Let’s Eat

By Dan Greenwood

Lola American Bistro owner Lacey Lueth.

Photos by Pat Christman

Lola – An American Bistro, a popular restaurant serving breakfast and lunch in downtown New Ulm since 2009, has a menu that owner Lacey Leuth describes as eclectic.

“One of my favorite things to do — it’s like a hobby — I love to go out and try new places to eat,” Lueth said. “The menu comes from having different things in different places. We twist it into our own version of whatever it was that I had.”

There’s a coffee bar and homemade baked goods made fresh daily, along with entrees ranging from Italian fare — Lueth is a chef trained in Italian cuisine — to her own adaptations of Korean, Middle Eastern, Mexican and Vietnamese dishes.

Banh mi, a sandwich inspired by French and Vietnamese influences and made from locally sourced pork, is one of her personal favorites.

“We buy pork roast from a company outside of Sleepy Eye called Sleepy Bison Acres,” Lueth said. “We slow roast that and then we make a ginger hoisin glaze that goes over it. We pickle our own carrots with rice wine vinegar — it gets topped with carrot, radish and onion. That gets a spicy Saigon sauce, cilantro, fresh cucumbers and we pickle our own jalapenos.”

The chicken pot pie has been on the menu since the beginning, and the hot mess is also a hit among customers. Lueth compares it to poutine, an appetizer popularized in the Canadian province of Quebec that typically involves a large plate of french fries smothered in

Top: Mason Tesch cuts fresh vegetables at Lola American Bistro. Below: Rosemary fries and chicken torta sandwich. gravy and melted cheese.

But as with most of the menu, Lueth and her staff make it uniquely their own, starting with slow-roasted shredded beef with homemade gravy and smoked Gouda cheese sauce over shoestring potatoes.

“They (shoestring fries) get tossed in a rosemary garlic pesto that we make,” she said. “Then it gets the shredded beef on top, the gravy, the cheese sauce, more smoked Gouda and then we top it with chopped green onions.”

The hot mess is also on the Lola food truck menu, along with staples such as the rosemary garlic fries with a garlic aioli dipping sauce and the banh mi tacos, an adaptation unique to the food truck. For Mankato residents, Lueth said the truck is usually parked at the Mankato Food Truck Hub in Old Town a couple of days a week in the warmer months.

“The Lola food truck has a Facebook page, and we post where we’re going to be,” she said. “This year we’re going to for sure do Fridays at the Hub unless we have something else like a private event booked.” While there are plenty of dishes that have remained on the menu for years at both the restaurant and the food truck, Lueth said it’s also always changing. “There are new things on the menu that the kitchen staff comes up with every single day. It’s the same with the food truck, too. We keep changing the menu all the time.”