In the pre-streaming era, I watched the entire series of Sex and The City patiently, in real time. I couldn’t help but wonder, from one week to the next, what adventures and mishaps would befall the four BFFs. Their milieu wasn’t anything like mine so it wasn’t an aspirational show. If the characters had real life equivalents, I would only have encountered them by chance or in passing. But the show did offer a glimpse inside a rosy-colored version of New York City, an urban center that I was curious about because it was, in every way, beyond my means.
When I walked into La Loulou, a new wine bar on Piedmont Avenue a couple of weeks ago, I felt a surprising, slightly disorienting sensation. Had I accidentally walked onto a displaced Sex and The City television set? Customers in sundresses crowded around each and every one of the small tables while a line kept expanding outward from the central bartop. It was the first warm evening of the year signalling the arrival of summer.
La Loulou is named after Lou Béraud who was there, in motion, attending to a thousand things. While her friend John Graham-Taylor, a master sommelier, manned the bar, Béraud opened a package of multi-colored macarons before she was pulled in another direction.
I generally find the overused phrase “hotly anticipated” meaningless when it comes to food round-ups. Has the reporter actually taken a city-wide poll to determine how many people are truly in a state of hot anticipation for a new restaurant? But that night La Loulou definitely filled a niche. Only one person looked visibly upset, fretting about the line and the lack of available seating. Everyone else was happy to be enjoying their wine-fueled conversations on a night out with pals.
Béraud, who told me she’s from Paris, modeled the bar’s interiors after the Art Nouveau wine bars in her native city. Her husband Peter Andreoni is a contractor with his own business, but he built out the whole bar. “He was really excited when I told him I wanted to make it Art Nouveau,” she said. It isn’t a typical request from his clients. The maroon and golden-yellow wall colors suggest the idea of a fanciful fin de siècle France. A France that’s easily conjured up after a bottle of Seillac Rosé Provence ($36).
In Paris, Béraud said, wine bars are “very pretty” because of the Art Nouveau architecture. But the ornate facades aren’t always equated with fanciness or Michelin stars. They’re really just friendly neighborhood bars. She wanted to create something similar in the East Bay, an approachable wine bar that’s also very pretty.
Currently, Béraud stocks the bar’s shelves with wines from the different regions of France, supplemented by a selection from Italy, Spain and California. Before she opened La Loulou, some of her colleagues in the wine industry suggested that customers would primarily be asking for California wines, but that hasn’t been the case so far. “People, because they saw the space was French, they were really getting in the vibe and they absolutely wanted French [wines],” she said. Béraud tries to stock equal amounts of reds and whites, but she’s also adding in more rosé and orange wines as well.
Béraud’s approach to curation and hospitality isn’t pretentious. A friend of hers with years of experience in the wine industry once told her, “At the end of the day, it’s just fermented grape juice.” Everybody should be welcome to start working on their palate, to try out and share a variety of different wines.
While La Loulou does serve hors d’oeuvres, Béraud has modeled her bar after something the French call l’apéro dinatoire, or an apéritif dinner. It means a person drinks and eats small bites until, at the end of the night, they’ve eaten without having indulged in a heavy, main course.
La Loulou’s most substantial fare are small and large cheese and charcuterie boards ($18 or $28). The small board was enough to share between three people. The one we ordered came with toasted baguette slices; a runny, pungent brie; green grapes; pickled onions and carrots; thin ribbons of saucisson; and kumquats macerated to maximum tartness.
La Loulou, 4250 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Open Wed-Sun 2-9:30pm; Fri-Sat till 10pm. IG: @laloulouwine. laloulouwinebar.com
