The Mind of a Chef (2012) s05e08 Episode Script
Joie De Vivre
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Los Angeles is a city where old identities are shed and new personae are born.
Ludo Lefebvre's first L.
A.
incarnation was that of a classic French chef, impressing the West Coast with his haute cuisine at two of the city's premier restaurants.
But it was an eponymous pop-up, then a novel idea, where he made his mark.
In this episode, Ludo revisits some of the classic LudoBites dishes that helped usher in a dining revolution, and the bloggers who helped make him a household name.
LudoBites helped me realize I can cook everywhere.
If you serve good food, if you do a good job, people come to you.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
Cooking is not just a recipe.
It's instinct.
Don't need to use caviar, fried chicken is cool, too.
My mom would be proud of me.
Imagine an unsweetened bowl of oatmeal, tinted leprechaun green with puréed parsley, flavored with garlic, swimming with the black, elongated, frankly unattractive bodies of fried escargot.
The slippery texture of the oatmeal mimics what we imagine exudes from the snails.
The earthy taste of the snails rhymes with what has been tamed out of the cereal and subsumed by a strong, bitter lashing of licorice, perhaps from a few drops of the liquor pastis.
Ludovic Lefebvre's LudoBites seems as much like a revolution as it does like a party.
This has the feeling of a transforming moment in the Los Angeles restaurant scene.
Jonathan Gold, November 6, 2007.
LudoBites was a pop-up restaurant I create with my wife Krissy.
We created this special event.
No PR.
It was just Ludo from very, very French frou-frou restaurant cooking in a t-shirt.
I was crazy, but you know what? This concept, LudoBites, really helped me realize what I want to do in life.
And thank God.
He just said, "You know what? I'm going to cook for who I want, where I want, and I'm going to do exactly what I want to do.
" But if we didn't make money every single night, we would be broke.
Because we had nothing left.
The first night that we opened, we had six people.
And then I think we had 12 people.
And then it sort of started growing.
It kind of became this really cool dinner party.
And by the end of LudoBites 1, they weren't named back then, because we never thought that there would be another one, it became something that changed the dining scene in Los Angeles, and then ultimately the culinary expectations of what a trained chef could do.
LudoBites really opened me to discuss with people about different food, and try to be more nice with people, and really have contact with the guests.
Squid pad Thai.
Oh, pad Thai.
It was 2007.
Social media and Twitter were still sort of new.
Bloggers were an unknown.
But what we learned is it was instant, and we were temporary.
Instant and temporary were a really good match.
But they were also really scary, because they had the power to make or break us.
Fortunately they liked us.
I'm just going to cook the shrimp.
I want them medium rare.
I don't want to be too aggressive.
You need to be gentle when you cook it.
The squid looks like noodles.
Oh, yeah.
I want to cook them very gentle, same thing.
I don't want any coloration.
What do you think was your favorite LudoBites? I liked number one, because it was before all the hype.
Because it was nobody for the first two weeks? No one cared about you.
Add my Thai flavor.
Butter.
Hashtag "swim in the butter.
" Yeah, I think LudoBites was very successful, of course, because of all the blogger, all of you.
You open a restaurant, it takes time to get an article.
So the blogger was actually great publicity.
You gave us a voice, you empowered us, and you acknowledged us.
I remember you guys not embracing it 100% in the beginning.
Sometimes it takes time to get used to something, especially when something is very different.
I can take a lot of critique.
I'm not perfect.
I did mistakes, and I was still doing mistakes.
You just need to be responsible the way you critique.
I don't think it hurt to have Krissy in your corner, either.
From serving to getting on social media.
She's actually the brains behind the operation.
- I know.
- You're the brawn.
But you know what? Your participation allowed him to do what he does best, which is just cook.
So you see, it's very simple now.
Squid, cook in the pad Thai flavor, compound butter.
Just take some tofu, and they're just mixed with some spicy chili, that's it.
LudoBites was not very fancy, huh, guys? What was good about the food, sometimes it was But I think it has to do with you, Ludo.
We would travel an hour and a half to go to LudoBites, you know, just to get there.
