World’s No. 3 restaurant chef speaks out

A 21st century French chef, L.A. Taco’s Taco Madness, a Juneteenth bake sale, yakitori in Vegas, ube everywhere and Steph Curry’s favorite popcorn. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

France’s outsider is in

The morning after his Paris restaurant was named the third-best on the planet at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony last week, the critic-turned-chef Bruno Verjus tucked into a booth at the Wynn Las Vegas and ordered three sunny-side-up eggs plus a piece of ham — a hard-to-mess-up order — before launching into a rapid-fire conversation about whether French gastronomy is stuck in the 20th century and how a woman painter from the 17th century spoke to the way he loves to eat and cook.

For more than 10 years, Verjus, who became a restaurateur and chef after a life as an entrepreneur selling medical devices, then a food blogger, critic, radio host and podcaster, has run Table by Bruno Verjus in Paris’ 12th Arrondissement. Table began its life in 2013 with a 21 euro à la carte lunch menu. It’s since evolved into a two-star Michelin showcase with a 400 euro tasting menu that highlights the best of French seasonal ingredients from artisan producers. Yet despite the Michelin nod and the difficulty of getting a reservation at his 24-seat restaurant, Verjus is often seen by the French cuisine establishment as an outsider.

He points to the headline in Le Figaro announcing Table’s No. 3 ranking: “A Parisian restaurant makes a surprise entry into the top 3 best restaurants in the world.”

“They say, ‘unexpected’ [as if we] became No. 3 in the world overnight. Some readers, they were very upset at the way the paper treated me. They say, ‘Hey, wake up. Where were you? You should have followed this guy and not say, Oh, my God, big surprise.’ ”

It wasn’t just the press but other chefs who were skeptical when Verjus made the transition from writer to restaurateur.

“When I decided to open a restaurant, many French chefs treated me like s—,” he says. “ ‘You’re pretending to to be a chef, but who are you? You never worked in a kitchen. We started when we were 14.’ And then I got a star and they were more upset. Second star, even more upset.”

That’s not to say he doesn’t have great French chefs in his corner. He talks regularly to superstar chef Alain Ducasse. And one of the chefs he considers a mentor is Alain Passard, whose L’Arpège has had three Michelin stars for decades and this year was ranked 45th on the 50 Best list.

But it irks many that only four French restaurants were recognized on the 50 Best list — the other two were the Paris restaurants Plénitude, a three-star Michelin destination by Arnaud Donckele that ranked 18th on the list, and Septime by Bertrand Grébaut, which ranked 11th on the list and is known as one of the France’s hardest reservations despite the fact that it has only one Michelin star.

To those who think France should be better represented on the list, Verjus says, “They still strongly believe French gastronomy is what it was in the 20th century. And I say, ‘Hey, why you don’t buy some plane tickets and go around the world to see what is going on worldwide?’ So many French restaurants are boring. It’s the same dead food.”

He views the chefs on the 50 Best list as allies in trying to shape what 21st century fine dining can become.

“When you talk about food, you talk much more about the soul. What is your perception of the world? The way I cook is I tell stories.”

He also breaks French tradition by largely forgoing the usual mise en place kitchen set up — with ingredients prepped ahead so that dishes can get to diners efficiently — in favor of à la minute preparations.

An example of how he thinks about food is a cherry dessert inspired by a still-life painted by the 17th century female artist Louise Moillon.

“When I went to the Louvre and saw the way she painted the cherries — with transparency — I said, ‘Oh, my God, this is exactly how you want to eat cherries.’ She paints exactly as she sees. And my process is the same. I do dishes exactly the way I want to eat. I’m a guest first of all. Because I used to write a lot about food, I always want to stay on the guest’s side. I want to understand food not from the kitchen, but sitting at the table.” (If you want to see Moillon’s work up close, there’s another painting of hers that features cherries at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum.)

After some discussion about the geopolitics of gastronomy (“everybody knows that since since Tallyrand 200 years ago”) Verjus finishes his eggs and gets ready to catch a plane.

“It will be very interesting to see how people will absorb the fact that Table is No. 3 now — if they will pay attention to me and ask, ‘Is there something that we missed?’ Or if they will continue to ignore me. Because I’m a disruptor.”

More awards: Lord Maynard Llera started L.A.’s Kuya Lord as a pandemic pop up featuring Filipino barbecue at his La Cañada Flintridge home. In 2022, he found a permanent restaurant home for Kuya Lord in L.A. on the corner of Western and Melrose. Our critic Bill Addison loved what he ate at Kuya Lord — and this week Llera was named Best Chef: California at Monday’s James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards. Stephanie Breijo has Llera’s reaction and news of the other honorees, including Ruth Reichl, who received the lifetime achievement award and Fly by Jing’s Jing Gao, who won the James Beard Cookbook Award for visuals in her “The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp.”

