POP-UP KING HOLDS COURT

Pop-Up

KING HOLDS COURT

CHEF LAURENT ‘LQ’ QUENIOUX FIGHTS FIERCE COMPETITION

BY FRIER MCCOLLISTER

If 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.”

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In May, Quenioux was still offering five-course boxed meals for delivery at $59 on select weekends. Meanwhile, he had already launched his first outdoor seating in Corona under the banner “LQ Fooding @ Ma Maison 2.0, Underground Supper Club.”

There are more planned in June, including a satellite experiment in Montecito Heights.

“There will be a few in June here (in Corona),” he explains.

“On June 26, it will be in Montecito Heights. It will be one of our new Los Angeles locations, near Pasadena and South Pas. But that location will not be as elaborate as what we are doing here. It will be much more simple, a three-course meal with wine and more fun, limited to 12 (diners) and a beautiful view of the city. It’s outside.”

The location is the urban farming operation Rose Hill Farm. With its limited indoor access, the location features a grill and outdoor pizza oven. The plan is for a more modest and informal three-course presentation.

“We won’t be able to do what we usually do, but it will be fun,” he says.

The next announced meeting of the Underground Supper Club in Corona is June 19. The sample menu, subject to change, demonstrates the depth of Quenioux’s artistry.

Starting with an amuse bouche of uni flan with pickled shiso leaves, the first course is a spring vegetable tart with white asparagus, radish, carrots, baby leeks and turnips. The tart is accompanied by a fresh herb coulis of estragon, mint, coriander and parsley grown in Quenioux’s own garden.

The second course: frog legs with caviar de sologne, mashed fingerlings with crème fraiche and a green garlic, ramp emulsion.

That is followed by smoked haddock with cauliflower espuma and sautéed apple.

The fourth course features softshell crab with bacon in fish sauce and fermented chili paste, served with English peas and fava beans, garnished with makrut limes.

Squab and crawfish in a red bell pepper, ginger lime emulsion with fresh morels is the fifth course.

An optional cheese course, at an additional charge, is next, followed by dessert. Dessert is chocolate cremeux, served with chocolate sorbet and honey, with a cocoa nib lace tuile. Wine pairing with each course is also available at an additional charge. The price is $85 per person for dinner.

Regarding the optional cheese trolley, Quenioux is known as an expert connoisseur of French cheese and has developed a productive import channel with a cheese monger, identified simply as Sophie.

Also available for delivery online, Quenioux’s curated cheeses are selections not easily found elsewhere. He sighed audibly when asked about it.

“I’m getting so tired,” he says. “We bring our own cheeses from France. They’re not pasteurized. It’s so expensive. It takes so much in logistics. Then you guys write an article about cheese in the city, and I know all these restaurants and they all buy the same crappy cheese from the same distributor. It’s been such hard work to build the infrastructure, to make it efficient, to be able to sell it.”

With pandemic restrictions possibly lifting entirely in June, a gastronomic adventure to Corona may reinvigorate the public’s fine-dining sensibilities.

“The setting is incredible; the service is incredible,” Quenioux asserts. “We need to fight back for our (fine dining) space. People will have a phenomenal experience at prices that nobody can beat.

“We’re actually looking for a new Pasadena location as well. We want to do maybe twice here (in Corona) a month, one in Montecito and maybe one in Pasadena, to do four weekends a month. Pasadena is different. I love Pasadena. It’s a different crowd. The future is more east.”

Make no mistake, Quenioux is an Arroyo fan. “Eagle Rock, Pasadena, Monrovia, Arcadia — this is the area that I love. For me, Los Angeles is that area. It’s the best that Los Angeles has to offer.”

To punctuate that point, Quenioux was persuaded to give up his recipe for chocolate croissant bread pudding for the delectation of Arroyo Monthly readers.

LQ Fooding @ Ma Maison 2.0 Underground Supper Club

bistrolq.com

CHOCOLATE CROISSANT BREAD PUDDING

Ingredients

2 cups milk 1 1/4 cups heavy cream 1 vanilla bean, split and seeded 5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (optional) 1/2 cup sugar 5 eggs Pinch of salt

5-day-old croissants, cut into 1-inch pieces 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into 1/2-inch pieces caramel sauce for serving lightly sweetened whipped cream for serving

Method

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly butter a 2-quart oval au gratin dish. Pour the milk and cream into a heavy saucepan. Add the vanilla seeds and bean halves to the milk mixture. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat, cover, and let stand for 30 minutes. Return the saucepan to medium-high heat and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and whisk in the 5 ounces finely chopped chocolate until smooth. In a heatproof bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs and salt until blended. Form a kitchen towel into a ring and place the bowl on top to prevent it from moving. Gradually pour the hot chocolate mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture through a finemesh sieve set over a large bowl. Add the croissants and stir to combine.

Let stand for 20 minutes, occasionally pressing the croissants into the custard.

Stir 3 ounces of the chopped chocolate into the croissant mixture and transfer to the prepared dish. Sprinkle the remaining chopped chocolate on top. Bake until a knife inserted near the center of the pudding comes out almost clean, 40 to 45 minutes.

5 REASONS TO DO “INSIDE OUT PRUNING”

Bringing out your hedge trimmer can be an easy, fast way to turn your plants from shabby to shapely. After a few effortless swings, the job is largely done. But we’ve all seen that stiff, unnatural, exterior of dense, tightly packed leaves with dead dry interior as a result. At Garden View, our maintenance teams use trimmers to efficiently remove plant material - but instead of solely relying on hedge trimmers, our team has perfected the strategy of utilizing what we’ve coined as, “The Inside-Out Method.”