So it wasyeah, it wasn't just a pop-up or the concept.
It was we wanted Ludo's food.
The squid noodles cook in the compound butter.
Put in a bit of shrimp now.
Put some grapes now.
Can we tell the story of the grapes and Fred Savage? Yes.
Fred Savage interned with us, and Ludo, of course, has no idea who Fred Savage is, and I'm like I have no idea who this guy is.
I know who Fred Savage is.
He wants to be a chef, but his wife says he's not allowed to be a chef.
So he came in and worked Well, she's right.
Come on, everybody wants to be a chef, and it takes a long time to be a chef.
It's not because you know how to cook one dish at home, okay? Anyway, he showed up Sorry for Fred.
He showed up 30 minutes late.
Yeah, did not call me, showed up late, did not apologize.
So Ludo gave him Oh, man.
grapes to peel Like, ten pounds.
And had him peel all the grapes, and then, like, three hours later, comes to proudly give them to Ludo, and Ludo turns around and throws them in the trash.
"Oh, I changed the dish.
" But he came back, didn't he? Of course he came back.
He came back.
Bon, les enfants.
Radish, because butter and radish go well together.
Bean sprouts, okay? I cook a little bit of butter.
It really brings back all the flavor when you cook it.
You really infuse the butter, and the butter becomes almost brown.
Scallion.
Sesame oil.
Okay, guys, the dish is ready.
So here are our squid pad Thai.
The bloggers gave us what we needed for the restaurant, and we developed some really magical friendships out of it.
I feel like I'm back in a LudoBites, you know? In front of them they always have their phone.
And they forget to eat.
I was on a date at L'Orangerie, and Ludo was checking the maitre d' stand when I walked in.
And it was love at first sight.
I am with a gentleman who I respected very much, but I was not in love with him.
The amuse-bouche comes out.
I thought Ludo was sending me a love message, because we connected.
And then the whole night, Ludo kept coming out.
And he talked to every table but us.
I was like, "Could you just go in the kitchen?" Like, "I got it, I got it.
"We're here, we're meant to be.
"Go back in the kitchen, because you're distracting me, and I'm trying to be respectful.
" At the end of the night, I don't want to order dessert, because I want to leave.
And they send out the petit fours compliments of the chef.
I now am convinced that Ludo has sent me a send-off message to let me know that yes, it's there.
He opens the meal acknowledging me, he closes the meal sending me his love.
And that's it.
Like, it's forever.
We're going to be married.
I did not know that every single table got an amuse-bouche, and everyone got the petit fours.
And as Ludo says, "It's a good thing you moved to Hollywood, because you do movies in your head.
" So I did movies in my head that night, and it was the perfect romance.
Next dish is going to be our Foie Gras Dynamite.
Remember this one? I remember.
I remember well.
I don't remember how I came up with this dish.
I guess it was to surprise people.
I love dynamite when I go to a Japanese restaurant.
I know, me, too.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
I don't know exactly what is dynamite, guys? It's normally a spicy mayo that's been broiled with seafood.
Japanese American food.
A little more ghetto Japanese.
Tuna, just nice tuna, marinated with sesame oil, salt, and white pepper.
Mayo, Tobiko eggs, and sambal sauce.
- You like spicy, guys? - Mmm.
Mix everything.
Mix that.
Saltine, butter, and salt.
I don't remember why I decided to put saltines in this dish.
They're classic crackers.
Chef Will? Come on, Chef Will.
Good job, Esther.
Put in the butter.
Tasting, Chef.
Oui, Chef.
So now, we're going to the foie gras, guys.
Foie gras and tuna is a classic combination.
Sear foie gras with seared tuna.
Not roe, but we sear tuna.
No-stick pan, if you can, no fat.
Very high.
Lot of foie gras.
I'm completely mesmerized by the smell right now.
So we have our foie gras here, guys.
For the crispiness, we're going to have a little bit of saltine on the bottom of the plate.
So a nice piece of foie here.
Ah, so beautiful.
With our tuna on top of the foie like this.
It is a contrast between the hot and the cold.
It's to give some little bit of freshness to the dish.
