Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Lebrun.
Amy, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’m a Southern California native from Huntington Beach. My first real cooking inspiration came when I was four years old. My dad bought me an Easy Bake Oven and I made cookies that were hard as rocks. He ate them with a smile and that made me want to cook more.
As a chef, I’ve always been inspired by the bounty of regional farms, sustainable meat and local seafood. I also love gardening and harvesting. I attended Culinary School at Orange Coast College and later the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley. In my early 20’s I was obsessed with Julia Child. Soon after, Suzanne Goin influenced me to use the freshest and most seasonal ingredients.
I started my culinary career in 2001 at The Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel. Over the years I had leadership roles in several high-volume and corporate venues including The Ritz Carlton, The Resort at Pelican Hill, 24 Carrots, and Wyndham Avenue of the Arts.
I’ve started as Executive Sous Chef at Lido Bottle Works in Newport Harbor when the restaurant opened in May 2017. When our first chef left in the beginning of 2018, I was promoted to Executive Chef and have made it a focus to showcase the area I grew up in on the plates that we put out.
Has it been a smooth road?
When you work so long in a corporate setting you have to follow all of the rules. Unless you’re in charge, and sometimes not even then, you aren’t the one in creative control.
As a creative person that was always the most difficult part of the job. Wanting to do something my way, but not having the ability to do it. There also weren’t a lot of female chefs that I worked with at the time, so you really had to work hard to make your opportunities count.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We don’t have a huge restaurant to feed a lot of people, so we really focus on each individual dish that goes out, giving the details of each plate the quality, time and love we know goes into making great tasting food. Finding perfect pairings is something we’re also big on. I strive to cook hyper-seasonally, incorporating not just seasonal ingredients, but varieties of ingredients that you can sometimes only find for weeks or a couple of months a year.
A lot of the ingredients come from three local gardens we use, and many of the farms and producers we feature in the restaurant come from relationships we’ve cultivated over time. Sourcing locally is what drives me. I go to the Dory Fishing Fleet at Newport Pier almost every morning to pick up fresh fish brought in that day for our daily specials. The access and variety we have inspired me.
If you had to start over, what would you have done differently?
I would still be a chef, for sure. I probably wouldn’t have stayed in the places I worked for as long as I did. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate those opportunities, but having a variety of ways to grow and be exposed to new things would have been great in retrospect.
It’s why I love traveling so much now, the same idea is behind it. Whether going to Mexico or Scandinavian countries or wherever I end up visiting next, I bring back all these ideas with me that really push me to create new things. If you look at my seasonal menus, you can always see what I’ve been into most recently because the influences come through in ways big and small.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3408 Via Oporto #103, Newport Beach, CA 92663
- Website: www.lidobottleworks.com
- Phone: 949-529-2784
- Instagram: instagram.com/lidobottleworks
- Facebook: facebook.com/lidobottleworks
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lido-bottle-works-newport-beach
Image Credit:
Knife & Spork Public Relations
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