A bistro is typically defined by its modesty – they are relatively small, affordable and humble. The bistro has become rather ubiquitous these days but despite its many incarnations, at its core, a bistro is a place where every man can eat, and eat well. With Petit Trois, Ludo Lefebvre has brought the spirit of the bistro to Los Angeles. In this episode, Ludo brings us back to Paris to introduce us to some of the people and places that first inspired him to begin a culinary career.
Chef Ludo Lefebvre began his US career cooking at Los Angeles restaurant Bastide, but after it closed for renovations he opted not to return and instead chose to do things his way. Borrowing a friend’s bakery space, which was closed in the evenings, Ludo created a unique dining experience in the form of small, reservations-only, “chef’s choice” dinners. These dinners became known as LudoBites, a pop-up deemed by Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold as "a transforming moment” for the LA dining scene.
Beef and brine. This 'Best Of' episode of the Mind of a Chef explores the wet and dry side of our culinary world. Magnus Nilsson dry-ages a steak in kidney fat as long as he possibly can, April Bloomfield hallucinates while at a butcher shop, Ed Lee makes a ribeye with eel puree, and more.
A strange light in the heavens. The star that signals the birth of Jesus. Is it faith, fable, or fact? The star of Bethlehem is hard to identify thousands of years later. Can we decode the secret of the star with the science of the universe? What was it? Where did it come from? And will it return? Discover an explanation by various astronomers and religion historians of what the star of Bethlehem really was based on available evidence.
Quinto sets out to discover whether aliens exist and what evidence we have to prove it. He meets with several who say they have encountered extra-terrestrial life–a man who has been abducted by aliens several times since childhood; a man who claims to have extracted an alien implant; and a woman who shows Zachary what it feels like to be abducted into a spacecraft. Zachary also meets with the world's leading scientists at SETI in Green Banks, West Virginia. There, utilizing the world's largest telescope, they show him the methods they employ to communicate with potential other-worldly visitors and what this research has taught them about a mysterious radio signal they picked up 3 billion light years away.
Zachary Quinto sets out to research the strangest creatures dug up from the depths of the ocean and to see how much they lend to the monsters that are depicted in myth and legend. Starting in Australia, he meets with a teenager who was savagely attacked by a swarm of mysterious flesh-eating monsters, only to jump into the water himself the next day amongst highly venomous sea creatures. From the carnivorous fish of American rivers to the eyeless monsters of the Atlantic Ocean, Zachary finds some merit in these old monster stories and is starting to understand just what we mean when we say that we know less than 1% of what waits in the depths below.
In this episode, Ludo brings us back to Paris to introduce us to some of the people and places that first inspired him to begin a culinary career.