DINING
Pop-Up
KING HOLDS COURT CHEF LAURENT ‘LQ’ QUENIOUX FIGHTS FIERCE COMPETITION
f there is a classically trained, fine dining chef in Los Angeles who was best positioned to weather the turbulent exigencies and uncertainties of the pandemic, it is chef Laurent Quenioux. A native of the Loire Valley’s Sologne, Quenioux has been pivoting masterfully since he arrived in Los Angeles in 1981. Quenioux has had a successful run since moving to LA — the 7th Street Bistro in Downtown Los Angeles opened in 1983; the small and eccentric Bistro K in South Pasadena; and the lauded Bistro LQ, which closed in 2013. He anticipates tastes and trends without sacrificing quality or his vision of French cuisine with a fresh California spin on it. Upon closing Bistro LQ, Quenioux collaborated with the Downtown LA underground supper club Starry Kitchen. That inspired him to host elaborate multicourse prix fixe dinners on the weekends at his Highland Park home. Food & Wine magazine took notice, as did LA’s burgeoning foodie culture, resulting in a sustained and successful five-year run. Ultimately and ironically, a victim of Highland Park’s hipster-fueled gentrification, Quenioux was forced to vacate his home there shortly before the pandemic. He landed on a verdant, capacious estate in Corona, where he began to host dinners again. Quenioux laughs at the idea that he invented the “pop-up restaurant.” “I am known to be the king of pop-ups, the longest-running pop-up in LA,” he says. With radically reduced overhead costs, the model allows him to present haute cuisine with high-quality ingredients, at far more reasonable price points than a typical fine dining restaurant. “It’s not a business model for everyone,” he says. “Most of the people just want to do those pop-ups to try to find the financing to open a restaurant. We are going backward. We’ve done the restaurants way too many times. Pop-ups are a better version for us. We’re going backward. We’ve done the restaurants. We don’t want to go back.” Still, for all his astute nimbleness, Quenioux struggled during the last year, and it was underscored with personal pain. “At the beginning, there was a lot of support, but it’s been challenging,” he recalls. “The competition became fierce. I don’t expect people to eat our food every single day. There were a lot of (options) out there.” Quenioux’s initial pandemic pivot was further challenged when his mother died in Paris in April 2020 from COVID-19 complications. Unable to travel, Quenioux saw his stress compound. “I am trying to go (to France) in September for a family reunion,” he notes. Popular pandemic eating habits and trends toward fast, casual comfort food further complicated his progress. Don’t get Quenioux started on the current, local viral craze for fried chicken and its variant strains. “Now we’re really trying to fight to get our place back in fine dining through a pop-up,” he says, adding that younger people crave junk food. “Now, fine dining is back, but we have to fight for it again. I don’t know what it is with that damned fried chicken,” Quenioux muses. Quenioux notes the time, effort and expense of sourcing his products and ingredients. “I think what is the most difficult for us to deal with (is) we work so hard to get the best ingredients and we pay top dollar for good ingredients,” he says. “But it seems people don’t care. They are going to eat that fried chicken, and they don’t know where that chicken comes from. People don’t care. They just eat fried chicken. That is the hardest part for us.” Chef Laurent Quenioux
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Photo by Luis Chavez
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BY FRIER MCCOLLISTER
14 | ARROYO | 06.21
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