Around this time last year, chef-owner Michele Galifi was prepping to open the doors of his new restaurant, Bianca Sicilian Trattoria, in the Arts District. Fresh off a fall from a ladder and a broken wrist, arm and elbow, the proud Palermitano picked himself up and spent the next 12 months cooking and serving traditional Sicilian food. Last month, he expanded operations with Lulu’s Coffee, a new breakfast spot inside Bianca Sicilian Trattoria.
While the restaurant is named after his first daughter, Bianca, Lulu is a nickname for his second daughter, Lucia.
“She’s a little feisty one,” he relayed. “I feel like it can connect to the coffee.”
Lulu’s Coffee Shop is named after the nickname of Chef-Owner Michele Galifi’s second daughter, Lucia.
(Lulu’s Coffee/Submitted)
Lulu is also one of the coffee shop’s signature creations: espresso, caramelized plantain, milk and a cream top. The Bianca features café de olla and Italian crema di caffè, the Tiramisù combines espresso, Marsala syrup, milk and a mascarpone top and the Drewski — the nickname for his third child, 9-month-old John Andrea — contains espresso and amaretto syrup. Guests can also order matcha drinks and tonics, including Matcha Tonic and Espresso Tonic.
“We use the same ideals and principles of the dinner,” said Galifi, “which is every single thing is made from scratch. We make syrups from scratch. We make cream tops with mascarpone from scratch.”
The Italian twist on the breakfast burrito is Italian pork sausage instead of chorizo. Galifi incorporates Latino flavors because his wife, whom he met while working at a restaurant in Pasadena in 2012, is Central American.
“We have a platano syrup with a platano cream top on a coffee,” he shared.
Other breakfast menu items include French toast with whipped honey ricotta and peach jam, avo toast with avocado cream, crispy prosciutto and furikake and a breakfast sandwich on house-made sourdough with lemon aioli, bacon, mozzarella, arugula and a fried egg.
Breakfast service is something that had always interested Galifi, but he never had the time or staff. Instead, he reached out to another business and offered it the opportunity to launch a pop-up coffee spot inside his space for four months.
“It was crazy,” said Galifi. “People would line up for coffee, and I had no food, just for coffee.
I didn’t want to let that go.”
Another reason for launching Lulu’s Coffee is that Galifi gets bored. It’s why he changes his menu every season, cooks up specials like lemon ricotta ravioli for National Ravioli Day (March 20) and debuts prix-fixe menus, like for Dine LA.
“There is so much that I could do and experiment, but still keep the traditional Sicilian flavors and seasonality in the menu,” he said. “I’m already changing the menu from summer to late summer. I change the menu quite often because of the produce and whatever is available around me at the moment.”
Another possible reason for the new venture is that Galifi doesn’t sleep.
“I don’t rest,” he said. “We need to kickstart things so that we get to the point where I can take some rest. Right now, this is a family business. We put everything into it, and we want to make sure that everybody’s happy and everything goes the right way all the time.”
The past year has been an interesting time for Galifi and his team. There has been a lot of learning and growth on a daily basis. The Arts District is also growing, according to Galifi, with restaurants, condos and apartments popping up in the last six months and more on the way.
“I feel like downtown is kind of moving away from the actual downtown,” he said. “We’re creating a second downtown right outside of it, which is great.”
While Galifi experiments with product, stays busy in the kitchen and mingles with customers, his food stays consistently authentic Sicilian. It’s part of his mission statement: to expose Angelenos to good flavors in a beautiful atmosphere and relaxed manner.
“I still get some comments like, ‘The almonds taste like almonds and the pistachio tastes too much like pistachio,’” he explained. “I understand that people are not used to those flavor profiles. It’s an homage to my culture and what I grew up eating, drinking, smelling, tasting. I’m not reinventing the wheel. I’m just paying attention to the flavors, textures, ingredients that I use to be true to who I am and to the Sicilian cuisine.”
“I try to talk to every single guest because I like to form that connection,” he continued. “What fulfills me is people enjoying the dining experience, taking their time. They tell me, ‘Thank you for not throwing everything on the table all at once and giving us the time and the opportunity to enjoy every single dish.’ Dinner should be a time and a place where people come together and enjoy their time, have conversation over a meal, over a drink, instead of this rush, rush, rush of every single moment in life here in LA.”
Lulu’s Coffee has an outdoor garden patio with free Wi-Fi and is open Wednesday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., with coffee being served until 2 p.m.
Lulu’s Coffee at Bianca Sicilian Trattoria is located at 1200 East 5th Street, Los Angeles, @luluscoffeedtla.
Dining and Cooking