JJ Bistro and French pastry

Everything About Us

There is more than meets the eye at JJ Bistro and French Pastry. The bright, cheery bakery and cafe serves a deeper purpose than dishing out the affordable fusion cuisine that has made it a neighborhood favorite. It is also a tribute to the owner's late mentor.Praseuth Luangkhot, or JJ, is the chef and owner. The bistro is a family affair, where Luangkhot's wife, Daokeo, his sister, Chin Li Majewski, and aunt, Porntip Pothongsunan, also work. The menu includes French, Laotian, and French-Laotian dishes such as fisherman pot pie, a melange of seafood and vegetables swimming in the chef's piquant green curry and resting between pillows of house-made puff pastry, a labor-intensive rarity in a region better known for rice. Green curry is woven through the menu, found also on pizza and in several noodle dishes. But as its name suggests, JJ Bistro and French Pastry does indeed serve classic desserts, many that Luangkhot learned under the tutelage of a master.

Chef Story

It was 1987 and Jinjie Praseuth Luangkhot, or JJ, was a 19 year-old Laotian immigrant in New York who was just looking for work-any work. Through a friend he a job as an ice cream scooper in the famous Maxim's and it was there that the hard-working youngster caught the eye of rising star patissier Jean Marc Burillier. didn't know what Maxim's was about,?JJ recalls, t was just a job to me. Then one day Jean Marc said to me: re you ready to work?' So I learned to make ice cream, then the basics like cookies, butter cream, sponge and cre anglaise. Then I became the dessert souffl?maker. Boy, that made me so nervous. All I really wanted to be was a busboy because you could make tips.? Like others in our series, JJ says he never planned to be a pastry chef. ne day you just feel like' this is what I can do.' You learn to feel the temperature of chocolate on your fingers.? He and Jean Marc developed the chocolate pyramids that became one of JJ's signature creations. Inspired by I.M. Pei's glass triangle entrance to Louvre, the three inch-high pyramids are filled with a thick dark chocolate mousse that surrounds carefully placed fresh raspberries. In 1994, at age 29, Jean Marc Burillier drowned at a Long Island Beach. Burillier, JJ and some other chefs had just left Maxim's to open a bistro of their own called Trois Jeans. Unable ot endure working at the bistro without his mentor, JJ moved to Hawaii that same year. e was my chef and he is the one who built my future. I want to keep his memory alive forever. He is always with me,?JJ says movingly of Burillier. JJ French Pastry at 3447 Wai'alae is where you can see JJ's work. You can also find his desserts at Chai's Island Bistro, OnJin's, Singha Thai, The Willows and at the espresso bar at Neiman Marcus. In his display case at the Waialae shop you can see the elegant lines of his individual-size cakes and tarts. There are the shiny green tea cakes that almost fluoresce in the afternoon light, or the cocoadusted chocolate raspberry pyramids, or tarts of poached pear in re wine, apple Bavarian, banana chocolate comfit and - with an almost neon glow near the end of the counter ?a grenadine pink framboise. All classic. All inventive. All part of a leagacy.