Piece of lychee.
This is a success because of you, Ashley.
Thank you.
I mean, it's not done unless it's torched.
Yeah.
Are those the fish eggs popping? Yep.
That's the dynamite.
Oh! I mean, this dish is great, but it's pretty out there as far as food goes.
Yes, I was doing what I want, but sometimes I have no choice to take up some dishes because it was too advanced, people do not get it.
The public wasn't ready for it then.
You think it would work better in 2016? Yeah, people I would feed now would understand more the dishes now, yeah, definitely.
LudoBites became its own machine.
But we had to be there 100% every day and produce it 100% every day for the machine to work.
It's not like we were opening a restaurant and we were investing in something that had a future.
We knew we were going to have a business for three months, and then poof, it's gone.
There's no more.
We didn't have a glamorous life, but we were happy, because we answered to nobody.
Nobody.
You get your hands dirty, you own it, you know every piece of your business, and you don't hand over control.
You want to open a restaurant in three days? Just give me a call.
I just did a little ham soup.
Of course we use the ham from Paris, jambon de Paris, put chicken stock, some milk, onions, and some shallots, and voilà , and just blend everything.
Take all the components in the sandwich, the butter, the cornichons, the radish, croutons, some cheese, to be the garnish.
A lot of people ask me if I'm going to bring back the ham soup.
When you made it back then for LudoBites, did you really give any thought as to how people would receive it? - No, I did not.
- It's really weird.
I mean, why a soup? So don't ask me why the brain works like this sometimes.
Everybody, we have a different palate.
For example, between you and me, I think your palate, you, is more sensitive with salt.
You are very sensitive with salt.
Just because I complained about that duck one time.
And it was too salty.
It was not too salty! Little bit of Gruyere.
Croutons on the Gruyere.
At least they don't get soggy.
Brown butter, soak the bread a little bit.
Cornichons.
Radish.
In France, when you have a ham sandwich, most of the time you have a beer with that.
That's why I decided to put a beer emulsion.
All you did to get the foam was just boil it? Yeah, that's it.
I thought you did some magical thing with some sort of machine.
No, no, cooking is easy.
Okay, everybody take their spoon.
Yep.
- Oh, yeah, the beer at the end.
- Oh, my God.
That's really nice.
The beer and the pickles go really well together.
Really well.
When we did LudoBites, they were magical nights when it all clicked.
And it clicked a lot.
LudoBites, like, when it worked, food was coming out, Ludo's happy, he's taking pictures, we're drinking wine.
I was doing what I wanted.
It was my restaurant.
I don't give a F.
The fancy restaurant causes you to take yourself too seriously.
It didn't matter who you were.
It's not exclusive to anyone.
And we wanted it to be affordable.
You have people driving Bentleys, and you have a table of girls in their 20s sharing every dish because they couldn't afford everything.
Most of the time I was very limited with the kitchen, sometimes with just one stove and one freezer, and half the time the freezer wasn't working, or the stove was breaking down.
But you know what? At the end of the day, I make happen.
We built this rock concert mentality.
"Well, I have to go to LudoBites.
Everybody else is going.
" Like, we crashed Open Table.
They had to shut down the entire system worldwide to reboot, because we had so much demand.
I feel great, but I feel a lot of pressure also.
You know, when you take a risk, you don't feel really confident.
If I was cooking that classic French dish, I would be very confident.
LudoBites, I don't want to say I always feel confident, because LudoBites, I was pushing the envelope, because I wanted to make sure we get something unique and surprising.
What do you think? - You ever feel confident? - No.
No, why? Because we didn't open it as a business.
We opened it up because he wasn't cooking, and if he wasn't cooking, he wasn't happy, and that wasn't a good thing.
But you know, guys, LudoBites helped me so much.
I realized I can cook everywhere.
If you serve good food, if you do a good job, people come to you.
And I think you cannot have excuse, your restaurant's closing because you have a bad location.
I don't think that's true.
So what are you doing? It's a very simple dish, a little bit more French.
I would say this dish is very French.
It's more about ingredients and a good technique and a touch of butter, yes.
