Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Bessade and Antoine Blandin.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Antoine and I met at the opening of my first restaurant in Paris and right away it was extremely easy for us to work together. We were both passionate about our job and had the same vision of what it means to be at service of. When I sold Gabylou, my first restaurant, I quickly realized that I wanted to keep doing what I was doing just in another part of the world. I traveled all around for a little less than a year, Antoine did the same on his side and as I was leaving in LA in the past, I realized that it will be the great place to do it again. Antoine agreed to join the adventure and this is how we started Loupiotte Kitchen.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I guess the biggest struggle is to start again in a city where you don’t really know that much people in your industry and you really have to learn how to trust your feeling. When I create a restaurant, I like to take place where everything needs to be build up and one of the first big challenges was to make sure I will find the right team for it. I had to go through construction, permits, health department, alcohol license, etc. and having the good team for it was essential to build the restaurant in time. So from negotiating the lease to build the whole thing the fact that I m not American and that I did not know much was for sure not easy. But we made it and everything turned out to be perfect
Please tell us about Loupiotte Kitchen.
Loupiotte means little light in French, and our mission with that restaurant was to create a place where people feel good, just like at home. We design the restaurant is a way where when you enter you feel like walking in into someone’s home. As far as the kitchen, all of our fruits and vegetable are a 100% from Farmers Market, we go to Santa Monica on Wednesday and Hollywood Market on Sunday. Everything is homemade and we mostly buy all the rest organic. With the restaurant we started doing nonprofit dinners once a month with an association called the Right Way Foundation. They help foster youth to find a better place in this town. America is a really tuff country, the system is let’s just say it pretty fuck up so we are happy to be part of the community and be part of something greater than just doing our job, specially now.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I will have build the restaurant with more an American culture in mind and not that much a French one. We take 2 hours to eat, here in LA people go fast, they want to order pay eat and go. Since the shut down of the coronavirus we have transform a little our way to serve and function. We are more focusing on To Go and I m sure it was a mistake to don’t to it straight from the beginning specially for breakfast and lunch.
Pricing:
- Breakfast lunch 9.50-15$
- Dinner 9.50 -31
- Wine glass 9.50-18
Contact Info:
- Address: 1726 N Vermont av
90027 Los Angeles - Website: www.loupiottekitchen.com
- Phone: 323 445 2738
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @loupiottekitchen
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