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Ida Hite, owner of Lyra’s Natural Kitchen, which opened earlier this month at Stony Point Fashion Park
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Lyra’s Natural Kitchen includes a variety of vegan and keto-friendly dishes among its offerings.
There’s a shop-small movement happening in an unlikely place — the mall. Under new ownership as of last year after a Florida-based real estate investment firm purchased it for $14.6 million, two-decade-old Stony Point Fashion Park is experiencing an influx of local.
Tyson Beane, specialty leasing manager for Stony Point, has rededicated the dog-friendly, courtyard-style mall to include more local entrepreneurs in its footprint. Roughly 40% of the current businesses are locally owned, including Black-owned restaurant Lyra’s Natural Kitchen, which opened at the beginning of September.
“Our niche is organic, free-range meats,” says Lyra’s Natural Kitchen chef and owner Ida Hite. “A lot of people want and are preaching about the health benefits of organic food, but Richmond just isn’t there yet. You go to California, it’s there” on the restaurant scene.
The pandemic was Hite’s motivating life event. After 18 years in medical counseling, she was ready to roll up her sleeves and start her own catering business. Hite’s last day at Bon Secours Medical Center was Halloween 2021 — by November 20 of that year, she had acquired her catering license. Recalling that day, Hite’s eyes shine above the towering hydrangeas she cut to decorate Lyra’s tables.
“I could hear my inner voice reflecting on my life and how I wanted to live it,” she says. “I was doing hard work for somebody else, and I thought, why not do it for myself? Why not do something I love?”
After two successful years catering professionally, her dream moved forward.
“My cousin lives in the Stony Point area, and he told me that the mall was looking for area businesses to fill its storefronts. I filled out the application and brought food [with me] when I dropped it off. Feed people, that’s just what I do. I got a call from the leasing agent within 10 minutes. ‘We want you!’ he said — while chewing in my ear,” Hite says, laughing.
Besides recruiting regional businesses, Stony Point sponsors free community events, such as live music and goat yoga classes on the plaza facing Lyra’s Natural Kitchen. Art from adjacent Zero Empty Spaces #28, an organization that acquires empty storefronts and transforms them into neighborhood galleries, hangs on the walls at Lyra’s.
During her restaurant’s debut, Hite served many of her signature dishes, such as Grandma’s mac and cheese (also available vegan) and her own slow-roasted brisket, made from free-range, grass-finished beef raised in the Shenandoah Valley at Sunrise Farms.
Hite says it feeds her soul to offer a large vegan and keto-friendly menu and meal-prep services and to include a broad, healthy bill of fare for children. Options such as barbecue jackfruit sliders and grilled vegan cheese with agar agar (plant-based gelatin) cup or veggie sticks make the restaurant’s $7.50 kids offerings a standout. The menu at Lyra’s Natural Kitchen, named for Hite’s granddaughter, is split down the middle between vegan and vegetarian dishes, including a chicken-less salad sandwich, and carnivorous mains such as blue crab salad, pasture-raised grilled chicken and pulled pork. All of the meats are organic.
Open seven days a week for sit-down breakfast, lunch and dinner without table service, the fast-casual concept uses point-of-sale technology for ordering rather than servers. Food is packaged to go, and indoor and outdoor dining are available. Prices range from an $8 vegetable hash to a $20 beef or chicken plate with green salad and homemade cornbread. Sides of fried riced cauliflower, sauteed greens or redskin mashed potatoes go for $4. Mushroom coffee and pineapple-moringa (an herbal supplement) juice are available, alongside more traditional beverages such as iced tea and organic fountain drinks. No alcohol is currently served, though wine and beer options may be added later. Hite plans on letting her customers “dictate our experience.”
“I didn’t have a full image of what was to come,” Hite says. “Everything about opening a restaurant is hard. It was a lot to tackle, but my experience in health care management helped. Family members, including my daughter, who directs our events and private parties, have all pitched in. My ability to organize, as well as my perseverance, all these things have helped me get open.”
Lyra’s Natural Kitchen is currently open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.
