By Natalie Lozano Trimble
Photos by Thanin Viriyaki
As Louise Lamensdorf, 88, prepares to remove the skin of a barramundi, she explains the process: Cut a small bit to give you something to grip, then hold on to the skin while you slide your knife through, keeping it flat.
“People ask me ‘When are you going to retire?’ and I say, ‘Never.’”
Lamensdorf closed her namesake restaurant Bistro Louise 14 years ago, because her husband was sick and her lease was up. But she knew she could continue working from home.
She caters holiday events, high teas, wine dinners and cocktail parties, and also offers weekly meals for pick up. While the menu differs, the format is consistent: soup, salad, choice between two entrees, a vegetable, a starch and dessert.
The barramundi is part of a Mediterranean fisherman’s stew for clients, which also includes lobster, shrimp and mussels and will be served atop saffron risotto. As she pours vermouth and white wine into the stew, she says they act as preservatives, while also adding complexity to the dish.
“Every minute you’re cooking you’re thinking, how can I add more flavor?” Lamensdorf says.
Teaching culinary arts has been a big part of her chef career but that was a midlife change.
Lamensdorf worked in accounting while her husband was in medical school. “I never dreamt that I would become a chef or be involved in moving the culinary scene forward in Fort Worth,” she says.
Fort Worth restaurateur and chef Jon Bonnell says the French Apron School of Cooking Lamensdorf co-owned in the ’80s helped introduce the city to cuisine from around the world. “I took my first cooking class ever from them in 1982 at age 12 and can still remember the entire menu,” he says.
Lamensdorf says she had a French palate from the beginning of her life — her maternal grandmother, a French immigrant, lived with and cooked for the family in Monroe, Louisiana.
She met her husband, Hugh at Tulane University. His service as a doctor in the Air Force brought them to Fort Worth’s Carswell Air Force Base. They expected to leave at the end of the two-year commitment but enjoyed the city and friends they’d made and decided to stay.
Elizabeth McCall, whose husband was also an Air Force physician, became a close friend of Lamensdorf. The women shared a love for cooking, and several years into their friendship, both couples took a month-long trip to France together.
Lamensdorf recalls eating at Michelin-starred restaurants every three or four days.
“It just blew us away,” she says. They bought French cookbooks from the Michelin chefs so Lamensdorf could translate them at home.
The trip inspired McCall, who suggested they start a cooking school, Lamensdorf says, along with a third friend, Renie Steves. They formed the French Apron School of Cooking in May 1979 with classes beginning that Fall. Each session was four weeks long and covered a single subject.
“After about two weeks of teaching, we realized we had to announce another series of classes,” Lamensdorf says. “We realized we needed training.” Her husband had just read that a local chef, Charles Finance, was retiring. Finance, who had taught Old Swiss House’s chef Walter Kaufmann in Switzerland before they both landed in Fort Worth, was the first chef at Woodhaven Country Club in the city’s east side.
Finance agreed to mentor the three women. “He was a true artist,” Lamensdorf says. “He taught us a lot about dressing the plate.”
The training was extensive — eight years and a lot of trips to Dallas for hard-to-source ingredients — but the results went further than the expansion of their cooking school’s curriculum. Finance’s influence abroad meant Lamensdorf and Steves were able to spend time in the kitchens of Michelin restaurants.
Back in Fort Worth, Lamensdorf worked as the Chef de Cuisine for La Maree, which Saint-Emilion’s owner Bernard Tronche had opened as a lunch-to-go counter. During that time, the French Apron closed. She was also the first chef at Cafe Aspen and was contracted to update the menus of The Fort Worth Club.
When an opportunity arose to open a restaurant on Hulen Street, her husband encouraged her to go for it. She was 59 when Bistro Louise opened in 1996.
“We thought we had a lot of food prepared, but that first day there was a line out the door,” she says.
Lamensdorf traveled to Europe often after her restaurant’s staff was seasoned. She taught classes in the Dordogne Valley of Southwest France and took classes in Tuscany, on the Amalfi Coast and at the Ritz in Paris. She also spent two weeks in the kitchens of both André Daguin at Hotel De France and Jacques Chibois at La Bastide Saint-Antoine on the Riviera. French paella remains her favorite dish to cook.
To hire Lamensdorf for catering or to purchase her weekly meals, call 817-291-2734.