Restaurateur John Resnick and executive chef Eric Bost have high expectations for their next culinary project, which they hope will deliver an intimate and immersive dining experience specifically curated to spark joy.
On April 17, they’ll open Lilo, a 22-seat fine-dining restaurant that will serve a 12-course tasting menu. Located on Carlsbad’s Roosevelt Street, right behind their 4-month-old Wildland all-day restaurant-bakery-bar, Lilo will serve a coastal California menu that reflects the local terroir and seafood with international influences.
Just 40 guests each night will experience a 2-1/2 to 3-hour progressive meal that will begin on an entry patio with a half-hour canapés course. Then the guests will move indoors to one of 14 seats at the chef’s counter or 8 seats at two four-top tables that are arrayed around the kitchen. The guests will watch their food being cooked and plated, and then served and described by the cooks themselves. Finally, the evening will conclude outside on the exit patio, where drinks will be served around a fire.
The cost for the Lilo experience is $265, plus tax, tip and optional beverage pairings. Reservations through May 25 opened up earlier this week and are booking up fast.
Resnick and Bost say they hope Lilo — which is pronounced “LIE-low,” referring to the rekindling of a friendship (a relationship that has been “lying low”) — will take diners on a journey that delivers far more than a great meal.
“This is a place where people will be coming to celebrate, and we want to be worthy of the celebration,” said Resnick, whose nine-year-old restaurant group includes three other eateries on Carlsbad’s State Street: Wildland, Campfire and the Michelin-starred modern French bistro Jeune et Jolie. “We want to create something where people feel like they can’t put their finger on it, but every aspect of the place and every detail was thoughtful and intentional. We’re trying to build it so people walk away feeling joyful.”
Bost puts it more succinctly: “We hope this would be one of the best meals they’ve ever had, and that’s all tied into joy.”
The idea for Lilo was born four years ago, after Resnick and Bost toured the long-shuttered, 10,000-square-foot Boogie Board factory across the street from Jeune et Jolie and started imagining what the could do with the cavernous space. The lion’s share of the property would eventually be dedicated to their Wildland project, but with 2,000 square feet of unused space in the back facing Roosevelt Street, they came up with the idea for Lilo.
Just as Wildland has a Southwestern desert vibe, Lilo was conceived as an indoor/outdoor space reminiscent of Southern California’s coastal environment. The design firm of Bells + Whistles created a dining room with textured walls that re-create the layered strata of ocean cliffs and an undulating white oak ceiling that mimics the look of rolling ocean waves. The patio, surrounded by tall, curving cedar-plank walls will be landscaped with native plants, rocks and a large Australian bottle brush tree.
All of Resnick’s restaurants have open kitchens that diners can observe, but at Lilo, diners will be surrounded by the kitchen experience. Bost said this design will deformalize the reserved traditions of fine dining, while still offering food execution at a high level.
“There’s nothing hidden at Lilo. You see everything going on. You’ll see pigeons roasting above the hearth and the team building plates in front of you,” Bost said. “Hopefully that looks beautiful and pristine and engaging and offers a dynamic that makes you want to eat it. You can see the human interaction and see the craft behind the cooking and the cocktail-making — all the nuts and bolts of it.”
Bost moved to Carlsbad in 2020, after five years in Los Angeles as chef/owner of Auburn restaurant and executive chef of the restaurant-bakery République. Before that, Bost spent 17 years cooking around the world — including stints with French master chefs Alain Ducasse and Guy Savoy — in cities that included Paris, Singapore, Las Vegas, the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York.
Bost’s international experience and training will be reflected in the cooking techniques at Lilo, even if many of the ingredients will be sourced from local family-owned farms and fisherman. But Bost said he’s also excited to serve ingredients from abroad, like a French wild turbot and Japanese fish that will be dry-aged in-house.
“The menu will be very vegetable-driven with lots of herbs and fruits. It won’t be over-manipulated,” Bost said. “It will be very alive and vibrant and the feel of it is today.”
Because the cooks will be interacting directly with the guests, the staffing makeup at Lilo is unique. Lilo will have 15 cooks and just eight servers. Three cooks will work during the day, doing in-house prep work that includes preserving, smoking, curing and dry-aging ingredients.
The other 12 cooks will work the dinner service. They’ll the servers each afternoon for a 25-minute training meeting on the intricacies of that evening’s menu. Bost is well aware that not all chefs like talking to diners about their food, so he hired cooks for Lilo who are all “very curious, who really want to learn and have tons of questions and want to push themselves out.”
Lilo’s chef de cuisine is Dusan Todic (of Jeune et Jolie), the pastry chef is Madeline Biehl (of SingleThread), wine director is Savannah Riedler (of Saison) and the beverage director is Andrew Cordero (of Jeune et Jolie, Campfire and Wildland).
The opening menu for Lilo has not been released, but Bost has shared some of the initial dishes he’s planning. The canapés course will include a charred spring pea tartlet with caviar, and a gougère waffle with 24-month-aged Comté cheese from . The beef course will feature double dry-aged meat with mushrooms and two species of kelp (one local and one from Japan). There will be house-roasted squab with burnt vanilla oil, green juniper and house-baked laminated brioche roll, and a French meringue dessert known as île flottante, with rose geranium crème Anglaise.
“The 12 courses allow us to be very curated, with small portions that are three to five bites each,” Bost said. “That keep people very engaged. We want to keep people on the edge of their seats and excited about what’s coming next. There’s some surprising elements and hopefully some familiar flavors, but done in ways that maybe people don’t cook at home. We want it to feel like it’s unique.”
Lilo
When: Opening day is April 17. Hours, 5 to 11 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays
Dining info: The 12-course tasting-menu experience (plan a 2-1/2- to 3-hour visit) is $265, plus tax, gratuity and optional beverage pairings
Address: 2751 Roosevelt St., Carlsbad
Online: restaurantlilo.com, instagram.com/restaurantlilo