Start by reaching inside the plant and, using a hand pruner, snip a small branch with leaves on it back to a lateral branch. Repeat the same process every 6 to 9 inches balanced throughout the shrub to create small openings in the dense exterior so that light can reach into the interior. New growth will start to sprout from inside the plant. Depending on the shrub and your needs, you may want to do this as often as every third pruning.

Here are our Top 5 benefits of Inside-Out pruning: 1. Less work - Plants that have been inside-out pruned will require less maintenance. Flush-trimming forces the plant to devote energy to producing new growth predominantly on the exterior of the plant instead of throughout the whole plant. This makes more work for you! 2. Healthier plants - Constant flush pruning cuts off growth before new healthy leaves and stems have a chance to mature and photosynthesize (produce plant energy). Plants need new growth to be healthy, produce chlorophyll, and to grow out of disease and other issues. Inside out pruning allows for new growth from inside the plant. 3. More natural look -In most cases, constant flush pruning makes plants look unnatural while subjecting the plant to possible over pruning resulting in exposing the dry, brown and dead-looking interior. Inside out pruned plants will produce new growth on the interior of the plant and won’t appear as sheared. 4. Less disease & insect problems - The dense exterior of sheared plants has minimal airflow at the center of the plant, making it a safe haven for pests, fungi, and disease. 5. More Flowers - Constant flush pruning cuts off most flower buds that appear on new growth before you, beneficial insects and hummingbirds can enjoy the flowers.

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RECREATING SUMMER Memories BY EMILY CHAVEZ

In my family, summer trips often involved camping at a national park, enjoying early morning hikes and late-night s’mores after a hearty dinner.

The formula for s’mores is simple: chocolate and marshmallow in between graham crackers. But, with me being a peanut butter lover as well, I opt for peanut butter-filled chocolate candy pieces, plus the marshmallow and graham cracker.

Last year, our summer camping plans were tossed aside, thanks to the pandemic, but now national parks and campsites are opening.

Our schedules keep getting busier, making it hard to carve out the time for a trip. Nevertheless, I’m determined to recreate those summer memories at home and make new ones. I’d like to keep that campfire going in my heart.

PEANUT BUTTER S’MORE BROWNIES PREP TIME: 20 MINUTES | TOTAL TIME: 50 MINUTES YIELDS 24 SERVINGS

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 CUPS GRAHAM CRACKER CRUMBS (ABOUT 10 CRACKERS) 1 1/2 CUPS SUGAR 1/2 CUP BUTTER, MELTED 1/2 CUP BUTTER, SOFTENED 3 LARGE EGGS, ROOM TEMPERATURE 1 TEASPOON VANILLA EXTRACT 1 1/4 CUPS ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR 1/3 CUPS CACAO POWDER 1/2 TEASPOON BAKING POWDER 1/4 TEASPOON SALT 1/2 CUP CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER, WARMED TO BE POURABLE 1 CUP MINI MARSHMALLOWS

INSTRUCTIONS

1. PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350 DEGREES. 2. STIR TOGETHER THE GRAHAM CRACKER CRUMBS AND 1/4 CUP SUGAR. 3. ADD IN THE MELTED BUTTER. PRESS THIS MIXTURE INTO THE BOTTOM OF A CLEAN 9-BY-13-INCH BAKING PAN. 4. BAKE UNTIL LIGHTLY BROWNED, ABOUT 8 MINUTES. THEN COOL ON A RACK. 5. MAKE BROWNIES BY CREAMING TOGETHER THE SOFTENED BUTTER AND REMAINING 1 1/4 CUPS SUGAR ON MEDIUM SPEED UNTIL FLUFFY, ABOUT 6 MINUTES. ADD EGGS ONE AT A TIME, BEATING AFTER EACH ADDITION. BEAT IN VANILLA EXTRACT. 6. WHISK TOGETHER THE FLOUR, CACAO POWDER, BAKING POWDER AND SALT IN A SEPARATE BOWL. THEN ADD TO THE CREAMED MIXTURE AND MIX UNTIL FULLY INCORPORATED. 7. SPREAD BATTER OVER THE BAKED GRAHAM CRACKER CRUST. EVENLY DOLLOP SMALL SPOONFULS OF PEANUT BUTTER ON THE BATTER AND SWIRL THROUGHOUT WITH A TOOTHPICK OR KNIFE. 8. TOP WITH THE MARSHMALLOWS AND BAKE UNTIL THE CENTER IS SET, ABOUT 18 TO 22 MINUTES.

Port of Jamaica, courtesy of Pasadena’s own Sailor’s Brew Coffee, features the use of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.

PORT OF Jamaica A DELICIOUS COFFEE COCKTAIL

BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI

This month, we bring back our cocktail column by introducing Port of Jamaica, courtesy of Pasadena’s own Sailor’s Brew Coffee.

Port of Jamaica features the use of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee. Harvesting this coffee is difficult, time consuming and, at times, dangerous because of the rough terrain, according to Trevon Sailor, the founder of Sailor’s Brew Coffee.

Jamaica produces 4 to 5 million pounds of this coffee a year. Fun fact: About 80% of Blue Mountain Coffee is exported to Japan.

Check out the recipe below for Port of Jamaica and enjoy!

4 ounces of brewed Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee. Any coffee can work, but Jamaica Blue Mountain has a naturally sweet and creamy body that complements the drink 1.5 ounces of RumChata 4 medium-sized ice cubes 2 dashes of ground cinnamon

Add ice to a cocktail shaker along with the brewed Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee and RumChata. Mix the ingredients by shaking for about 45 to 60 seconds. Strain the cocktail into an elegant glass. Top with ground cinnamon and enjoy.

PORT OF JAMAICA

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