Why Gjusta matters.
Gjusta is an ambitious bakery and deli where Venice's independent food culture meets naturally leavened bread, house-cured fish and a market-driven kitchen descended from Gjelina.
Set along Sunset Avenue near Hampton Drive and just steps from Lincoln Boulevard, the bakery occupies eastern Venice between the low-rise streets of Oakwood, the commercial corridor along Lincoln and the denser blocks extending west toward Abbot Kinney Boulevard, with the Pacific shoreline completing the neighborhood farther west. A former warehouse gives the operation enough depth for baking, smoking, curing and cooking to remain physically connected with the counter. Bread, pastry and smoked fish establish the primary encounter through marble display cases crowded with preparations produced by the kitchen behind them. An outdoor courtyard extends the bakery beyond its industrial shell, giving longer breakfasts and lunches a counterpart to the constant movement around the deli counter. The result is a large working bakery whose production scale, counter choreography and Venice setting make the processes behind its food as consequential as the finished dishes.
What defines Gjusta.
Gjusta is best known for beginning in fall 2014 as the commissary kitchen supplying bread and pantry goods to Gjelina and GTA before developing into a bakery, deli, cafe and market in its own right. Chef-owner Travis Lett and business partner Fran Camaj opened the public-facing operation on October 29, 2014, extending a hospitality group that had begun with Gjelina on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in 2008. Its name came from Camaj's aunt, paralleling Gjelina's naming for his mother and carrying the Albanian family's personal history into the expanding group. Pastry chef Nicole Mournian, executive chef Matt Armistead, operations director Shelley Armistead and sous chef Manny da Luz joined Lett and Camaj in the original kitchen, with Mournian and Armistead helping establish a repertoire deliberately separate from Gjelina. Early production encompassed rye and other breads, pastries, smoked salmon, sandwiches and cheeses, combining the structures of an East Coast delicatessen with elements Lett associated with Balkan cheese shops. Gjusta subsequently became the foundation for a larger Venice network that now includes Gjusta Goods, Gjusta Grocer, Gjusta Flower Shop and Gjusta Studios alongside the original bakery. Nearly all fresh produce now comes directly through longstanding relationships with Southern California farmers, supported by purchasing at five farmers markets during the week and daily deliveries, with much of the meat and seafood sourced from regional ranchers, fishermen and cooperatives.
Pastrami gravlax, beet gravlax, herb gravlax, kippered salmon, smoked trout, salmon belly, mackerel and salmon collar turn preservation of seafood into one of the counter's deepest culinary branches. The Fish & Egg assembles selections from that repertoire with soft egg, labneh, capers, tomato, pickled red onion, cucumber, radish, herbs and sprouts, allowing smoke, salinity, cultured dairy and fresh vegetables to meet on bread. Fermentation runs through a separate layer of the kitchen via kimchi, sauerkraut and fermented pickles, joined by pickled turnips, shishitos and red onions that introduce acidity across sandwiches and composed plates. The Banh Mi Americano folds pâté and rotisserie chicken into a baguette with pickled daikon, carrot and cucumber, cilantro, chili dressing and mayonnaise, and a second version replaces the chicken with smoked brisket. Shakshuka, labneh, baba ganoush, za'atar, harissa, hummus and marinated feta carry Eastern Mediterranean preparations through breakfast, spreads and the mezze plate without confining them to a single portion of the day. House-made celery soda, shrubs and sparkling ginger lemonade apply the same production-minded approach to nonalcoholic drinks, tying preservation, extraction and fresh ingredients back into a kitchen originally created to manufacture food for an restaurant group.
How Gjusta fits.
Gjusta works as the anchor for an outing connecting Venice's preserved community history with a literary institution born from the neighborhood's experimental arts culture and a private bungalow transformed over decades into an immense work of folk art.
Begin at Venice Heritage Museum, which opened its permanent home in March 2024 as an institution devoted to the neighborhood founded by Abbot Kinney in 1905. Its archive draws together photographs, postcards, films and other artifacts spanning the repeated reinventions of Venice, including the lost attractions and waterways of Kinney's Venice of America and the communities that succeeded the original resort. Exhibitions have examined the Ship Cafe, annual canal festivals held from 1969 through 1976 and the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Continue to Beyond Baroque, founded by George Drury Smith in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine before its storefront became a gathering place for readings and the Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop established in 1969. The organization became a nonprofit in 1972, received its first National Endowment for the Arts grant the following year and moved in 1979 into Venice's former City Hall, a 1906 building whose courtroom and council chamber became its theater. Exene Cervenka met John Doe through the poetry workshop before the pair co-founded X, and later generations around the center included Wanda Coleman, Dennis Cooper, Bob Flanagan, Amy Gerstler and Mike Kelley. Conclude at Mosaic Tile House, where artists Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran converted a modest 1940s bungalow into an extraordinary compound of handmade tile, ceramics, glass, sculpture and found objects. Pann purchased the property in 1994 to create studio space, studied construction at Santa Monica College and served as general contractor as she, Duran and students built two studios behind the house. Tiles Pann fired from stoneware clay gradually escaped the bathroom project that initiated the work and spread across walls, floors, ceilings, pathways, benches and sculptural forms built by Duran. The transformation continued for decades, producing a rare Venice folk-art environment before Pann's death in May 2025. The progression moves from an archive preserving Venice's successive reinventions through a literary center that helped generate its postwar artistic culture and culminates inside a home where two artists converted domestic architecture itself into a continuously expanding work of art.
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