Know what is jardin aux Iégumes, guys? Garden of beans.
Yes.
Oh, bien.
I'm surprised, wow! It's like a vegetable stew.
But is more about the beautiful produce we have here in California.
So I'm cooking my carrots slowly with a touch of chicken stock, water, and touch of butter.
I really want my vegetables to keep their color, and to really be al dente.
Same thing with the leeks here.
A little bit of fresh peas.
It's really a great springtime dish.
We're going to cook the monkfish with a touch of olive oil.
Just a drop.
Peu de sel.
Poach very slowly.
Again, quick.
How do you know when it's done? A little trick, if you put a little knife like this here like this? Yeah? And keep it for, like, five seconds, and you put here it's warm, it's cooked.
Here we have the butter.
I'm just going to add my vadouvan spice.
Vadouvan is like the French curry.
- Yeah.
- Wow.
Simple dish like this need to be cooked perfectly.
Petites carottes.
I love carrots.
You know what we say in France, guys? Les carottes ça rend les fesses roses et ça rend aimable.
"Carrots make your ass pink and make people very nice.
" So please, everybody eat carrots.
I mean, it's true, that's what we say.
And it's an expression.
Spring leeks here.
Jardinière de Iégumes.
My son loves English peas.
Voilà .
And now we put the precious gold butter.
Gold butter.
That smells so good.
I love simple dish like this, the way you cook the fish, the vegetable, and the sauce, and that's it, three things on the plate.
And that is my French food, you know? When I first moved to L.
A.
, people would be like, "It's the BBD.
" And I'm like, "What's the BBD?" It's the bigger better deal.
LudoBites continually opening as a new restaurant was the bigger better deal every time, because it was a new location, and it was a new menu.
And they all had to have it.
Okay, we'll do dessert, guys.
We're going to do our panna cotta.
I wish I could be a genius and just create dishes like this all the time.
I always loved a little caramel and salt.
Candy from Brittany.
Start our dessert with caramel.
I want to do something very creamy in texture, you know? That's why I decided to do the panna cotta.
But how I can replace, you know, something like the salt with something else? Caviar.
That's love.
That's enough for you? No.
You're not going to drink beer with that.
No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
- No! - You can't? - No, no.
- This is a dessert beer.
No, no, but not with that, not with caviar.
How about we just drink this before? Not with I'm sorry, I like this, but we have too much Oh, my God.
Beer with caviar! Sam Sifton was the food critic at the New York Times when we were doing LudoBites 5.
He was the turning point when we knew it was really, really something special.
He wrote what I would say is the equivalent of any five-star review.
It was so unbelievable.
There wasn't a negative word to be said.
Everything so positive.
When we read it, I mean, it was tears came to my eyes.
But it also was the moment the magic kind of left.
Ludo did LudoBites because he didn't want to cook for critics.
And then a critic came in and put us on the map, off the map, completely over the map.
And so the expectations were there, versus we were just having a lot of fun.
We're happy because, like, we have a true business that's happening.
But now we're dealing with complete and total insanity.
And, like, how do we control it, and, you know we just stop it.
That's it, we're done.
We stop.
No more LudoBites.
Merci.
I have a toast.
Guys, thank you for coming today.
Thank you for your precious time, for the joys, for the fights.
Thank you for everything, guys, you did for us.
Thank you.
Merci, guys.
Try to find one which smells very good, guys.
That smells good.
You like this one or what? I like it.
Yeah, you're right, yeah? So we'll take this one.
All right, let's go, guys.
Thank you, bye-bye.
Maybe we should pick some avocado, no? Oh, oui, avocado.
Let's go find avocado, guys.
L.
A.
is La La Land.
And it's It's home, but it's not home.
Because it always feels so temporary.
But it has so many opportunities.
Ludo and I together have made it our home.
Los Angeles has embraced Ludo, and has embraced us, and so for that, we're forever grateful.
LudoBites could have only happened in L.
A.
, I really think.
I think the nature of what Los Angeles is, and how it lives, and what it embraces, and what it doesn't embrace and so, like, if you look at LudoBites, LudoBites is, like, an L.
