Two floors, and two very different dogs.
Lou Lou has the bistro, and she sits. Foster has the bar, and he does not. They keep different hours on purpose, and between them Scott cooks and Wesley runs the restaurant she designed.
Downstairs at Lou Lou's
A chef from Richmond, cooking Chesapeake oysters four hundred miles inland, in a bistro named after a French bulldog.
Scott learned to cook standing next to his mother in Virginia, went to Ole Miss, and started his career in kitchens in Jackson Hole. What came back with him is on the menu and it is not subtle: Chesapeake Bay fried oysters and Chesapeake crab cakes, on a Georgia menu, because that is where he is from. The rest is Southern and French and unfussy. Lunch, a break while the kitchen resets, then dinner.
- Chesapeake Bay fried oysters, and the crab cakes
- Lunch, then dinner, with the kitchen dark in between
- Brunch Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 3
- Closed Wednesdays, both floors
Upstairs at Foster's
Foster is a red merle who comes at you at a run. His floor never took a reservation and never needed one.
Climb the stairs and everything changes: darker, later, and directly above the dining room, which is why the music up here stays the kind you can talk over. It was a sports bar with dollar bills stapled to the beams when they got it. Mondays it belongs to the people who work in this industry, from four, with a dollar off the beer and a ten dollar smash burger.
- Industry Mondays from 4, and a $10 smash burger
- Live music, booked by Wesley
- Walk-ins all day, no reservation needed
- Doors at 4, closed Wednesday and Sunday
Your evening, and Wesley runs it
Wesley did not decorate this restaurant. She designed it, and she will design your night the same way.
Her background is interior design, and her line is that the way a room feels matters just as much as what is on the table. She took a stripped concrete shell, chose Hawthorn Green for the walls of a restaurant named after two dogs, and matted and hung her grandfather's paintings herself. She is the only person in Columbus who can cater your party and style it, because she already did it once, here.
- Rehearsal dinners and bridal showers
- Birthdays, holiday parties, and business dinners
- Styling and day-of coordination, by the person who designed the restaurant
- Upstairs, downstairs, or the whole house
The same kitchen, at your table
Gabriel McDonald had a private tasting here before he let them cater his wedding. That is the order Scott prefers.
Catering runs out of the same kitchen and the same hands as the dining room, which is why the tasting comes first: taste it, then decide. Drop off if that is all you need, or the whole thing served and run. Tell Wesley the shape of the day and she will come back with what they would actually do for that many people, at that hour, in that venue.
- A tasting before you commit
- Weddings and rehearsal dinners
- Drop off, or served and run
- Menus built for your night, not off a sheet
“My fiancée and I had a private tasting before we opted to have them cater for our wedding, and they made everything exceptionally memorable.”
Gabriel McDonald