Ludo Bites America - Redondo Beach

This last Spring famed pop up chef Ludo Lefebvre took to the road with the Sundance Channel in tow. The goal: filming a one night pop up per town. One week from start to finish included finding a location, checking out the local fare, hiring staff and rocking the local palates. The very last stop on the tour that included Raleigh, Mobile, Denver, and Santa Fe was the Southern California town of Redondo Beach.

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm a South Bay girl. Redondo Beach is the neighboring town to Torrance, where I grew up.  So when it was announced that Ludo Bites America was filming there, I knew I couldn't miss it even if I don't want to be on TV. 

The location of choice for this particular one night stand, was Casa Pulido. That took me by surprise. Being familiar with the food/service here, it didn't strike me as an obvious choice. Though truthfully, because of the lack of clientele during the week, maybe that makes it the best choice. I was definitely curious to see if they would be able to adjust to Ludo taking over. I was lucky enough to secure a reservation and with a good friend and my daughter in tow, headed over there to see what was what.

Upon arrival, we were bombarded with shouting and chanting from a small crowd of foie gras protesters carrying pamphlets and signs depicting obviously mistreated geese. These people were preaching to the wrong crowd. One particular overzealous protester attempted to shove a pamphlet in the hand of my 3 year old child. I told the woman that my daughter happens to love foie gras and I was told scathingly that I was a horrible parent. I said it then, and I'll say it now: if being a horrible parent includes feeding my child humanely sourced foie gras, then I'm terrible. Call CPS. I am sick to death of people having narrow minded views and trying to shove it down my gullet. (Get it?) It's all well in good if you want to hug animals and not eat them, but keep it to yourself. I like my steak still mooing, my veal tender and my foie gras perfectly seared. Have a problem with that? Talk to the hand, but if you try to harass my daughter about it, you can have a nice introduction to my fist. Capiche? 

Once inside, we were quickly seated in a nice booth and immediately ordered the entire menu. In fairness to us, it wasn't as extensive as a typical Ludobites. Several items on the menu had me excited from the start, namely the foie gras quesadilla (suck it protesters). Then the service started to get a bit dodgy. 

Everything I had worried about regarding the location proved to be true. Our server forgot that we had ordered and came to get our order again, and our dishes were completely out of sync with some dishes coming multiple times.  Later on in our meal we were interviewed, which I'm sure will be cut, regarding the service. I'm sure they were looking for that typical reality tv bashing, but I just couldn't do it. Especially watching the table across from us acting like a bunch of douchey morons just to be on TV. I was there for the food, not to make some big break into television. 

Facts being facts, Casa Pulido staff is not capable of handling the type of service typical to this kind of event. It's the type of restaurant where you see your server 3 times. Once when ordering, in the middle and at the end. Anything more than that confuses them. It's also apparent by the recent interview the owner of Casa Pulido gave to the Daily Breeze that they have no clue, nor do they want one. I love the staff for the regular LudoBites and I only wish they had been there for this one.

The Redondo Beach episode airs tomorrow, August 23rd at 9pm. Set your tivos to stun. Maybe you'll see me, hopefully you won't. But I'm dying to see how it's edited.

UPDATE: Well, they actually used a few seconds of my interview in which I mentioned the long wait time for our server to take our order. I'm right at the 35:47 mark. I will now be going on the starvation diet. Being a foodie plus the camera 10lbs is not kind...