Tivoli Waitress’ Pies Hit the Sweet Spot

Tivoli Cafe’s entrees and pizzas have a good reputation around town, but word is spreading about another reason to visit the Sunset-at-Swarthmore trattoria: homemade pie. Specifically, pies created by waitress Nika LaRue. Her pies come in five varieties, including chocolate and apple, but you don’t need to open the menu to find them. Just listen for the cheers! Indeed, when the Tivoli employee of three-and-a-half years arrives with her fresh baked goods, knowing customers give her a hero’s welcome. ‘People are like, What’d you bring, what’d you bring?’ the 30-something LaRue says, chuckling. ‘Everyone’s got their favorite.’ On the ‘Tivoli Treats’ dessert menu, you’ll find LaRue’s solid standards: Chocolate Brownie Cake Sunday, described as Belgian chocolate cake with deluxe chocolate chips, chocolate sauce and whipped cream; and a Triple Berry Crumble Cobbler, combining raspberries, blueberries and marionberries in a deep-dish crumble (sans nuts) with whipped cream. LaRue recently introduced three new entries: Grandma’s Fresh Apple Pie (topped with caramel sauce and whipped cream); Prize Pecan Pie, replete with chocolate chunks; and ‘The Great Pumpkin’ Pie (its moniker referencing the ‘Peanuts’ Halloween special). These seasonal confections will stick around until February. The whole thing began innocuously enough in February when LaRue was in the kitchen with the restaurant’s owner, Sohail Fatoorechi, and chef George Lepe. The two men were unhappy about the lukewarm response to their desserts which, except for homemade tiramisu, Tivoli had contracted out. ‘I’ve had recipes that were in my family forever,’ LaRue says. ‘I baked a pie and gave everyone a piece and they said, ‘Wow, can you bring more of these?” Within three months, LaRue’s pies also made the menu at Tivoli’s sister restaurant, Il Forno Caldo, in Beverly Hills. Soon, a demand for LaRue’s creations began to take hold with locals, including a celebrity or two. ‘We’ll go in there on Tuesdays and Saturday nights just for Nika’s pies,’ says Cindy Ambuehl, an actress and real estate agent married to soap opera star Don Diamont. Ambuehl once starred in a short-lived TV show with LaRue’s older sister, Eva LaRue, who now appears on ‘CSI: Miami.’ She insists that Diamont was so fond of LaRue’s banana cream pie (when it was on the menu) that his catch phrase (upon trying other baked goods) was ‘Not as good as Nika’s!’ Tivoli’s owner attests to the pies’ success. ‘We’re serving a lot of dessert,’ Fatoorechi says. ‘It’s doing really well for us.’ The restaurateur adds that the initial pies that he sampled, which sold him on the notion of carrying her line of baked goods, were the Triple Berry Crumble and the Pineapple Upside-Down cake. Tivoli also added LaRue’s Key Lime and Black Bottom Banana Cream pies to the menu. ‘He is really like family, he’s helped me so much,’ LaRue says of her employer. LaRue was raised in Orange County and the Inland Empire, where her mother lived. She would also visit her father’s side of the family in Puerto Rico, Florida and Alabama. ‘I’ve been baking since I was really young,’ says LaRue, whose paternal grandmother was her culinary inspiration. ‘It seems that anytime I spent time with the women in my family, it was in the kitchen.’ For LaRue, baking these pies for Tivoli’s feels like she’s exposing family secrets by tapping into grandma’s recipes. The Pineapple Upside-Down is her father’s favorite (‘I’m sharing a piece of my dad with the public,’ she says) and she has mastered gingerbread cranberry shortcake, a favorite of her grandma’s. LaRue balances her week between baking pies on Sundays at Il Forno’s facilities for both restaurants (and private individual customer orders via bake4u@luckymail.com), waitressing several times a week, pursuing her teaching credential at Cal State Los Angeles, and raising K. J., her active 12-year-old son, who partakes in Boy Scouts activities when he’s not playing baseball, basketball or football. Tivoli and Il Forno each buy about 15 pies per flavor for the week, which sometimes takes LaRue up to eight hours straight to create. If Tivoli runs out of pie during the week, LaRue goes back into Il Forno late at night, after business hours, and bakes more pies, which LaRue delivers to Tivoli when she shows up to waitress. LaRue, who commutes to the Palisades from Culver City, is wary of expanding her production on too big a scale. ‘I think that a lot of bakers get greedy about their ingredients,’ she explains. ‘Once they start mass producing something, you can taste it because they start using manufacturer’s lard. You get icing that tastes like Crisco. I would rather make something of quality.’ Despite a packed schedule, LaRue finds the time to experiment with new recipes. ‘I always take suggestions from people,’ she says, adding that she is already mulling over some potential ‘Tivoli’s Treats’ for next spring. ‘I might do a peach cobbler, I might even do a strawberry shortcake!’