The Block meets The Rock
Eagle Rock has just gained a new addition to Colorado Boulevard. Lou The French On The Rock has brought pastries, coffee, and a little piece of France to the neighborhood, marking the second location of a bakery that has spent the past decade building its name just a few miles away in Burbank. Behind the counter are Laurent “Lou” Correa and his longtime friend and business partner, Lydia Kerma. While the Eagle Rock location may be new, the story that brought the two of them here began years before either would imagine opening a bakery together.
Before becoming a baker, Correa was a professional basketball player in France. At 17, while attending school in Orléans and pursuing his first professional contract, he met Lydia. Correa remembers being so determined that he intentionally kept to himself at school, believing friends would be a distraction. Lydia noticed him eating alone in the cafeteria and began talking to him anyway.
“We clicked. We became friends,” Correa said.
By the time the two found themselves working together, Correa had built an entirely different career. Lou The French On The Block had become an established Burbank bakery, one Correa says grew into the kind of place he had imagined long before opening its doors.
“If you start anything, you have to envision what you can create,” Correa said. He remembers going on runs before opening the bakery and picturing what it could eventually become. Over the years, that vision grew beyond simply having a place to sell pastries. The bakery developed a loyal following, and with it, a community of its own.
“We built a community around the bakery,” Correa said.
After years of building that relationship in Burbank, taking the business somewhere new presented a different challenge. A second location would mean not only starting again in another neighborhood, but trusting someone else with something Correa had spent years building.
“I needed someone that I could trust,” Correa said, and years after they first met, Lydia became that person. Their friendship now had a new dimension, with Correa describing the adjustment of learning “how to coexist as friends and business partners also.”
With someone he trusted beside him, Correa could finally turn his attention toward an expansion that had been waiting in the background for years: Eagle Rock.
Correa first came across the Colorado Boulevard storefront in late 2019, when it was still a juice bar. With Trader Joe’s across the street and people constantly walking through the area, he immediately saw potential in the location. But after securing the location that December, the timing quickly changed. The pandemic put plans for a second bakery on hold, leaving the Eagle Rock location waiting for years before Correa and Kerma were finally able to bring it to life.
However, choosing Eagle Rock was about more than the right storefront- what really stood out to the pair was the neighborhood surrounding it. “I think Eagle Rock is already a community,” Correa said. “Now it's up to us to be accepted.”
That welcome began before the bakery even opened its doors. While Correa and Kerma were still prepping the space, people passing by would stop to introduce themselves and tell them how excited they were to see the bakery coming to the neighborhood. To the two owners, who grew up in France, those interactions stood out. “Cultrually, French people don't come to you like that,” Correa said. “For us, being from another culture, we take that to heart because it's so encouraging.”
That early enthusiasm became even more visible at the bakery’s soft opening, when customers from both Eagle Rock and Burbank lined up outside. After years of delays and promises that the second location would eventually become a reality, Correa saw the turnout as more than just a successful opening day.
“The community came together for us,” he said. For him, a self-described competitor, seeing the line also carried a sense of vindication: “It was like, ‘I told you so.’”
The connection between the two locations is built into the bakery’s name. When Correa first began considering the Eagle Rock location, he and his Burbank employees joked about what a second Lou The French On The Block should be called. “The Rock” came up, naturally.
“They thought it was stupid,” Correa said, laughing. He disagreed, seeing the two bakeries and the communities surrounding them as connected rather than separate. “The Rock and The Block are a team,” he said. “They both work together.”
But Correa and Kerma don’t want Lou The French On The Rock to simply feel like the Burbank location transplanted into a different neighborhood. His goal is for Eagle Rock to make the location its own. “I want the community to claim it,” Correa said.
Correa and Kerma partnership has also begun to shape what customers will find on the menu. For Kerma, that means the pain suisse, a pastry made with croissant dough, vanilla cream, and chocolate chips. It is one of her favorite French pastries, and she spent nearly two years trying to convince Correa to add it to the menu. Now, she says, “It's pretty famous.” Correa’s favorite remains the croissant, fitting with the way he approaches much of the bakery’s food. “For most of my recipes, it's like, if it takes me home, I have the recipe.”
For ERHS students making the short trip over to Colorado, however, both owners agreed that a first visit should start with the basics. Kerma’s pick is a croissant, which she sees as the simplest way to get to know a French bakery. Correa agreed, but added instructions.
“Croissant and hot coffee,” he said. “You dip your croissant in the coffee and you eat it!” For those less interested in coffee, Kerma offers an alternative: hot chocolate.
Correa also hopes students will eventually become more than customers. Looking a few years ahead, he imagines the Eagle Rock location developing the same kind of neighborhood connection as the Block, including local students working behind the counter.
“If you work here and that’s your community, you gotta represent,” Correa said.
The bakery celebrated its official grand opening last weekend with a red carpet theme, marking the beginning of its Eagle Rock location alongside the 10-year anniversary of Lou The French On The Block in Burbank. As the Rock begins its own chapter, Correa’s goal for the bakery remains simple: “I want the community to claim it. If they claim it, we did our job.”
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