygone Lexington mainstay Jonathan at Gratz Park. “She had the personality, and everybody knew who she was. I only wanted to work for her.”
Of the cooking techniques Slone Meyers taught him, Lundy said the most valuable lessons centered on the production required for serving large numbers of guests. Feeding a large crowd never dampened her creativity and imagination for fine cooking.
“She was so ambitious menu-wise,” he says. “She was never short of ideas for new concepts or ideas for recipes.”
Lundy regards his mentor as “an incredibly strong cook” – the descriptor chefs commonly use to praise peers who can produce great meals under pressure.
“I’ve seen her do it all and work that kitchen alone,” Lundy says. “She’s as good as anybody.”
Slone Meyers took an equal shine to Lundy and asked him to join her and ex-husband Roy Meyers at Roy and Nadine’s, which the couple opened in 1990.
“She was my culinary mother, and Roy was very much a paternal figure to me, and I was very close to both of them,” says Lundy. So close that the trio opened Pacific Pearl together in 1997. At that time, contemporary Asian cuisine was not only cutting-edge for Lexington but, arguably, for most of the United States. Of all Slone Meyers’ restaurants, Lundy says Pacific Pearl was his favorite, but he believes it was way ahead of its time.
“The city wasn’t ready for it then,” says Lundy, who left in 1998 to begin his own restaurant at Gratz Park Inn. “But it would work now.”
Slone Meyers said Pacific Pearl only “shuffled money, never made any” in its seven years, and so she closed the restaurant. By then she and Roy Meyers were divorced, and Roy and Nadine’s had also closed. Throughout it all, business never faltered at a la Lucie, but the failure of two restaurants in five years left Slone Meyers strapped for cash.
“I was broke, so I sold Rosebud,” Slone Meyers says. She found a partner to open a new restaurant named Phoenix, but when the relationship soured, she sold out and turned her focus to a la Lucie. “I had to get back on my feet again, so I picked up some catering jobs, too.”
Anne Allen, Slone Meyers’ sister, says Lucie has always been resilient, and she believes she’ll bounce back after a la Lucie closes this year.
“She’s an amazing problem-solver who’s always asking herself, ‘What can I do now?’” Allen says. “She’s a tough old broad who can adapt creatively.”
In 2014, when the stretch of Limestone fronting a la Lucie was closed for construction, Allen says her sister devised a clever plan for reminding people that the restaurant was still open. She sent Allen to buy several plastic construction helmets that the two adorned with their own lipstick kisses and a la Lucie signatures.
“And then we took them to Thursday Night Live [at Cheapside Park] and handed them out to people,” Allen says. “She’s always thinking outside the box.”
Predictably, there will be troves wishing she would stay inside the current a la Lucie “box.” On top of countless meals eaten there, thousands have made memories in the eclectic dining room known for its leopard print booths and art-covered walls. Allen, who worked there 10 years, recalls many nights when getting a drink at the bar required navigating a crowd three people deep. Arturo Sandoval, a longtime fan, says just entering a la Lucie transports guests out of Lexington and into a famed Paris cabarét.
“It’s always felt to me like I’ve stepped inside the Moulin Rouge,” says Sandoval, a professor of art at the University of Kentucky. “Wherever you look, there are so many wonderful artistic expressions in that tiny, loud but intimate space. All of that adds up to the kind of ambiance that makes a good meal.”
Longtime patron Charlie Stone says his favorite dish, the buttermilk fried quail, won’t be his greatest loss with a la Lucie’s closing. He’ll miss a staff that knows not only his name and preferences, but also those of countless other guests.
“She and her staff know everyone who comes through the door, and they make you feel like you are in your own kitchen,” says Stone, founder of the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington. “There’s just nothing like it in town; it doesn’t match any other restaurant’s profile.”
Despite the a la Lucie half of the title for Slone Meyers’ next restaurant, she insists it won’t resemble her signature restaurant at all. It will, however, draw on some lessons learned creating the Asian cuisine at Pacific Pearl.
“Asian noodle bowls are hot right now, plus I’ve learned a lot from more casual restaurants,” Slone Meyers says. “I’m thinking this one will cover the four Bs: [charcuterie and cheese] boards, burgers, bowls and bourbon.”
Though she owns the building that will house The Red Light, located on North Limestone at the corner of Loudon, Slone-Meyers is seeking funds for the project through a Kickstarter campaign; in the interim, she also will seek work as a chef at another restaurant to earn some income. Her sister hopes the community that Slone Meyers has given to so generously for decades will give back to her with this next restaurant. She says her sister’s restaurants always took in employees who needed a second chance to get back on their feet, and that they always helped local charities.
“On Thanksgiving, Lucie has people over to her home, employees who have no place to go that day,” Allen says. “She calls them her orphans, and she creates this huge meal for them. That’s the kind of person she is.”