Ludo Lefebvre
Ludo Lefebvre
Petit Trois
Cooking at:
Los Angeles Gala Dinner
Ludo Lefebvre is a French chef, restaurateur, author, and television personality. He was awarded a Michelin star in 2019 for his cutting-edge restaurant Trois Mec and is known as the king of pop-up dining in Los Angeles after launching his revolutionary concept “Ludo Bites”.
When he wasn’t getting into trouble as a teen, he was developing his passion for cooking by spending hours in the kitchen with his grandmother. At 13, his father begrudgingly took him to a local restaurant, Maxime, and told them to assign the worst job to him, believing that he would quit after a couple of weeks. “I loved it, peeling potatoes, onions, washing dishes, I was eager to learn,” remembers Lefebvre.
Chef Ludo has trained under chefs Marc Meneau at the legendary restaurant L’Espérance; Pierre Gagnaire at Saint-Etienne; served as the personal chef for the Defense Minister; and Alain Passard at L’Arpege, one of Paris’ most prestigious restaurants; then finally to the three-star Michelin restaurant Le Grand Vefour before immigrating to the United States in 1996.
He was awarded the prestigious Mobil Travel Guide Five Star Award twice; once at L’Orangerie in 1999, where Chef Ludo earned a reputation of combining old world simplicity with subtly exotic new world flavors. Then again at Bastide in 2006, where he intensified his proprietary world spice combinations and created a truly epic culinary adventure. He then went on to create his uber-popular LudoBites concept, a multi-city restaurant tour, deemed by LA Weekly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold as “a transforming moment in the Los Angeles restaurant scene.” Chef Ludo then opened two restaurants in Los Angeles, Trois Mec, which was awarded a Michelin star in 2019, and Petit Trois.
Trois Mec burst on the LA dining scene in 2013, earning rave reviews from critics like Jonathan Gold and then-Eater critic Bill Addison, leading to a 2014 nomination for best new restaurant by the James Beard Foundation. Gold lauded Lefebvre’s 24-seat tasting menu restaurant as “cutting edge,” while Addison called Lefebvre “a stratospheric talent.” Additionally, LA Weekly named Trois Mec Best New Restaurant Los Angeles in 2013, Los Angeles’ Best Restaurant in 2014 and 2016, and named Ludo Best Chef 2015. He was also named the break-out star of The Taste by the New York Times.
Ludo is also the author of two cookbooks, LudoBites: Recipes and Stories from the Pop-Up Restaurants of Ludo Lefebvre and Crave: The Feast of the Five Senses. Ludo has made numerous TV appearances including Ludo Bites America on the Sundance Channel, and The Taste with Anthony Bourdain, among many others.
