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Living Food Legend Alice Waters Opens Her First LA Restaurant

Inside Lulu at the Hammer Museum, an ode to all things seasonal, sustainable, and beautiful from the founder of revolutionary restaurant Chez Panisse.

by Farley Elliott
Photos by Wonho Frank Lee
An overhead shot of a simple plate of lettuces and ring of baked goat cheese during daytime.
Baked goat cheese and garden salad.
Wonho Frank Lee
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Tomorrow, Los Angeles marks the arrival of Alice Waters, a food luminary and international culinary icon known for her genre-defining Bay Area restaurant Chez Panisse and her tireless work promoting sustainability, regenerative agriculture, and modern American — and specifically Californian — foodways. Her new restaurant Lulu opens inside the Hammer Museum on Thursday, November 11.

The highly anticipated Lulu is, like any Waters project, meant to act — much like the museum itself does — as a showcase, a place for the artistry of local farmers and purveyors to be put on full display for a paying audience. Waters’ oeuvre, of course, is in restaurants, creating places for people to come together over lightly manipulated dishes that highlight the sum of their ingredients; think a simple bowl of perfectly in-season fruit or (as with the new Lulu) a baked Sonoma goat cheese starter with golden beets and lettuce. The restaurant will begin with a prix-fixe three-course lunch offering and a la carte options, spread across a market menu that changes daily to reflect whatever has come in from local growers. That might mean a halibut carpaccio one day, lamb tagine with saffron couscous another, and olive oil walnut cake with pomegranate for dessert.

A bar with glass shelving above that shows off backlit cloth with patterns.
The backlit bar.

While Waters is the spiritual signpost for the new Lulu, she’s certainly not alone in making the day-to-day of the restaurant happen. David Tanis, a longtime food writer and Waters collaborator, is on as chef to run the restaurant, while Rosemary West leads the beverage side with a focus on female winemakers and small, biodynamic vineyards. The entire project was conceived in conjunction with Ann Philbin, Hammer director, and the restaurant’s director of operations is Jesse McBride, formerly of Chateau Marmont and the Standard hotel group. The operation’s CEO is Chez Panisse’s own Jaemie Ballesteros Altman.

As for the space itself, Lulu is a colorful pop of creativity, outfitted by designers Christina Kim and Sean Daly who pull in yellow, light red, and jewel tones everywhere. There are long, curving olive banquettes, scalloped ceilings, and ample open-air atrium spaces for upscale but unfussy indoor-outdoor dining. There are no white tablecloths at Lulu, only hanging lanterns, warm daylight floating in from above, and small touches like rough-edged wooden tables and backlit bar shelving that reveal whimsical woven cloth patterns. Southern California native plants define the space, and on each table are bowls from ceramicist Shoshi Watanabe and plates from 111-year-old LA pottery company Bauer.

Lulu opens Thursday, November 11 at the Hammer Museum in Westwood at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard. The restaurant is open for lunch only to start, with hours from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, for a prix-fixe sit-down menu and a la carte sandwiches, soups, and salads; dinner hours are still to come, and reservations can be made via Resy.

A yellow plate with a simple shave of salad ingredients on top.
Fennel, radish, and arugula salad.
An overhead shot of a light yellow bowl with tan soup and a swirl of red sauce.
Chickpea soup with chile oil.
A dessert, shown in tilted lens, of a square of cake with pomegranate seeds on top and a whip at the edges.
Olive oil walnut cake with pomegranate.
A side shot of a pear slice of pie with cuts of fruit spilling out.
Pear-frangipane tart.
A light. green cocktail in a wide glass on the edge of a marble table.
Soriel Canyon.
A light red coupe glass of a cocktail on the edge of a white table.
Prairie gimlet.
A wide look at a dining room partially outside with trees and banquettes and wooden tables.
The indoor-outdoor space.
A wide look at a bar of a restaurant at left, open-air seating in foreground, and colorful back dining room during daytime.
Bar seating, banquettes, and a colorful inside dining room.
Tilted seats at a cement partially outdoor bar for a restaurant at daytime.
One side of the bar.
Copper pots hold piles of fresh fruit on a long wooden table at daytime inside a new restaurant.
Fresh fruit on display.
A vertical look at olive green seating for a new indoor-outdoor restaurant.
A colorful interior dining room with circular wallpaper and dark green booths.
Scalloped ceilings and glass make the interior multi-colored dining room of a new restaurant pop.
Inside seating awash in color.
Heavy wooden bar seats in a dim interior of a bar at daytime.
The inside portion of the bar.

Lulu at the Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024 Visit Website
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