Gjusta
Bakery · Venice
320 Sunset Ave, Venice, CA 90291
Highlights
Artisanal bakery with house-baked breads, pastries, and smoked fish.
Artisanal bakery with house-baked breads, pastries, and smoked fish.
"If you’re planning a day at Venice Beach, stopping for sandwiches at Gjusta is a necessity. The popular deli/cafe on Rose Ave. has transitioned into a full marketplace selling everything from ceramics to books to pantry essentials. But today, your eyes are on their sandwiches. We’ve found it consistently impossible to order poorly here, but that said, the tuna conserva, porchetta melt, and anything that involves lox are our go-tos. Call (310) 314-0320 for takeout." - brant cox
"The english muffin is a less common vehicle for fancy breakfast sandwiches these days, and it might be because most of them look puny enough that Paul Bunyan could eat two dozen for a morning snack. That said, we'll forever be loyal to the small-but-mighty breakfast sandwich at Gjusta and Gjelina Take-Away, served on a split fresh-baked muffin with a perfect squish-to-crunch ratio. This sandwich's secret weapon is a dose of spicy-sweet braised greens (Gjusta uses collards, GTA does kale), which not only adds needed roughage, but intermingles majestically with the runny egg yolk, bacon grease, and layer of melted comté. The McMuffin could never." - garrett snyder, arden shore, brant cox, cathy park
"Gjusta might be an obvious choice—the Venice deli a few blocks from the beach is big, busy, and usually filled with everyone from locals to tourists with suitcases. In addition to their grab-and-go menu, they now have an extended patio, where you can sit back and discuss whether you saw Tom Felton at the beach or just a guy who looks like him. Try the burrata and tomato sandwich or open-faced bagel with an entire farmers market’s worth of produce and house-made gravlax stacked on top. You’ll understand why Gjusta has so many devotees." - brant cox, sylvio martins, garrett snyder, cathy park
"Weekday mornings might be the best way to experience Gjusta. Things are so quiet, they dispense with the ticket system entirely, so you can stroll straight up to the counter and order your breakfast bialy without waiting approximately a million years. You might even get a seat out on the patio. The egg bialys are great, but our go-to is always the pastrami gravlax with herbed cream cheese on a bialy, and a baklava croissant chaser. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and we are ready and willing to take advantage of that." - nikko duren, brant cox, sylvio martins
"Whenever we land at LAX, there are two things on our minds. The first is finding the bathroom, and the second is the tuna conserva sandwich from Gjusta. Is Gjusta in Venice a traditional sandwich shop? Maybe not, considering they’re open all day and offer roast chickens, pizza, smoked fish plates, etc. But Gjusta excels in the sandwich department. The bread is baked in-house, and the fillings hit that cliche California sweet spot of farmers' market ingredients and well-sourced meats. The tuna conserva is our old faithful because of how the roasted peppers, sprouts, salty tapenade, and cucumbers ooze into the sourdough and top-shelf tuna. But we also work the banh mi, tomato confit, and meatball sandwiches into the rotation." - brant cox, sylvio martins, cathy park
