Mailea Weger knows what she’s doing. The Californian chef-owner of lou has a story, she tells it well, and people are listening.
The short version: Weger had a successful 10-year career in fashion. At age 30, she felt unfulfilled, so she sold everything, moved to Paris and started working in a cafe. She came back to the States to get her culinary degree; cooked in New York, New Orleans and Los Angeles; and then returned to Paris for a two-year stint at Echo Deli. In 2019, she set up shop in East Nashville to be near her parents, opening lou in the craftsman that formerly housed Fort Louise.
That’s a story diners in 2020 like. We know what it is to feel disillusioned — to be sitting in a cubicle, scrolling on Twitter and dreaming about chucking it all to do what we love. Most of us won’t — or can’t — do it, and that’s what makes Weger’s story so magnetic. Since opening in September, lou has been written about by publications from Travel & Leisure and Thrillist to Condé Nast. Food & Wine named it one of the 19 biggest restaurant openings of 2019. Lou’s pastry chef, Sasha Piligian, once worked at L.A.’s Sqirl, which F&W named one of the most important restaurants of the past decade. So the hype? It’s there. But how’s the food?
We have to start with dessert. As a lover of savory things, I never thought I’d start there, but Piligian made it so. Her fried apple pie is equal parts comfort and sophistication, with a crust as flaky and buttery as any you grew up on. Finished with hibiscus cream and citrus curd, the apples pop in a way they never could when accompanied by plain old vanilla ice cream. The dark-chocolate semifreddo with miso-peanut caramel needs no explanation — it’s as obscene as it sounds. And then there’s the Key lime custard tart. Topped with candied coriander and salted Meyer lemon, it tastes like Key lime pie and cheesecake had a baby — tangy, fluffy and impossibly rich. And while I know it’s not technically cheesecake, it’s the caliber I imagine Sophia Petrillo would cut a bitch to get.
Le petite mort cocktail
To drink, I recommend starting with a spritz before moving on to natural wine. Lou has everything from skin-contact German white to chilled, co-fermented Portuguese red (which is made with multiple grapes, and which you must order). At brunch, cash in on “breakfast wine,” a discounted glass of unfinished bottles from the night before. At dinner, the $25 half-liter of “vin de table” is always a good call. Once you get to digestifs, lou goes strong — not sweet — and that’s key when pairing with decadent desserts. The Marseille Amaro by Forthave Spirits was a notable discovery, with its bracing rhubarb and cinnamon flavors. It, like a lot of things at lou, smacks of 2020 buzzwords: small-batch, all-natural, botanical, Brooklyn! And boy, does it have a story. Forthave’s website bills the spirit as the secret recipe of four medieval dudes who were caught stealing from plague victims, and who were only set free when they gave the recipe up. That’s some next-level branding, and you know what? I’m in. It delivers. Lou uses Forthave’s amaro and aperitivo (botanical liqueur made with orange and chamomile) in “le petite mort,” a cocktail made with olive brine that’s part Negroni, part dirty martini. It’s bitter, savory, odd and addictive. That target is not easy to hit, which is probably why it’s named after a French slang term for orgasm.
That drink is a good example of how lou puts its artisanal, organic, citizen-of-the-world brand to work. Sure, giant Peruvian lima beans sound cool, but do you really need them? The answer is yes — but only because Weger makes their size matter. The hearty, creamy, huge beans (each bigger than a quarter) are dressed with Meyer lemon, salsa verde and a crunchy, breadcrumb-y topping. They’re honestly just fun to eat.
Photo: Daniel Meigs
The same is true of the Key West pink shrimp al pastor, heavily spiced and dressed with chile oil and salted lime. The shrimp come head-on, which I typically rail against in fine dining, but lou does it right: tails trimmed, heads nearly detached and ready for sucking, bowl for shells. It’s a fun, confident dish. There’s more of that at brunch. For the tartine, Weger dresses roasted wild mushrooms in garlic-honey, cumin butter, chile oil and cotija cheese before piling them on crusty Folk sourdough and topping it with a fried egg. It’s a satisfying, veggie-forward dish, as is the gravlax “chopped” salad: cured salmon, mint yogurt and crunchy things like pickled fennel and fermented cauliflower. While its Instagrammable plating makes it hard to get the perfect bite, the flavors are flawless when you do.
My biggest nitpick is when those flavors aren’t pushed quite far enough — as with the baked eggs with mole cream. Mole typically has about 30,000 ingredients, and while I could taste the care that went into lou’s, mixing it with cream and adding baked eggs dulled the spark that mole often brings. A similar thing happened with the mussels with fermented fennel and avocado leaf dashi. The broth was delicate and deep — I could see it as a first course at The Catbird Seat — but it didn’t do much paired with mussels or bread, both of which need concentrated flavors for slurping and sopping. I’d also like more pickled cherries and walnuts in the crispy rice (though the crust is a crunchy, golden dream); better distribution of cumin butter on the skirt steak; and 15 minutes alone in the dining room to rearrange the tables so the backs of all the chairs don’t touch each other. (If you’re seated next to a toe tapper, may God have mercy on your soul.)
These are small things, but they add up when you’re getting national publicity four months in. I imagine they’ll all get worked out in time. Lou is already doing so much right, and that comes down to Weger. I sat beside her at a recent Sean Brock dinner, and she was funny, confident and disarmingly straightforward — three of my favorite qualities. She joked about how she “peaked” in 2008 with every girl’s late-Aughts dream job: working for Juicy Couture.
In lou’s brightest moments, you see that wit in action. I look forward to much more of it from her in 2020.
