Despite the COVID pandemic, there are new restaurants opening in Lexington
Despite the coronavirus pandemic limiting Kentucky restaurants’ indoor dining capacity to 33 percent and seating outside, these are new dining spots opening in Lexington.
Kismet at The Burl opened Thursday night, despite the COVID-19 outbreak shutdown, bad weather and a power outage. It’s run by chefs Tonya Mays-Cronin and her husband, Philip Cronin, who met while they were learning culinary skills at Sullivan University.
“We’re a full-service walk-up restaurant on The Burl property, kind of attached to it all,” Philip Cronin said. The restaurant has outdoor seating on an Astroturf patio with picnic tables and umbrellas, and indoor seating among the arcade’s video game machines.
Cronin said he would describe their menu as “eclectic street food, things we’ve eaten through our travels together and wanted to recreate and bring to Lexington.”
They were approached to open a bricks-and-mortar home by the owners of the popular live music venue The Burl, who include former University of Kentucky cheerleading coach Jomo Thompson, Will Harvey, Cannon Armstrong and Seth Bertram.
The chefs originally planned to open in the spring, then the coronavirus pandemic hit, shutting down bars and dining in at restaurants across Kentucky.
For the last two years they’ve been cooking at pop-ups inside bars, including Best Friend Bar on Euclid, where they built a following for their steam buns and Dan Dan noodles.
The noodles are a spicy Szechuan noodle dish they ate where they lived in Washington, D.C. and loved; they are available with pork or tofu.
The steam buns are a spicy take on a chicken sandwich. Other options include burgers, Kismet fries with roasted garlic aioli and furikake, and sweet potato doughnuts with vanilla bean ice cream, berries and caramel.
Kismet is open Wednesday through Sunday, 5 to 11 p.m., and now with food service The Burl will be open those hours as well. Bars are allowed to reopen later this month.
“We have this great space down here with arcade games, live music and when the restrictions are lifted this place could be very special,” Cronin said.
Seafood Lady
The other new Lexington restaurant is a Seafood Lady, started by Nichelle Thurston in Louisville in 2015, which has gained fans through word-of-mouth.
“I’m from Pensacola, Florida, originally and the type of seafood we serve is our cuisine,” Thurston said. “Lobster, oysters, crabs, shrimp, fish, Southern seafood, beach scene … there wasn’t much of it when I moved here over 10 years ago,” she said. She quickly found a following and about five years ago began bringing her food truck to Lexington for events.
And people in Lexington loved her Cajun-style seafood boil too.
“We’ve been blessed throughout this five years of being open, to have a large fan base gained by word of mouth and just putting out good food ... and treating people well at the same time,” Thurston said. She began planning a Lexington store a year, “then we ran into COVID-19 but as soon as things settled, we realized we didn’t experience any shortfall. So we decided to go ahead.”
So she’s opened a second location at 833 Georgetown Street offering pans and platters of seafood and veggies, fixed fresh to order, for takeout. The Lexington menu is at seafoodlady502.com and you can order online, by phone or in person.
If you’re ordering in person, be prepared to wait in line, especially at busier times on Friday and Saturday late afternoon.
Seafood Lady will officially open June 13; the restaurant will be open Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday noon to 6 p.m.