A.
story.
Support your PBS station.
Los Angeles is a city where old identities are shed and new personae are born.
Ludo Lefebvre's first L.
A.
incarnation was that of a classic French chef, impressing the West Coast with his haute cuisine at two of the city's premier restaurants.
But it was an eponymous pop-up, then a novel idea, where he made his mark.
In this episode, Ludo revisits some of the classic LudoBites dishes that helped usher in a dining revolution, and the bloggers who helped make him a household name.
LudoBites helped me realize I can cook everywhere.
If you serve good food, if you do a good job, people come to you.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
Cooking is not just a recipe.
It's instinct.
Don't need to use caviar, fried chicken is cool, too.
My mom would be proud of me.
Imagine an unsweetened bowl of oatmeal, tinted leprechaun green with puréed parsley, flavored with garlic, swimming with the black, elongated, frankly unattractive bodies of fried escargot.
The slippery texture of the oatmeal mimics what we imagine exudes from the snails.
The earthy taste of the snails rhymes with what has been tamed out of the cereal and subsumed by a strong, bitter lashing of licorice, perhaps from a few drops of the liquor pastis.
Ludovic Lefebvre's LudoBites seems as much like a revolution as it does like a party.
This has the feeling of a transforming moment in the Los Angeles restaurant scene.
Jonathan Gold, November 6, 2007.
LudoBites was a pop-up restaurant I create with my wife Krissy.
We created this special event.
No PR.
It was just Ludo from very, very French frou-frou restaurant cooking in a t-shirt.
I was crazy, but you know what? This concept, LudoBites, really helped me realize what I want to do in life.
And thank God.
He just said, "You know what? I'm going to cook for who I want, where I want, and I'm going to do exactly what I want to do.
" But if we didn't make money every single night, we would be broke.
Because we had nothing left.
The first night that we opened, we had six people.
And then I think we had 12 people.
And then it sort of started growing.
It kind of became this really cool dinner party.
And by the end of LudoBites 1, they weren't named back then, because we never thought that there would be another one, it became something that changed the dining scene in Los Angeles, and then ultimately the culinary expectations of what a trained chef could do.
LudoBites really opened me to discuss with people about different food, and try to be more nice with people, and really have contact with the guests.
Squid pad Thai.
Oh, pad Thai.
It was 2007.
Social media and Twitter were still sort of new.
Bloggers were an unknown.
But what we learned is it was instant, and we were temporary.
Instant and temporary were a really good match.
But they were also really scary, because they had the power to make or break us.
Fortunately they liked us.
I'm just going to cook the shrimp.
I want them medium rare.
I don't want to be too aggressive.
You need to be gentle when you cook it.
The squid looks like noodles.
Oh, yeah.
I want to cook them very gentle, same thing.
I don't want any coloration.
What do you think was your favorite LudoBites? I liked number one, because it was before all the hype.
Because it was nobody for the first two weeks? No one cared about you.
Add my Thai flavor.
Butter.
Hashtag "swim in the butter.
" Yeah, I think LudoBites was very successful, of course, because of all the blogger, all of you.
You open a restaurant, it takes time to get an article.
So the blogger was actually great publicity.
You gave us a voice, you empowered us, and you acknowledged us.
I remember you guys not embracing it 100% in the beginning.
Sometimes it takes time to get used to something, especially when something is very different.
I can take a lot of critique.
I'm not perfect.
I did mistakes, and I was still doing mistakes.
You just need to be responsible the way you critique.
I don't think it hurt to have Krissy in your corner, either.
From serving to getting on social media.
She's actually the brains behind the operation.
- I know.
- You're the brawn.
But you know what? Your participation allowed him to do what he does best, which is just cook.
So you see, it's very simple now.
Squid, cook in the pad Thai flavor, compound butter.
Just take some tofu, and they're just mixed with some spicy chili, that's it.
LudoBites was not very fancy, huh, guys? What was good about the food, sometimes it was But I think it has to do with you, Ludo.
We would travel an hour and a half to go to LudoBites, you know, just to get there.
So it wasyeah, it wasn't just a pop-up or the concept.
