At Trois Familia, Ludo Lefebvre will make you and your kids eggs for breakfast - Los Angeles Times
Advertisement

At Trois Familia, Ludo Lefebvre will make you and your kids eggs for breakfast

Jon Shook, Vinny Dotolo and Ludo Lefebvre, here sitting at their restaurant Trois Mec, are opening a brunch place in Silver Lake.

Jon Shook, Vinny Dotolo and Ludo Lefebvre, here sitting at their restaurant Trois Mec, are opening a brunch place in Silver Lake.

(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
Share via

The number of Pinterest and Instagram feeds that exist only to document brunch is evidence enough, if you needed it, of the popularity of breakfast in the Age of Avocado Toast. Now the three guys of Trois Mec and Petit Trois — Ludo Lefebvre, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo — are about to open a brunch place, something that recently would have required more than direct evidence for anyone to believe it. Welcome to parenthood. At least as done by chefs.

Trois Familia, the chefs’ third collaboration and the first where they’ll all be cooking together, will open sometime next week in Silver Lake, in the Sunset Boulevard space that was previously Alegria. Thus a disco-era sign is up in another strip mall — Trois Mec and Petit Trois having established the chefs’ fondness for them. And inside, they’ll be making you brunch every day, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Something to do, maybe, before they all head out for the evening to cook at their beautiful collection of restaurants.

>>Jonathan Gold review: Petit Trois

Advertisement

The menu is still in progress, but there will be lots of vegetables, since this part of the world is pretty good for that. What else? Tortas, ceviche, lots of crepes and, among other things, bean stew with garlic broth, brown butter and preserved lemon. “No grain bowls. No crispy rice salad.” (You all know where to go for those anyway.)

As Trois Familia is to be a brunch place, there will of course be eggs. Lots of eggs. “I love eggs, I love to cook eggs,” says Lefebvre. But because this is, after all, not your average grill cook here, the eggs will come outfitted with potato pulp and caviar. In other words, they are the eggs he cooked at L’Orangerie, that very swank French restaurant where he worked in the late ‘90s.

“I always wanted an eggs restaurant,” Lefebvre continues. “It’s a fun project, nothing fancy, bring your kids. We’ll have popsicles.”

Advertisement

Instead of booze, since there’s no liquor license, expect the man who once ran the kitchens at Bastide to make you smoothies. Also hot chocolate, infused water (very French), and “regular coffee.” For dessert: tres leche cake and banana splits, Ludo’s version.

>>Jonathan Gold review: Jon and Vinny’s

And why Silver Lake? Why not? It’s close enough to the chefs’ various restaurants and where they live with their respective families. Also, Lefebvre says he likes the feel of the place. “It’s laid back a little bit, artistes, natural. Everybody smiles at you. I say, what’s wrong with you? People welcome us. It’s crazy.”

Advertisement

“In France, when you buy a restaurant,” said Lefebvre the other day, “most of the time you leave it the way it is. Spend a million dollars on renovation? We don’t do that.”

At least the trio isn’t doing it for this place, which befits the family-oriented egg joint that Lefebvre describes. A French-Mexican egg joint, it should be said, in large part because Alegria was a Mexican restaurant. As Lefebvre put it: “Why not?”

Why not indeed. Trois Familia, named so mostly because Lefebvre, Shook and Dotolo all have young kids now, will have “an ‘80s ambiance” to go with that sign, with a real turntable, according to the chef, playing ‘80s music. “No French rap,” says Lefebvre. “It’s passe.” (He’s been known to play some, notably at LudoBites and Trois Mec, but maybe his two kids have opinions on the subject.)

>>Jonathan Gold review: Trois Mec

And instead of the Mozzaplex diagonally across the street, there are a lot of the kind of family Mexican restaurants that the chefs both do and don’t want to emulate. “I don’t want to compete with tacos,” Lefebvre more or less concludes. No worries.

Although Lefebvre is from Burgundy, remember that his brunch partners met as hungry teenagers at a Fort Lauderdale cooking school, once had a Food Network show, like to cook at Sundance — and just last weekend began serving foie gras loco moco for brunch (more brunch!) at Animal.

Advertisement

It seems as if everybody wants to get up earlier these days, or at least eat well when they do. The new Little Sister is opening with breakfast on the menu, rather than rolling it out weeks later, as new restaurants often do. And a slew of restaurants are putting lunch on their own daily menus, including Church Key, Hutchinson and Terrine. Or maybe many of us just like eating out with our kids.

Especially if they’ve only heard about L’Orangerie as a bedtime story.

Trois Familia, 3510 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.

Because taking pictures of food is almost as much fun as eating it, on Instagram @latimesfood.

ALSO:

6 great waffle recipes for breakfast, dinner, anytime

What’s the best cookbook of all time? The answer may surprise you

Advertisement

Now you can have your weekend brunch at Animal -- more loco moco for you

Advertisement