Local dining community loses another legend
From Val Gene's to Cafe 501, Pete Holloway's legacy will endure 2
020's cruelty was always going to bully its way into 2021, but hoping it wouldn't was something we could all do together.
It was fun the 48 hours or so it lasted.
The Oklahoma City dining community lost another one of its pillars with the passing of Peter Holloway, co-founder of Holloway Restaurant Group. Holloway passed away way too young at 66 on Monday.
Holloway began last year in better spirits than a guy fighting stage four melanoma could be expected. When I spoke to him about it last January, he was clear-eyed. Melanoma had taken his best friend Wayne Hirst in 2015, which didn't instill him with much hope but did give him loads of resolve.
“I know what I'm up against,” he told me.
The coronavirus was still just an echo from the news back then.
COVID-19's ruthlessness is no more evident than how it first added complication to Holloway's fight against cancer, and ultimately took his life.
The last time I spoke with Holloway in person was, as 2020 would have it, at a memorial service. Holloway and I were both speakers at the service for chef Michael Paske, who was a Holloway kitchen alum. Holloway spoke passionately that day about the importance of creating and sustaining mental health resources for food-service professionals.
Holloway narrowly missed making mental health his vocation. He studied psychology in college, but once he and Tad Blood began working for legends Jim Vallion and Gene Smelser at The Hungry Peddler for Val Gene Associates, Holloway was hooked on hospitality for life.
“Those were some great old days,” he said at a lunch with Vallion and me back in 2015. “Jimmy and Gene taught me everything I know.”
His years learning and earning at Val Gene Associates saw
him take roost at the Eagle's Nest, develop concepts like Texanna Red's and act as steward to iconic concepts like Harry Bear's and Herman's Seafood.
In 1990, he developed his first top-to-bottom concept for Val Gene's with the birth of Pepperoni Grill, still a fixture at Penn Square Mall. A young operator named Lori Burson accepted her first general manager job in that space.
In response to his passing, Burson posted of Holloway on social media: “He started out as a boss and became a mentor and friend to so many of us. ... He definitely was a giant influence on my life, and I wish we had more days together but we all know he is enjoying an incredible bottle of wine with Wayne (Hirst) and enjoying every sip.”
After many years with Val Gene, Holloway and his wife Sheree opened Cafe 501 in Edmond in 1996. Two years later, with a second Pepperoni Grill in Edmond and Cafe 501 lines for lunch that stretched out the front door, Holloway Restaurant Group was off and running. In the years that followed, he and Sheree would open The Martini Bar, Boulevard Steakhouse, Park House and Ice House in the Myriad Gardens, and he played a role in the revival of the Classen Grill back in the 1990s. Holloway even worked with the Mathis brothers when they approached him about opening a prime steakhouse that would eventually evolve into The Ranch Steakhouse.
Chef Ryan Parrott was a part of that project and spent 1999 working at Boulevard Steakhouse, but that never would've happened if Holloway hadn't made such a strong first impression. Parrott recalled, “I was working at Bellini's in Edmond. A large group came in and were telling us about their bad experience at another restaurant. We quickly got them seated and assured them we would take great care of them. Right on their heels was Holloway. He had a blank check in his hand and gave it to our manager. He said he wanted to cover their entire bill no questions asked, no limit. The man was true hospitality. He wanted them to have a great time so bad he was willing to pay for it at a competitor's restaurant. I knew then I wanted to work for this man.”
When I think about Pete Holloway, I think about family. He surrounded himself with family at work where his goal was to offers families a place to celebrate life's highlights. Hospitality was sacred to Holloway, and places that offered it as it was intended were cathedrals.
In more than a decade of dining experiences, only a handful are as memorable as the last time I dined at The Coach House. It was down to just a handful of services, and I was there with my son, who aspired to be a chef and worshiped the kitchen and everyone in it, while it was my daughter's first visit.
Among the other diners there that night was a rowdy table of local restaurateurs, helping send the The Coach House out in style. Pete Holloway was among them. He came over and chatted with us, clearly happy to see us eating at a place he'd competed against at one restaurant or another all three decades it was open.
I remember he told us how glad he was to see people out with their families to pay tribute.
“People need to know about places like this,” I remember him saying. “They need to remember what it meant to the local industry.”
When the check arrived that night, I was informed by our server that it had been taken care of by Holloway.
“I looked up to him as a friend, restaurateur and a family man,” said chef Kurt Fleischfresser, who owned The Coach House. “In this industry it's hard to excel at even one of these things, but he seemed to master them all.”
As tributes poured in late Monday and early Tuesday, generosity and high standards were common themes. That and knowing “who is driving your bus.”
Former Boulevard Steakhouse manager Candace Ramsey, posted: “I learned more life lessons from Pete than probably any other person in my life. He taught me to set the bar high, to believe in myself, that you can learn from everyone you come in contact with from a dishwasher to a CEO and that you should treat them both with the same respect.
“He taught me that the only person that controls my attitude is me. `Who's driving your bus?' was the phrase I will remember him saying time and again. Who am I choosing to let control my emotions? He said it so often, my roommates and I went out and bought him a bus that was then hung outside of the office. It's a phrase, 24 years after I first heard it, I still say to myself and my children often.”
Jane Pitt-Mitchell, who started working for Val Gene Associates in 1981 and went on to purchase Harry Bear's from Val Gene, posted a similar list:
“Everything matters. Don't let someone else drive your bus. When a customer treats you poorly, smile and remember you only have to deal with them temporarily. They have to live with their crappy selves. When the trash driver won't park the dumpster where you ask him to buy him a coke and get to know him. Clean bathrooms make a statement. ... He taught me to care about my employees and my customers the same. Without them we had nothing. And, the last thing he said to me when we talked last, `Wear your damn mask knucklehead!'”
That goes without saying now, but remember Pete's family in your prayers. His wife Sheree, his sister Margaret, his daughter Alex, and his sons Andrew, Jeffrey and Hirst are restaurant folks. Once they've wiped away their tears well enough to see, they will be back on the floor or in the kitchen to serve the community.
The hospitality will endure no matter how heavy their hearts because that's how Pete would've wanted it.