The winemaker who shocked the French

From my earliest days covering food, I heard the stories of the 1976 blind tasting instigated by British wine merchant Steven Spurrier in which a California wine — a 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon — beat out some of France’s most highly esteemed domaines. That wine came from Stag’s Leap founder Warren Winiarski, and as David Rosoff writes in his appreciation of the vintner, who died June 7 at the age of 95, “the results sent shock waves through the wine world. … The tasting became known as the Judgment of Paris, and it secured California wines’ place on the world stage.”

‘L.A. Taco deserves to live forever’

If you haven’t made Saturday plans this weekend, may I suggest you head to L.A. Taco‘s annual Taco Madness festival? Held at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes starting at 6 p.m., the festival (postponed due to rain from its original April date) always has fantastic tacos, micheladas and music. More important, you can help support one of our best and most beloved local sources of on-the-ground journalism. Stephanie Breijo talked with editor in chief Javier Cabral about the challenges facing L.A. Taco and the need for more subscribers. Taquero Victor Villa also weighed in on the importance of the site when his Villa’s Tacos became the three-time champion of L.A. Taco’s Taco Madness competition in April.

“I hope you guys can support L.A. Taco, I hope you guys subscribe to be a member or donate to them,” Villa said. “Good journalism like L.A. Taco deserves to be alive forever and ever.”

Also: More for food lovers this Saturday. Gather for Good is hosting its first in-person Pies for Justice bake sale to celebrate Juneteenth, with some of the city’s best pastry chefs contributing pies. The bake sale was launched in 2020 as a virtual event during the pandemic to support restaurants that lost business due to COVID shutdowns. The bake sale now, as Bryan A’Hearn writes, “donates proceeds to support advocacy for racial justice and underserved communities in Los Angeles.” The event will be held at ChowNow headquarters in Culver City starting at 11 a.m.

Yakitoriguy lessons

Last week, Jenn Harris reported on the winners of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants held at the Wynn Las Vegas, with the No. 1 spot going to Disfrutar in Barcelona. And in the most recent Tasting Notes, critic Bill Addison gave his assessment of the 50 Best awards and the special “One to Watch” designation that went to Jon Yao‘s Kato, the only L.A. restaurant to be recognized by the 50 Best group. But we also want to note that Los Angeles’ Yakitoriguy made a special appearance at the Revelry festival held at the Wynn around the 50 Best awards. Our own Stephanie Breijo was emcee of the event, taking diners through Yakitoriguy’s demonstration as he talked about the many ways to cut a chicken and why he feels it’s important to keep the tradition of yakitori alive and thriving.

As he told Breijo in her 2023 profile of the chef, “when I started, a lot of people that I met on the street didn’t know what yakitori was; they thought it was teriyaki chicken. That’s like saying, ‘Is ramen just noodles in soup?’ ”

The Influentials

This month, the paper launched L.A. Influential, a series on some of the moguls, artists, community leaders and others shaping the city. Among them are a few food world personalities making a difference in how we eat. Siblings Jonson and Alice Chen, for example, run the Taiwanese supermarket powerhouse 99 Ranch, started by their father Roger Chen in 1984. “With 58 stores across 11 states, 99 Ranch is now one of the largest Asian supermarket chains in the country,” writes Clarissa Wei.

And of the name, Wei says, “They say that the 99 in 99 Ranch is a homophone in Mandarin for longevity and that the ranch represents freshness.” “As if straight from a ranch,” Alice said. “The double meaning is 99%. It’s almost perfect, but not quite. We’re always trying to be better. It’s very Asian. No one is 100%.”

Liwei Liao has spread the gospel of dry-aged fish across the Southland and beyond at his Sherman Oaks market the Joint Seafood. “I’ve always said I wanted to change the way fish has been sold, but I never realized that it would have been at this scale,” Liao told Stephanie Breijo.

Zach Brooks, the curator and general manager of Smorgasburg L.A., gets some 100 applications a month from those hoping for a spot at the weekly Row DTLA outdoor food market. A successful Smorgasburg run can often give upstart chefs the attention they need to find the backing to open their own restaurants.

“My dream was to have a lineup that Jonathan Gold would love,” Brooks told Jamie Feldmar, referring to this paper’s late restaurant critic. “But I also wanted stuff that tourists would love, people on Instagram would love, and second-generation Chinese kids from the [San Gabriel Valley] who know what good food is would love.”

Steph Curry’s favorite popcorn

Jenn Harris got an exclusive first look at the food coming to Inglewood’s new Intuit Dome, the new home of the L.A. Clippers. A chef in Salzburg, Austria, helped with the development of the pretzels. “It’s a level of dedication and care to detail one might expect from a Michelin-starred restaurant,” Harris writes. And then there is the popcorn, chosen by “Golden State point guard and popcorn expert Steph Curry.

“Steph Curry has actually ranked every single facility for their popcorn,“ Halo Sports and Entertainment CEO Gillian Zucker told Harris. “And we’re like, we want our popcorn to be the best so maybe he’d come and try it. We asked him and he said he would.”

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