Ludo Lefebvre Dishes On How Media Killed The Pop-Up Star And His New Restaurant

Ludo Lefebvre has staged several successful pop-up restaurants in Los Angeles over the years (we believe the official tally is all the way up to LudoBites 10.0), but he’s soon giving up his nomadic ways to open a real-live brick-and-mortar restaurant with Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Animal.

“It’s time to move on,” he told Zagat. “Nowadays you have some stupid pop-ups. It was different in the beginning but these days it seems like people do it just for press.”

His wife Krissy, who’s basically his only help in running LudoBites, agreed, adding, “The term in my mind has become really bastardized by the press, it’s like what is it?”

If you caught last week’s No Reservations, you know that Lefebvre accompanied Anthony Bourdain on a sojourn to his homeland, Burgundy, where you may have spotted a nostalgic twinkle in his eye. Ludo admitted the trip home gave him tons of inspiration towards opening his new venture with the Animal boys, and led him to think that maybe, just maybe, he can finally put real French food on the map in LA.

Ludo: When I went back [to France] with Anthony [on his show No Reservations] over there I had some great inspiration. When I watched it again this week, actually my wife said, ‘why don’t you do what Anthony says? You should do restaurant like this.’ [like a French routier or truck stop] Of course it wont be a routier like you see on TV, but the same concept – a truck stop, but more elaborate and I want to do a good French restaurant.

Krissy: Yeah, the concept keeps changing but, but that’s the current idea.

Ludo: For the food, I will say French but we talked and we want Vinny and Jonny to bring some good American dishes too. I love Southern food and I think the food will be like 80% French and 20% American.

Check out the rest of his interview with Zagat here to read more about the new concept.

[Zagat]

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