Superba Food + Bread opens in Venice

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A selection of breads from Superba Food + Bread’s bakery. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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Superba Food + Bread’s dining room features a window into the kitchen. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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“The aim is to teach people to have bread in their lives,” says Superba Food + Bread owner Paul Hibler. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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The coffee corner at Superba Food + Bread, which serves Stumptown Coffee, with a yellow La Marzocco espresso machine. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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The wine bar at Superba Food + Bread. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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An overhead door that divides the patio from the indoor dining room at Superba Food + Bread. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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A pick-up window for coffee at Superba Food + Bread. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

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The exterior of Superba Food + Bread in Venice. (Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)

By Betty Hallock

April 9, 2014 11:15 AM PT

Superba Food + Bread, the 5,000-square-foot bakery-focused restaurant from owner Paul Hibler (Superba Snack Bar, East Borough, Pitfire Pizza), is set to open in Venice on Friday.

Inspired by the bustle of Rose Bakery during a trip to Paris, Hibler tapped chef Jason Travi, along with Jason Neroni of Superba Snack Bar, to create a California menu with a heavy accent on the breads from Superba Food + Bread baker Jonathan Eng. “What’s both wonderful and frightening is we’re making all this up, there’s no template,” Hibler said.

The 200-seat restaurant, designed by Design, Bitches, includes a wine bar, windowed kitchen with a rotisserie, a coming Italian pastry case and a separate coffee bar with a walk-up ordering window.

Eng plans to bake six kinds of breads daily, for Superba Food + Bread as well as Superba Snack Bar and East Borough (which will use the bread for its banh mi). And yes, you probably will pay $8 for toast -- topped with Travi’s testa, hot pepper jelly and herbs, or burrata, walnut, pomegranate molasses and pickled radish. A full toast menu is available.

“Bread is misunderstood, the aim is to teach people to have bread in their lives,” said Hibler, who also noted that there are plans to deliver bread to locals by bicycle.

Other dishes include “Rabbi’s Day Off” with “not so matzo balls” and chicken broth; black rice salad with rotisserie pineapple; freekeh salad with citrus, fennel and mint; frisee aux lardons with bacon confit and slow-cooked egg; vegetables such as braised greens, ember-cooked celery root and heirloom shelling beans; and entrees including seared arctic char, rotisserie leg of lamb and a butcher’s steak with bone marrow Bordelaise.

The breakfast menu includes a breakfast sandwich with linguica, baked eggs, kaya toast and savory muffins, drop biscuits, scones and croissants, fashioned by Lincoln Carson, who was corporate pastry chef for Michael Mina. His desserts are riffs on classic idea, but with a twist, Carson said: a Superba candy bar, vanilla custard and a signature birthday cake. “We’re going to own red velvet.”

The wine list from Ashley Ragovin includes fun French picks, higlighting regions such as the Loire, Jura and southern Rhone.

Tyler Wells, a co-founder of Handsome Coffee, will helm the coffee drinks.

1900 Lincoln Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 907-5075, www.superbafoodandbread.com.

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