It was we wanted Ludo's food.
The squid noodles cook in the compound butter.
Put in a bit of shrimp now.
Put some grapes now.
Can we tell the story of the grapes and Fred Savage? Yes.
Fred Savage interned with us, and Ludo, of course, has no idea who Fred Savage is, and I'm like I have no idea who this guy is.
I know who Fred Savage is.
He wants to be a chef, but his wife says he's not allowed to be a chef.
So he came in and worked Well, she's right.
Come on, everybody wants to be a chef, and it takes a long time to be a chef.
It's not because you know how to cook one dish at home, okay? Anyway, he showed up Sorry for Fred.
He showed up 30 minutes late.
Yeah, did not call me, showed up late, did not apologize.
So Ludo gave him Oh, man.
grapes to peel Like, ten pounds.
And had him peel all the grapes, and then, like, three hours later, comes to proudly give them to Ludo, and Ludo turns around and throws them in the trash.
"Oh, I changed the dish.
" But he came back, didn't he? Of course he came back.
He came back.
Bon, les enfants.
Radish, because butter and radish go well together.
Bean sprouts, okay? I cook a little bit of butter.
It really brings back all the flavor when you cook it.
You really infuse the butter, and the butter becomes almost brown.
Scallion.
Sesame oil.
Okay, guys, the dish is ready.
So here are our squid pad Thai.
The bloggers gave us what we needed for the restaurant, and we developed some really magical friendships out of it.
I feel like I'm back in a LudoBites, you know? In front of them they always have their phone.
And they forget to eat.
I was on a date at L'Orangerie, and Ludo was checking the maitre d' stand when I walked in.
And it was love at first sight.
I am with a gentleman who I respected very much, but I was not in love with him.
The amuse-bouche comes out.
I thought Ludo was sending me a love message, because we connected.
And then the whole night, Ludo kept coming out.
And he talked to every table but us.
I was like, "Could you just go in the kitchen?" Like, "I got it, I got it.
"We're here, we're meant to be.
"Go back in the kitchen, because you're distracting me, and I'm trying to be respectful.
" At the end of the night, I don't want to order dessert, because I want to leave.
And they send out the petit fours compliments of the chef.
I now am convinced that Ludo has sent me a send-off message to let me know that yes, it's there.
He opens the meal acknowledging me, he closes the meal sending me his love.
And that's it.
Like, it's forever.
We're going to be married.
I did not know that every single table got an amuse-bouche, and everyone got the petit fours.
And as Ludo says, "It's a good thing you moved to Hollywood, because you do movies in your head.
" So I did movies in my head that night, and it was the perfect romance.
Next dish is going to be our Foie Gras Dynamite.
Remember this one? I remember.
I remember well.
I don't remember how I came up with this dish.
I guess it was to surprise people.
I love dynamite when I go to a Japanese restaurant.
I know, me, too.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
I don't know exactly what is dynamite, guys? It's normally a spicy mayo that's been broiled with seafood.
Japanese American food.
A little more ghetto Japanese.
Tuna, just nice tuna, marinated with sesame oil, salt, and white pepper.
Mayo, Tobiko eggs, and sambal sauce.
- You like spicy, guys? - Mmm.
Mix everything.
Mix that.
Saltine, butter, and salt.
I don't remember why I decided to put saltines in this dish.
They're classic crackers.
Chef Will? Come on, Chef Will.
Good job, Esther.
Put in the butter.
Tasting, Chef.
Oui, Chef.
So now, we're going to the foie gras, guys.
Foie gras and tuna is a classic combination.
Sear foie gras with seared tuna.
Not roe, but we sear tuna.
No-stick pan, if you can, no fat.
Very high.
Lot of foie gras.
I'm completely mesmerized by the smell right now.
So we have our foie gras here, guys.
For the crispiness, we're going to have a little bit of saltine on the bottom of the plate.
So a nice piece of foie here.
Ah, so beautiful.
With our tuna on top of the foie like this.
It is a contrast between the hot and the cold.
It's to give some little bit of freshness to the dish.
Piece of lychee.
