Laurent Gras
With the May 14th opening of Lincoln Park seafooder L2O, chef Laurent Gras is looking to make a splash in the Chicago foodie pool – though he has already been making ripples for months. Gras, who first rose to prominence in the mid-’90s while working at Peacock Alley in New York's Waldorf-Astoria, received a fair amount of attention last December when he began to blog about the experience of opening a restaurant in the Windy City. Now that the new seafood destination has flung open its doors to the public, the Buzz caught up with Gras to learn how L2O (a riff on the formula for water, H2O, the name is pronounced "el-two-oh") came to be.
Gras credits his partner in the venture, Lettuce Entertain You's Rich Melman, for coming up with the idea of opening a seafood spot in steakhouse-heavy Chicago. When the old Ambria space came available last year, they figured it was the right time and place.
With the location and cuisine decided, Gras began to focus on the menu, drawing upon his experiences of growing up in France and moving to the U.S. From that solid base he then tried to "incorporate ideas from [his] travels to South America, Asia and Europe." Though "the influences on my food are always evolving, I think my focus has stayed the same," Gras says. To prove the point, he notes that he has "dishes on the menu [that] I have been working over for 10 years."
And you don't just have to take his word for it. As Gras and his team have been building their restaurant, they've kept anyone interested in the loop via the restaurant's blog, still a rarity among most restaurateurs. Updated regularly by Gras, his chef de cuisine, GM and dining room manager, the blog has provided an up-close and personal look at everything from sourcing oysters to details on new planned dishes to practicing for opening night.
The blog has also served to keep Gras grounded. "I like [it] because it is both a good way for me to personally organize my thoughts and document the work happening at L2O," as well as a way to have "a conversation with other people. Fine dining can be too exclusive sometimes and I like that everyone has access to it [the blog]."
Gras has also discovered – like many college students before him – that a blog is a good way to reassure anxious loved ones. Gras says that he uses it secondarily to "keep my family and friends around the world updated, like my parents who read the blog in France."