How to still get ‘America’s best fried chicken’ after the restaurant serving it burned down
OWOSSO — Even though chef John Beilfuss put his “heart and soul” into his "Lula's Louisiana Cookhouse: The Recipes That Put us on the Map" cookbook, he couldn’t have imagined what the book's demand would be.
He ordered 125 physical copies of the book to sell himself. Inside are crowd favorite recipes from the Owosso restaurant like “America’s Best Fried Chicken,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” "Shrimp Creole" and “Baptism Etouffee.”
The copies sold out in three hours. So Beilfuss has ordered hundreds more for the people clamoring for copies on the restaurant’s Facebook page, he said.
“Honestly, I'm overwhelmed,” he said. “I had no idea that there would be that much interest.”
Owosso residents Beilfuss and his wife Morgan opened Lula's in downtown Owosso in 2012. In 2017 they opened the adjacent building and bar as Lily Pearl's Lounge.
Lula's was located just off Main Street, adjacent to Foster Coffee Company. Known for its fried chicken, jambalaya and etouffee, the restaurant was a popular destination spot for area foodies. In 2019 Beilfuss estimated the restaurant served about 1,800 meals a week.
During its operation, the restaurant garnered many awards, including Michigan’s best fried chicken by MLive in 2016 and the No. 1 best fried chicken restaurant in the U.S. in 2019 by Eat This, Not That!, a food and nutrition publication.
A December 2021 fire resulted in a total loss of the building and both Lula's and Lily Pearl's Lounge were lost, with only Lula's front wall on South Washington Street still standing. Investigators were unable to rule out anything electrical or mechanical as the cause, Public Safety Director Kevin Lenkart said previously.
“Having a restaurant burn down is a lot of work,” Beilfuss said, and demolition was finally completed this January.
Besides handling the former restaurant space, Beilfuss has been working on his cookbook, which he self-published this month through AuthorHouse. The book is available in soft and hard covers and as an e-book.
The book includes 180 recipes with most of the restaurant favorites, even though the best fried chicken recipe was “a tough one to part with,” Beilfuss laughed.
Beilfuss learned how to cook at 15 and said he worked on some of the recipes for Lula’s for years prior to the restaurant opening. Some of the recipes, including the fried chicken, he’s been working on for 40 years, he added.
Now he’s working on his next cookbook about home cooking around the world that he hopes to complete by Christmas. And he hopes to increase his activity on his YouTube channel, Scratch Cook with John.
As for the former Lula's Louisiana Cookhouse space, Beilfuss said Lula’s was incredibly popular for Michiganders and all over the Midwest. To this day he still gets notes and emails from people asking if he will reopen the restaurant.
He doesn’t have anything finalized yet, but he has a lot of ideas for the empty lot, he said.
“Stay tuned because there are plans that I have for that spot,” Beilfuss said.
Contact Bryce Airgood at 517-267-0448 or bairgood@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @bairgood123.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lula's Louisiana Cookhouse cookbook by John Beilfuss has ‘America’s best fried chicken’
