Gjelina

It took seven years of planning and a nearly two-year hiatus following a kitchen fire for this Venice, California mainstay to finally settle into Bond Street. Now that it has, Gjelina operates with the same produce-obsessed momentum that defined the original on Abbot Kinney, though the setting has shifted from beachside bungalow to a sprawling, two-story NoHo building. The energy here is high-volume and high-decibel. The ground floor centers around an open kitchen and a wood-burning oven that anchors the menu, turning out blistered, thin-crust pizzas and roasted vegetable plates that often crowd out the proteins. You watch cooks maneuver around the fire while servers navigate tight gaps between tables. Upstairs offers a slightly different vantage point, with large loft-style windows overlooking the street, but the noise level remains consistent – this is a place for shouting over dinner rather than whispering. The menu changes frequently, dictated almost entirely by what local farmers and fishermen are hauling in that week. While you can certainly order house-made pasta or hamachi crudo, the kitchen’s reputation rests on how it handles aggressive roasting and charring of seasonal vegetables – sunchokes, carrots, and cauliflower are treated with as much seriousness as a steak. A mandatory 20% service charge is applied to every check, streamlining the end of the meal.