LaLou

a lovely wine bar in prospect heights. it's a great place to sit at the bar, get a booth or go to the backyard. during the week, i can sit at the bar. on the weekends we can also usually find a seat if it's just one or two people. the staff is so kind, thoughtful and remember you! the menu changes seasonally with some consistent plates like the cheese, olives, oysters. their steak or duck is also both fantastic. their wine list is expansive and their bartender, Elaine, is so knowledgeable and helpful, you'll find something for anything on the menu. i can't recommend enough! it's a fave of mine for sure.

LaLou has been on my list for ages and it didn't disappoint. Made a reservation in the back garden, which is heated and covered, and had a great dinner before a show at Barclays.

Amazing wines (duh) but the food was just as good! My boyfriend and I shared the Jamon de Bayonne, leeks, bass, vol-au-vent and chocolate rum cake. The vol-au-vent and cake were the highlights, followed by the bass.

Perfect spot for a pre-Barclays or BAM dinner!

This is one of my favorites in Brooklyn. The menu has delicious options for diners from vegetarian to dedicated carnivores. The space is welcoming with the bonus of amazing covered outdoor space. The full bar and well curated wine and Amaro list are available with the ever professional and fun staff!! Great burger , simple and delicious!! Now that I am pescatarian the menu has numerous options for me.

Full disclosure: I knew the head chef when he was a kid. And now he is all grown up and boy oh boy has he mastered some mad skills.

We recently spent a weekend in Brooklyn and my daughter (Chef Ian's childhood classmate) made us reservations at LaLou. I intentionally did not google-stalk LaLou before we arrived because I wanted to be surprised. And everything was delightful!

To start, our train was late getting us in to Penn so no way did we have enough time to race from the station to LaLou to make our reservation. I was worried about fancy NY restaurants with strictly enforced grace periods but I called to let them know and they could not have been more accommodating. When we got there, we had suitcases in tow and despite being a small establishment, it was no big deal for the hostess to find a safe spot for the bags to hang out while we indulged. We were 2-for-2! Super impressed with LaLou's front of house!

Next we were walked back to a beautiful little outdoor space that was cozy and welcoming. Fresh herbs growing in window boxes separated us from our neighbors and we loved the intimate and fragrant atmosphere. Definitely request outdoor seating if Mother Nature is having a good day. From there, we began our culinary adventure delivered by a most friendly and professional wait staff.

The menu is both small and overwhelming. In a good way. There were about a dozen small dishes to choose from - all so artfully presented - and we wanted them all! We enjoyed such creations as
- jambon de bayonne, comté, purple mustard, with sourdough (yes the mustard was really purple and the jambon was thinly sliced and flavorful)
- endive, orange, castelvetrano olive, and hazelnut salad (deliciously fresh and delicately dressed)
- bigeye tuna, cucumber, mache, with herbes de provence (so very fresh and seasoned to perfection)
- leeks, quail egg, potato chips, and pedro ximénez vinaigrette (this was a wonderful surprise and such an interesting mix of flavors and textures)

And to top off our meal, the vol au vent. An outstanding flaky pastry shell filled with tomato confit and cipollini onion. This was probably my favorite dish - but as you can imagine it was pretty hard to choose. How could it be so delicate and flakey and yet so creamy and satisfying all at once?

We also enjoyed a great orange wine from LaLou's vast wine list. It is really quite stunningly large and varied. There is also a full bar, but we didn't get there.

I obviously highly recommend LaLou. And not just because cute little Ian has grown up to be a masterful chef - that's just a bonus. I would equally rave if he had chosen another line of work. But he didn't! And that's good news for all of us.

As a '90s kid, I'm old enough to remember when bread and butter were not merely free but also expected at many restaurants. My parents surely appreciated this as a helpful way to affordably fill up their rapacious youngster, but looking back, the bread was rarely great, and the butter was also rarely great, and in fact the butter was often not even actual butter.

I'm taking you on this trip down memory lane because LaLou offers bread and butter, but it is not free, and it is not even inexpensive by the standards of bread and butter. Instead, it is $6 as of early 2023, which I know for some people is just a ridiculous price for such a thing, either practically speaking, or as a simple matter of principle, or both.

