• NPR, Friday, August 20, 2010 10:46 AM

LudoBites 5.0 is a tiny café and located in a dingy corner of Los Angeles' fashion district. Don't expect it to be around much longer -- but that's by design, Alex Cohen reports. It's the fifth iteration of a pop-up eatery that Ludo Lefebvre and his wife Krissy have launched since 2007, when the French-born chef got cold feet about opening a much more traditional restaurant with $2 million that investors were ready to back him with.

The prices are lower than they normally would be for fine cuisine, and reservations are hard to come by. The heavily tattooed, "terribly handsome" Lefebvre is like a rock star, Cohen says, who is on display whipping up the likes of a caramel soufflé with sea salt ice cream behind the sandwich bar, and always available for a snapshot with a patron.

The couple is already scouting out a location for a sixth reboot, attracted by the freedom to make up menus on the fly with only a short-term rental commitment. "The people come three days before we open the restaurant, all the staff," Lefebvre says. "We work on the recipe for two days and we open -- that's it. Pam poom."

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