This is a success because of you, Ashley.
Thank you.
I mean, it's not done unless it's torched.
Yeah.
Are those the fish eggs popping? Yep.
That's the dynamite.
Oh! I mean, this dish is great, but it's pretty out there as far as food goes.
Yes, I was doing what I want, but sometimes I have no choice to take up some dishes because it was too advanced, people do not get it.
The public wasn't ready for it then.
You think it would work better in 2016? Yeah, people I would feed now would understand more the dishes now, yeah, definitely.
LudoBites became its own machine.
But we had to be there 100% every day and produce it 100% every day for the machine to work.
It's not like we were opening a restaurant and we were investing in something that had a future.
We knew we were going to have a business for three months, and then poof, it's gone.
There's no more.
We didn't have a glamorous life, but we were happy, because we answered to nobody.
Nobody.
You get your hands dirty, you own it, you know every piece of your business, and you don't hand over control.
You want to open a restaurant in three days? Just give me a call.
I just did a little ham soup.
Of course we use the ham from Paris, jambon de Paris, put chicken stock, some milk, onions, and some shallots, and voilà , and just blend everything.
Take all the components in the sandwich, the butter, the cornichons, the radish, croutons, some cheese, to be the garnish.
A lot of people ask me if I'm going to bring back the ham soup.
When you made it back then for LudoBites, did you really give any thought as to how people would receive it? - No, I did not.
- It's really weird.
I mean, why a soup? So don't ask me why the brain works like this sometimes.
Everybody, we have a different palate.
For example, between you and me, I think your palate, you, is more sensitive with salt.
You are very sensitive with salt.
Just because I complained about that duck one time.
And it was too salty.
It was not too salty! Little bit of Gruyere.
Croutons on the Gruyere.
At least they don't get soggy.
Brown butter, soak the bread a little bit.
Cornichons.
Radish.
In France, when you have a ham sandwich, most of the time you have a beer with that.
That's why I decided to put a beer emulsion.
All you did to get the foam was just boil it? Yeah, that's it.
I thought you did some magical thing with some sort of machine.
No, no, cooking is easy.
Okay, everybody take their spoon.
Yep.
- Oh, yeah, the beer at the end.
- Oh, my God.
That's really nice.
The beer and the pickles go really well together.
Really well.
When we did LudoBites, they were magical nights when it all clicked.
And it clicked a lot.
LudoBites, like, when it worked, food was coming out, Ludo's happy, he's taking pictures, we're drinking wine.
I was doing what I wanted.
It was my restaurant.
I don't give a F.
The fancy restaurant causes you to take yourself too seriously.
It didn't matter who you were.
It's not exclusive to anyone.
And we wanted it to be affordable.
You have people driving Bentleys, and you have a table of girls in their 20s sharing every dish because they couldn't afford everything.
Most of the time I was very limited with the kitchen, sometimes with just one stove and one freezer, and half the time the freezer wasn't working, or the stove was breaking down.
But you know what? At the end of the day, I make happen.
We built this rock concert mentality.
"Well, I have to go to LudoBites.
Everybody else is going.
" Like, we crashed Open Table.
They had to shut down the entire system worldwide to reboot, because we had so much demand.
I feel great, but I feel a lot of pressure also.
You know, when you take a risk, you don't feel really confident.
If I was cooking that classic French dish, I would be very confident.
LudoBites, I don't want to say I always feel confident, because LudoBites, I was pushing the envelope, because I wanted to make sure we get something unique and surprising.
What do you think? - You ever feel confident? - No.
No, why? Because we didn't open it as a business.
We opened it up because he wasn't cooking, and if he wasn't cooking, he wasn't happy, and that wasn't a good thing.
But you know, guys, LudoBites helped me so much.
I realized I can cook everywhere.
If you serve good food, if you do a good job, people come to you.
And I think you cannot have excuse, your restaurant's closing because you have a bad location.
I don't think that's true.
So what are you doing? It's a very simple dish, a little bit more French.
I would say this dish is very French.
It's more about ingredients and a good technique and a touch of butter, yes.
