The Art of the Meal

WITH THEIR NEW RESTAURANT LULU, FOOD LEGENDS ALICE WATERS AND DAVID TANIS BRING BEAUTIFUL DISHES TO THE HAMMER

BY HEATHER PLATT

THE HOTTEST THING to see at the Hammer these days isn’t in the galleries; it’s in the restaurant space. Farm-to-table pioneer Alice Waters shines at Lulu, her firstever Los Angeles eatery, in the museum.

“Lulu will fully engage the senses of everyone who comes to experience this beautiful intersection of art, food, and learning,” Waters gushes. “A dining experience at Lulu is about opening up the senses and experiencing life.”

Waters isn’t the only marquee name of the new venture. The restaurant is a collaboration between her and famed cookbook author David Tanis. Tanis, who is well-known for his New York Times cooking column, worked at Waters’s seminal Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, on and o for nearly 25 years. He left in 2011, moving to New York to focus on developing and writing his own recipes. Now he’s come back to

California to reunite with Waters and run the Lulu kitchen.

“I’m having a lot of fun with the L.A. farmers’ markets,” says Tanis, who is taking great pains to source almost all ingredients from small, local farms that practice regenerative, organic agriculture. “That’s important to us; it’s a way to help mitigate the climate crisis.”

Lulu o ers an ever-changing, daily, threecourse lunch and a limited supper menu on select evenings. At a recent lunch, the prix fixe began with crisp romaine leaves in a balanced, creamy anchovy dressing. A main-course chicken thigh came exactingly braised in a comforting broth with polenta, wild mushrooms, and tiny turnips. A lemon tart with a dusting of lime zest and a dollop of crème fraîche made for a bright ending.

It’s food that’s simple but perfectly sourced and prepared —and reminiscent of Chez Panisse. But Tanis hopes to diverge from the famous restaurant’s European-leaning approach and represent more of L.A.’s diverse cuisines.

“We look at the whole project as being experimental,” he says. “Even though we all know how to run a restaurant, and we’ve worked in restaurants for years, we’re trying new ways to be a restaurant.”

10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, hammer.ucla.edu/restaurant.