Writer and chef David Tanis’s new restaurant Lulu is open in the Hammer Museum courtyard in Westwood. Director of Hammer Museum Ann Philbin and restaurateur Alice Waters conceived the restaurant project. Philbin and Waters envisioned a gathering location for the community of artists, farmers and students in Westwood.
Tanis was excited about having the chance to help realize Philbin and Waters’ goal of a restaurant in a new American neighborhood that highlights regenerative agricultural practices and locally sourced products. Tanis told LA Weekly that the restaurant team was able to make inspiring connections with local agriculturalists. As for Tanis, being capable of doing that at the museum allows the team to reach a representative sample of the community around the location.
Lulu opens for lunch, provides a fixed price menu with three courses for customers, and allows customers to order individual food items from another menu. The restaurant changes the menus each day according to the season, which is firmly devoted to its ‘market cooking’ ethos. Food items like the following are among the menu options at the restaurant.
- Baked Sonoma Goat Cheese alongside golden beets and garden lettuces
- California Halibut Carpaccio alongside Meyer lemon
- Shellfish and Mediterranean Fish stew with Dungeness crab and regional rock cod
- North African Lamb Tagine alongside Saffron Couscous
- Olive Oil Walnut Cake alongside pomegranate
- Lemon Tart alongside Créme Chantilly
The individually ordered items at the restaurant include Eggplant Banh Mi sandwich, Mozzarella and Arugula sandwich alongside Casella’s Prosciutto. When it comes to wines, Lulu specializes in biodynamic wines, especially options from female winegrowers and small-production winery locations. Fresh produce drives the Rosemary West-designed cocktail menu at the restaurant, which has spirits from family-owned cum small manufacturers. Here are some of the cocktail options of the restaurant.
- Granada Salvia, featuring a beverage created with blue agave that is known as Arette Blanco Tequila, sage and pomegranate.
- LULU Daiquiri with San Zanj Haitian Rum, Demerara syrup and lime juice. For your information, San Zanj Haitian is a new alcoholic product from an old family-owned rum distillery in Haiti.
The restaurant also has a menu that rotates daily and that comprises non-alcoholic drinks. Sean Daly and Christina Kim designed the expansive and bright indoor to outdoor space of Lulu in the Hammer Museum courtyard with an eye on sustainability, supporting local producers and minimizing waste. The team and Angel City Lumber worked together to get wood from trees that have fallen, which include a bunya pine tree situated around 3 kilometers from the museum. The wood offers each table at the restaurant complex knots and lines, like a piece of abstract art.
Half the restaurant space is outdoors, so the team paid attention to landscape design as well. The team and Craft Landscape Architects worked together on planting native species like toyon, milfolia, deer grass, Sierra mint and California strawberry to promote the breeding specimens of SoCal flora that is not invasive. The other notable design element of the restaurant is a mosaic wall associated with Cuban-American sculptor Jorge Pardo.