Know what is jardin aux Iégumes, guys? Garden of beans.
Yes.
Oh, bien.
I'm surprised, wow! It's like a vegetable stew.
But is more about the beautiful produce we have here in California.
So I'm cooking my carrots slowly with a touch of chicken stock, water, and touch of butter.
I really want my vegetables to keep their color, and to really be al dente.
Same thing with the leeks here.
A little bit of fresh peas.
It's really a great springtime dish.
We're going to cook the monkfish with a touch of olive oil.
Just a drop.
Peu de sel.
Poach very slowly.
Again, quick.
How do you know when it's done? A little trick, if you put a little knife like this here like this? Yeah? And keep it for, like, five seconds, and you put here it's warm, it's cooked.
Here we have the butter.
I'm just going to add my vadouvan spice.
Vadouvan is like the French curry.
- Yeah.
- Wow.
Simple dish like this need to be cooked perfectly.
Petites carottes.
I love carrots.
You know what we say in France, guys? Les carottes ça rend les fesses roses et ça rend aimable.
"Carrots make your ass pink and make people very nice.
" So please, everybody eat carrots.
I mean, it's true, that's what we say.
And it's an expression.
Spring leeks here.
Jardinière de Iégumes.
My son loves English peas.
Voilà .
And now we put the precious gold butter.
Gold butter.
That smells so good.
I love simple dish like this, the way you cook the fish, the vegetable, and the sauce, and that's it, three things on the plate.
And that is my French food, you know? When I first moved to L.
A.
, people would be like, "It's the BBD.
" And I'm like, "What's the BBD?" It's the bigger better deal.
LudoBites continually opening as a new restaurant was the bigger better deal every time, because it was a new location, and it was a new menu.
And they all had to have it.
Okay, we'll do dessert, guys.
We're going to do our panna cotta.
I wish I could be a genius and just create dishes like this all the time.
I always loved a little caramel and salt.
Candy from Brittany.
Start our dessert with caramel.
I want to do something very creamy in texture, you know? That's why I decided to do the panna cotta.
But how I can replace, you know, something like the salt with something else? Caviar.
That's love.
That's enough for you? No.
You're not going to drink beer with that.
No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
- No! - You can't? - No, no.
- This is a dessert beer.
No, no, but not with that, not with caviar.
How about we just drink this before? Not with I'm sorry, I like this, but we have too much Oh, my God.
Beer with caviar! Sam Sifton was the food critic at the New York Times when we were doing LudoBites 5.
He was the turning point when we knew it was really, really something special.
He wrote what I would say is the equivalent of any five-star review.
It was so unbelievable.
There wasn't a negative word to be said.
Everything so positive.
When we read it, I mean, it was tears came to my eyes.
But it also was the moment the magic kind of left.
Ludo did LudoBites because he didn't want to cook for critics.
And then a critic came in and put us on the map, off the map, completely over the map.
And so the expectations were there, versus we were just having a lot of fun.
We're happy because, like, we have a true business that's happening.
But now we're dealing with complete and total insanity.
And, like, how do we control it, and, you know we just stop it.
That's it, we're done.
We stop.
No more LudoBites.
Merci.
I have a toast.
Guys, thank you for coming today.
Thank you for your precious time, for the joys, for the fights.
Thank you for everything, guys, you did for us.
Thank you.
Merci, guys.
Try to find one which smells very good, guys.
That smells good.
You like this one or what? I like it.
Yeah, you're right, yeah? So we'll take this one.
All right, let's go, guys.
Thank you, bye-bye.
Maybe we should pick some avocado, no? Oh, oui, avocado.
Let's go find avocado, guys.
L.
A.
is La La Land.
And it's It's home, but it's not home.
Because it always feels so temporary.
But it has so many opportunities.
Ludo and I together have made it our home.
Los Angeles has embraced Ludo, and has embraced us, and so for that, we're forever grateful.
LudoBites could have only happened in L.
A.
, I really think.
I think the nature of what Los Angeles is, and how it lives, and what it embraces, and what it doesn't embrace and so, like, if you look at LudoBites, LudoBites is, like, an L.
A.
story.