And that's a fair opinion, because there is almost zero culinary talent required to serve even the highest-quality bread and butter. There is no sautéing, no searing, no seasoning, no flambéing, really no preparation at all to justify the markup. And when it comes to menus that charge for bread and butter, who knows how much bread and butter you'll even get -- some spots are shockingly stingy.

At LaLou, however, the bread and butter could almost be a vegetarian main course, and a very satisfying one to boot. For your hard-earned greenbacks, you'll receive two paperback-book-size slabs of She Wolf sourdough and enough Normandy butter to glaze every nook and cranny of the crusty carbs in golden goodness.

I could sing similar praises of LaLou's chicories with crème fraîche vinaigrette, which are a symphony of bitter and creamy flavors, as well as the head-on prawns, which are accompanied by a remarkable rouille and arrive in a puddle of paprika butter that ends up giving the sourdough double duty as a wet mop. Like the bread and butter, both of these dishes seem to have permanent places on an otherwise evolving menu, praised be.

Other takeaways: The service is good; the decor is minimalist to an extreme, bunkeresque degree; and the happy hour wine flight frequently features three whites that, while versatile and inoffensive, are barely distinguishable from one another.

I should also note that the seasonal menu sometimes evolves in less-than-perfect ways, such as when it was charging nearly $30 for few squash rings and gnocchi. But overwhelmingly, at LaLou, you absolutely get what you pay for.

My consensus: it's on the border of okay/good.

We were early for our reservation but they were able to seat us right away in the garden. The staff was friendly and you could tell they all liked their jobs (genuine smiles all around). Service was not too fast and not too slow; just right.

The interior is pretty, with an airy light vibe with low lighting. The ambiance is great for a date night.

I had the Weird Sisters cocktail which was okay. It had a bitter aftertaste that wasn't really to my liking, but if that's your thing, go for it. My boyfriend had the Dead Beat Summer which was more to my liking - watermelon paired with licorice (from the absinthe) was an interesting combination that worked well.

I shared the pecuri in i vigne and honeycomb appetizer with my boyfriend and wish there was more cheese served, or at least a less crusty and large bread to balance out the ratios. As it was, the ratio of cheese to bread was off and there wasn't enough cheese to spread to my liking. The flavors were good, however.

For dinner, I got the roast chicken. There were two medium sized cuts of chicken on the plate, with a crispy skin on both. I don't usually order chicken because of the very easy potential of making it dry, but the chicken was moist. It is laid on a bed of sauce you can dip the chicken in. On the side were two small portions of (I believe were) baby romaine with a vinaigrette on top. Weirdly there were about 6 green beans and 4 broccolini served with this dish. So the star of the dish was the chicken, with the sides a bit of an afterthought. I would have liked a few more of the baby romaine, and less salt on the broccolini and green beans. I think charging $33 for this dish is a bit much for what you get.

Would I come here again? Yes, but only for drinks.

I came here with my friend to catch up after work last week. She had made a reservation, which I highly recommend doing as it was quite crowded when I got there. We sat in the beautiful outdoor patio area, and it was lovely. The inside of the restaurant was also very nice, but was definitely a bit louder and more dimly lit. We each ordered a drink, and then ordered the sourdough bread, the endive salad, the brandade de moure and two delicious desserts. I would absolutely come here again as it's great spot to catch up with a friend or on a date. Highly recommend!

The perfect brunch does exist and it is at LaLou. If you want fresh and lite bites. You have to pay them a visit. The staff is very kind and the atmosphere is sweet and intimate.

This is such a cute neighborhood bar in Prospect Heights. They're open late so we stopped by after dinner for some drinks.

The inside is trendy, with wooden booths lining the wall. There is dim lighting and candles on the tables. It's the perfect date spot as you get privacy from the booths and it's quiet enough to talk comfortably.

We tried their beers, which we thought they might have on tap. They were around $10 and $14, and they brought them out in cans and poured them into glasses. It wasn't quite a pint. For that price, I wish we would've gotten a cocktail because they were only $2 more.

I felt like we were paying for the ambience and setting at that point, but still worth it in my opinion!

LaLou is such a delight, and THE spot for the flavor curious on Vanderbilt. I bring all my loved one to this restaurant.