Tuscaloosa's Urban Bar & Kitchen is all about family

It's Good Friday morning and welcome to the sixth and final day of Tuscaloosa Restaurant Week. Today we'll be spending some time with Grover Lyons, co-owner of Urban Bar & Kitchen.

Every day this week, Thread and Visit Tuscaloosa have been showcasing the city's most popular restaurant locations and the artisans making its best dishes in a feature published every morning.

Want more? Over 40 participating eateries are also offering unique offers and special discounts on their most popular orders throughout the week. Visit the Tuscaloosa Restaurant Week website for more information and to participate today.

One of the best restaurants in America, and also one of downtown Tuscaloosa's newest, is a heartwarming success story that's quickly gaining accolades.

Urban Bar & Kitchen, run by co-owners and friends Gary McGehee and Grover Lyons, was the only Alabama restaurant to make USA Today's list of America's Best Restaurants in February, just three years after the duo decided to give the restaurant business another go.

There's a reason for that: McGhee and Lyons met in the early '90s and have worked together for more than 20 years, first under Drew Henson at Cypress Inn on Rice Mine Road and then at The Levy, McGhee's own restaurant, which he opened in 2015 on the banks of the Black Warrior River in Northport.

The seafood-focused Levee was beloved from the moment it opened, but it was a massive establishment that could accommodate hundreds of diners. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, Levee was one of the first local restaurants to be hit, and McGee made the difficult decision to close the restaurant in May 2020.

“Gary called me to let me know that Levy Bar & Grill was over. It was devastating news,” Lyons told The Thread in an exclusive interview while McGhee was busy with other commitments.

Lyons said when she told her wife, her first concern was for McGee, who she knew would be devastated. She told Glover to call friends and ask if they needed anything.

“He said, 'Give me some time,'” Lyons recalled. “'Give me some time to figure things out.'”

A few weeks later, the couple was searching for a new building, this time south of the river. As we reported in our thread when we first announced McGee's plans to open UBK, they initially thought their eventual home on University Boulevard was too small, a much more intimate place than the Cypress Inn or the Levee.

Still, they decided “this is the right place,” and took the plunge, opening Urban Bar & Kitchen at 2321 University Boulevard, the same location where Fuzzy's Taco Shop had twice tried and failed to open a location in Tuscaloosa.

Affirmations and song lyrics were displayed on the walls in neon.

“Three years later, here we are. By the grace of God, here we are,” Lyons said. “We've been in business for a little over three years and it's going really well and we're having a lot of fun. We want to thank everyone in Tuscaloosa and the surrounding counties for the support and love they've given us. It's been overwhelming, it's a blessing and we're really grateful.”

Lyons said UBK is often referred to as a Cajun or Creole restaurant, likely due to the popularity of its Cajun Surf and Turf, but the reality is more complicated, Lyons said.

“The food here is hard to describe,” he says. “A lot of people think it's Cajun, but it's not. A lot of the menu came about by chance. Over the years, we've both been cooking, watching and eating what we love, and we just serve all the things we love best.”

Lyons said the menu “will include everything from chicken fingers to rib-eye steaks.”

“I tell people,” Lyons said with a smile, “if you come to this restaurant and there's nothing on the menu that you like or want to eat, you're probably not hungry! Because we have everything on the menu.”

“If you haven't tried Urban Bar & Kitchen yet, I urge you to give it a try,” Lyons says. “I think you'll be pleased and will keep coming back because you'll get great service and great food at a reasonable price.”

The other half of their success formula, Lyons and McGehee say, is they want everyone who walks in to feel like family, whether they're a regular customer or an employee.

So, despite the tough times in the restaurant industry, with both Cypress Inn and Levee Stand closing today, the pair decided to open Urban Bar & Kitchen.

“We've been doing this since we were 15, so of course it's a passion, but the other reason is we're not just doing it for ourselves. We have a lot of friends, people we know, who worked at Levy's, who lost their jobs, and we knew how hard it was for them,” Lyons says. “We wanted to create another restaurant to give them, our family, another chance. We were really just trying to look out for everyone, not just for me and him, because times are tough and everyone needs a job. We tried to get everybody together and get everyone back to work more than anything.”

Customers should feel like family, too, and if you've ever seen Gary or Grover work in the dining room, you know how much work goes into it.

“That's not always possible. Sometimes we're too busy, but 85 percent of the time, one of us is walking around this floor, talking to every customer that comes into this building,” Lyons said. “There's a good chance that they'll remember our name and leave.”

This isn't just a performance. Lyons said staff will do everything in their power to make sure customers leave satisfied. While humans make mistakes and no restaurant is perfect, Lyons said UBK wants the opportunity to resolve issues for those who do have rare but ultimately unavoidable problems.

“This isn't just a place to come, eat and go,” he said. “We want our customers to come in and be greeted with a smile and feel welcomed, because we want them to come back and we want them to tell their friends about us.”

Urban Bar & Kitchen is located at 2321 University Boulevard and is open daily for lunch (11am on Tuesdays), closes at 2pm and reopens for dinner at 5pm.

During Tuscaloosa Restaurant Week, UBK will be serving Blue Crab Ravioli in a Seafood Cream Sauce with a Side of Asparagus, a limited-time return of a long-loved entrée dish that is not currently featured on the UBK menu.

“We're just two local guys trying to make an honest living. We're family-owned, part of the community, small business owners, and we just want the opportunity to serve you guys,” Lyons said. “Small businesses don't have the buying power that larger businesses have, so everything costs a little more and we all have to work a little harder to stay in business, but you can taste the difference. It makes a big difference. Give small businesses a try.”

This profile is the sixth and final in a series as part of Visit Tuscaloosa's Restaurant Week 2024, presented this year by UA Online.

Thank you for reading this feature. To read the rest of the series, click here.