At this cafe and corner store, it’s all about ‘putting money back into where we live’
Chefs Ralph Hsiao and Andrew Marco, left, with cofounders Brian Lee and Yoonna McGill, are focusing on locally sourced food and products at Open Market.
(Stephanie Breijo)
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At Open Market, the sandwiches make for an interesting map of Los Angeles: The Normandie, the Pico, the Olympic, the Virgil and others take their names from the city’s streets, reflecting its cultures and flavors. The coffee is roasted in Granada Hills. The Chingoo snack mix arrives via Koreatown and Torrance. The baguettes and buns are made daily by Clark Street Bread in Echo Park.
Farley Elliott
One of LA’s more popular underground home bakery operations is moving into the mainstream, opening up a new takeaway multi-purpose space right off Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. Gemini Bakehouse, known for its sourdough loaves, bagels, desserts, and homemade jams, is turning up the heat at 2847 W. Sunset Boulevard, in the same strip mall plaza as Same Same and Moon Juice.
Owners Conor and Hannah Smith tell Eater that they’ll primarily be using the space to vastly increase their wholesale production, including to restaurants like Petit Trois in the Valley. Previously, the Smiths were a home-baking cottage industry operation, just like the early days of Clark Street Bread, using their small kitchen and oven to turn out as much product as possible. And while home baking has taken over Instagram in the past pandemic year, those small operations can be hard to scale up to real profitability; hence the space.