Petit Trois captivates diners with impeccable bistro fare
Chefs of the world’s finest restaurants are notorious for being demanding and maddeningly particular to their staffs — not to their guests. But to patronize a restaurant by chef and Los Angeles food scene luminary Ludo Lefebvre is to be beholden to his strategic conceits.
Big steaks · The steak-frites at Petit Trois are exactingly prepared. A large ribeye is cooked to a flawless medium rare, topped with an onion soup sauce and accompanied with french fries cooked in beef tallow. – Uracha Chaiyapinunt | Daily Trojan
His infamous “traveling pop-up” dining concept LudoBites crashed OpenTable servers despite its unpredictability and constantly changing locations, and his brick-and-mortar restaurant Trois Mec’s ticketing system might become the sole reason Angelenos actually start planning their lives out two weeks in advance.
Lefebvre is starting to dictate the rules of the game in the L.A. fine dining scene — and at his newest Hollywood French bar and bistro concept Petit Trois, it might be good policy to just succumb to his demands.
Along with his Trois Mec teammates Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo (both formerly of Animal), Lefebvre envisioned Petit Trois as a simple, accessible bistro serving the French food he enjoyed in his home country, with a pared-down cocktail program and a handful of carefully selected wines and beers. There’s nothing simple about the preparation of the food, though — in following with Trois Mec, Lefebvre has a full-disclosure open kitchen so that diners can appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into each dish.
At one lunch service, a chef prepares a green bean salad with surgical precision: bathing each long bean with milk-white dressing, plating and then inserting translucent slivers of plum at careful intervals before finishing with Microplane-grated fresh horseradish. The salad is a marvel, with each individual bean snapping with a juicy, crisp texture that practically sings the arrival of the early fall season.
Steak frites, a classic brasserie staple, is executed with a similar clinical precision. A healthy-sized entrecote is pan-seared, basted and then set to rest before being topped with an onion soup sauce and accompanied by a bed of tallow-cooked French fries. The entire dish: the sauce, the unctuous fries and the steak come together to create a French trifecta of umami, with flavors so savory and rich that it almost seems like a crime to serve it for lunch.
Speaking of rich, the already famous crisped chicken leg with frisée salad is impossibly juicy with skin a tad on the greasy side, but it’s one of Petit Trois’ highlights: The varying textures from the crisped brioche crumbs to the juicy dark meat and the salad all balance one another and practically beg for a decent, crisp white wine to counter the fattiness of the chicken skin.
This brings up another point: Almost all of Lefebvre’s dishes at Petit Trois can be elevated with a beverage pairing. Lefebvre’s cocktail program, much like Lefebvre himself, is direct, intentional and fuss-free. With a wine list spanning about six relatively young French options, it would come off a bit curt if it weren’t for the fact that Lefebvre and his team probably know better than diners when it comes to pairing his food with wine.
The above sentiment of “trusting Ludo” seems to be an overarching theme of dining at one of Lefebvre’s restaurants. Los Angeles is a city where a successful dining experience is governed not only by the food and the cachet of the chefs back of house, but very much by the people who are eating in the same room. The latter of these is impeded by the fact that the aptly named “Petit” Trois is comprised of one bar seating about eight people and another bar directly behind it that seats about 12.
The sparse, austere seating arrangement has the diners’ attentions flow either into a mirror sitting less than a foot away from their faces at the back bar, or staring directly at the kitchen assembly line. Petit Trois is not a place to eat with a group of friends — it’s far more conducive to eat alone or with one other person at most.
There is no people-watching here, despite the proliferation of immaculately appointed beautiful somebodies swishing about, trying to flag down the host or order another glass of wine. Petit Trois doesn’t just dismiss social pretenses; it actively stifles them with its spartan ambiance and no reservations policy.
That’s because at Petit Trois, Lefebvre is the high-profile owner, the mastermind and the biggest name all at once. The small bistro pulls the bright lights of Hollywood to the food and gives no quarter to the social niceties of dining. So eating at a restaurant by Ludo Lefebvre guarantees an experience: a tricky one trying to get tickets for seats in the case of Trois Mec, or at Petit Trois, one that can’t be easily shared with friends. In any case, the actual food transcends social considerations. It takes a damned skilled chef to bring this much attention to his food — and Ludo Lefebvre, Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook might be the only ones in Los Angeles right now who can pull it off.