I mean, I’ve been working on the Edible Schoolyard project for 25 years and I know that it works to empower children to learn their math in the garden and their history in the kitchen classroom. WATERS Fortunately, they have an enlightened director and Board of Directors as a matter of fact, the chancellor of UCLA is on the board at The Hammer, and I spoke to the whole board and said I’m really interested in the ways in which regenerative agriculture can address climate and health. I’m putting all my eggs into the education place. Lulu Hammer Museum Restaurant Courtesy of Hammer Museumĭo you feel that your values surrounding food and sustainability are reflected in this space? Being in an art museum - especially in the Hammer Museum where there’s such interesting stuff happening - it kind of gives us a built-in audience of interesting and diverse people. TANIS We hope it’s a very broad audience.
It feels so much like an art installation that we’re creating. WATERS I’ve always wanted a restaurant in a museum because it’s already a beautiful place. How did you go about incorporating your ideas for what Lulu could be into the existing Hammer Museum and broader UCLA setting? And I just felt like that little fixed price menu would be something special because professors from the university who have visiting guests and they want to come here and have more of a family meal where everybody’s eating the same thing.Ĭonceiving of a restaurant in a museum environment is I’m sure very different from creating a standalone outpost. I only thought that if we make something delicious, that they will want to come. That’s the excitement of cooking this way, and I hope it is for the customers to be eating this way. You’re coming in every day with what the Buddhists say is “beginner’s mind.” You kind of know what’s going to be on the menu because you have to make those orders, but you’re not absolutely certain about what you’re going to do with them until you see them and you taste them and then you make those fun judgments. He knows that by heart just the way I do. And that is incredibly valuable information that David has just internalized.
#Lulu restaurant how to#
We’ve learned how to use a vegetable throughout the season - at every moment when it’s changing, when it’s growing. WATERS We have learned over 50 years how to find suppliers, how to bond with them, how to take back the vegetable scraps to the farms. And it’s just inspiring to go and see - it’s so beautiful every time I go. Because the East Coast in the wintertime, its potatoes and onions and apples or in the supermarkets it’s California produce that’s had to take a long journey. Of course I’ve visited LA a number of times but have never stayed here for weeks. Whenever I come to the West Coast, from San Diego up to Washington State, I’m always just impressed with the farmer’s markets.
TANIS I lived in Northern California for a number of years. It’s my whole approach to market cooking, which is what market cooking is: you go to the market, see what looks great, and then you make your menu. Basically, those are the only places that we’re getting our produce the idea being whatever is the best and whatever is in season is the thing that needs to go on the menu. Waters and Tanis spoke to THR about the concept of market-to-table cooking, adapting to a Los Angeles food audience, and what to expect from Lulu as the new restaurant develops.Īs collaborators, what is your conceptual direction for Lulu in terms of the menu and ingredients? What are you hoping to bring to the Hammer Museum environment with the restaurant?ĭAVID TANIS The whole menu is going to be based upon what is available with the farms that we work with, and the farmers at farmer’s markets. An eggplant banh mi sandwich, spicy black bean soup, and French lentil salad are among the menu’s standouts. Luis Sierra, formerly of Estela and Altro Paradiso in New York City, is Lulu’s chef de cuisine. The restaurant, which includes a partially covered dining room and bar, sits in the museum’s courtyard filled with trees and other reminders of the natural world, a striking contrast to the highly curated galleries that loom just beyond. “I am very interested in what is happening in terms of food at the whole University of California,” Waters says. Waters was excited to work on a restaurant project at the Hammer, especially because of its relationship with UCLA, where an extensive food studies program supports the research of nutrition, food culture and policy, public health, sustainability, and more. La Dolce Vita, Funke and Steak 48 Lead a Wave of New Beverly Hills Restaurants
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