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Lucky 32 Adds Alfresco Dining
By Melissa Turner, News & Record, June 2, 2004

After a 15-year wait, Lucky 32 (1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro; 370-0707) has added outdoor dining. "For all those 15 years, we've wanted outdoor dining, but we couldn't figure out how to do it here," says Dennis Quaintance of Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants, which owns Lucky 32, Green Valley Grill and the O. Henry Hotel.

It's easy to see why it took some pondering: The restaurant is sandwiched between a fire station and Marus Marble and Tile. But after making some changes to the restaurant's parking lot, Quaintance found he had room to create a 72-seat veranda.

It's a typical outdoor dining space in one important way: It's outdoors. But the similarities end there. The veranda, when the carefully chosen plants fill up and out, will be an outdoor room defined by a framework, but walled by trees, shrubs and greenery and crowned with a rim of hand-made steel tulips that are being created by local sculptor Jim Gallucci.

The plants and steel tulips aren't all that's organic about the space. The whole motif is, even down to the light diffusers over the tables, which Quaintance calls "steroid tulips." (They're much bigger than the flowers, and they're upside down.) The table-and-chair setup invokes the showy flowers, too.

The veranda, which opened May 19, is constructed primarily with work from local artisans. Gallucci also built the tables and is creating a retractable steel awning to replace the temporary sunshades that are in place now. The light diffusers were created by Raleigh artist Matt McConnell.

"We've just decided if there's anything we can buy locally, we will," Quaintance says. The look outside reflects some of what's inside, too. "Our mind-set is, it's Grandma's house, but the avant-garde granddaughter inherited it," he says.

The veranda is open whenever the rest of the restaurant is, weather permitting.

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