A Brooklyn Girl’s Guide to Sunday: Gjusta Bakery

I’ve been a longtime Gjelina fan, heading there on every Los Angeles visit since I first dragged an ex-boyfriend to the restaurant a few years ago. I was in serious pain from a root canal but it didn’t matter: we soldiered on and I dealt with my pain by sitting by the outdoor fire place and eating grilled cauliflower. Recently, I spent a week in a house just down the street from Gjusta Bakery, the Gjelina team’s newest project and the cafe-bakery that’s currently bewitching the food world. There’s really not that much to say about it except that it’s totally perfect and amazing and has one of the most beautiful counters I’ve ever seen, an enormous loop ready for coffee and sandwiches and croissants.

The outside space at Gjusta is full of wooden tables and old rickety chairs and benches that make me want to sit outside and write every day, all day. It’s the kind of place that just makes everything seem at peace, as though there’s nothing else needed in a day but really good food and sunshine. The orange juice is freshly-squeezed and somehow even more addictive than regular fresh orange juice. The entire place smells like baking bread. Walking here in the morning became an easy habit of mine, one that almost made me feel like I was walking to my own neighborhood coffeeshop, instead of someone else’s in a city that I was visiting. Gjusta the kind of place that makes it easy to feel like a local, and even easier to fall into a community.