The Clever Root

Spring / Summer 2016

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7 4 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t THE "POP-UP" IS A RECENT DEVELOPMENT in the restaurant world. A chef in between gigs, or a working chef with some experi- mental ideas, rents a defunct restaurant or prevails on an existing place to use it on a night when it's closed. Then, for one night or two, a new restaurant pops up. Leave it to three of the most creative celeb- rity chefs in Los Angeles to grab this concept and run with it. They have formalized the pop-up and now sell tickets for the experience. Trois Mec re- fers to these "three guys"—Vinny Dotolo, Jon Shook and Ludovico Lefèbvre—who took over an abandoned pizzeria in a mid-town strip mall and, without even changing its seedy façade, created a cult destination restaurant that serves an ever-changing five-course dinner menu Monday through Friday. Tickets, currently priced at $85 plus 18% service charge (that comes to $100.30 per head), before wine and any supplements, go on sale every other Friday morning at 10:00 a.m. for reservations in the following two weeks. They are usually sold out by 10:02. Shook and Dotolo are the proprietors of three other hot restaurants: Animal, a raffish, meat-cen- tric place that features such delicacies as pig's ears, calf's brains and oxtail poutine, a prime destination since it opened in 2008; Son of a Gun, a trendy seafood place; and Jon & Vinny's, an upscale pizzeria. Lefèbvre, the leader of the mecs, is a dashing, artistically inked, bigger- than-life French stud muffin who has been chef at some of the most celebrated Los Angeles restaurants, including the now defunct Bastide and L'Orangerie. SNAGGING A TABLE AT LOS ANGELES CULT RESTAURANT TROIS MEC BY ANTHONY DIAS BLUE THE POP-UP COMES OF AGE Carolina gold rice pudding, brown butter, egg yolk. PH O T O : S H AYLA D E LU Y The interior of Trois Mec. The counter is the best vantage point from which to observe the kitchen activity.

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