Several new businesses will greet students in Westwood Village this fall. The village will soon be home to an expanded Urban Outfitters store and a variety of new food options, from build-your-own pizza to Australian pies.
Garlo’s Aussie Pie Shop
Traditional Australian sweet and savory pies will be the focus of Garlo’s Aussie Pie Shop, which plans to open on Glendon Avenue next to Jersey Mike’s Subs in late August.
The restaurant will be the first Garlo’s Aussie Pie Shop location established outside of Australia, said Jeff Fradin, one of four partners who own the restaurant and the overseer of operations in the Westwood branch.
The store will serve authentic Australian cuisine, meat pies, sweet pies and Australian coffee, he added.
The shop will open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and will sell pies for about $5 to $8, he said.
The first Garlo’s Aussie Pie Shop opened in Australia in 2001. Now they sell about 25,000 pies each day in shops, hotels and various stores, Fradin said.
Open Oven Pizza
A few blocks away, students and Westwood residents looking for lunch and dinner will be able to turn to a new custom pizza shop opening in early August, which will compete with the popular restaurant 800 Degrees.
Open Oven Pizza, which will be located in the space that used to be U-Mini on Westwood Boulevard, will offer 10-inch personal pizzas for less than $8, said Dustin Gebhard, the restaurant’s manager.
This will be the store’s first location, but Gebhard said he hopes to launch an Open Oven Pizza chain in the future.
He added that the store will try to be competitive by offering unlimited free pizza toppings and using a new wood-fired oven.
“We’re trying to make it as close as we can to you making the pizza without getting your hands dirty,” he said.
The pizzeria will be open for lunch and dinner, though definite hours have not been set, Gebhard said. The owners plan to give away free pizzas for lunch and dinner on Aug. 5 and 6 before officially opening on Aug. 11.
Jimmy John’s
Across the street, Jimmy John’s, a chain sandwich shop, also plans to open this summer. The popular Midwestern store has opened several California locations recently, most of them near large college campuses, including UC Santa Barbara.
Jimmy John’s has more than 1,900 locations across the country, including two in downtown Los Angeles, according to its website.
The new restaurant will replace Sandbags, another sandwich shop that closed in 2012. Sandbags struggled for years to attract business from UCLA students.
House of Meatballs
On Gayley Avenue, an Italian family that operated a restaurant for about six months plans to replace it with another one, this time focusing on meatballs.
House of Meatballs will soon replace Donna Sophia Trattoria in a space between Bel Air Camera Superstore and Whole Foods Market.
Both restaurants are run by the Morra family, known for the Italian restaurant Da Pasquale Restaurant in Beverly Hills and Brunello Trattoria in Culver City.
Pasquale Morra, owner of the restaurant, said the family decided to build the new restaurant partly to appeal to younger customers. He added that there will be about 10 or 12 types of meatballs, including vegetarian, turkey, chicken and pork, served with various side dishes.
The most expensive item on the menu will cost about $12, Morra said.
Urban Outfitters
One of the biggest changes to Westwood’s business landscape will be the addition of a retail store to a building that has been empty for more than a decade on Westwood Boulevard.
Urban Outfitters will open an expanded Westwood location in the form of two adjacent stores – one for women’s apparel, accessories and textiles, and another for men’s apparel, electronics and vintage guitars, said store manager Emily Waldron.
The store will promote its grand opening on Aug. 7 by giving out free tickets to the Eat|See|Hear festival and offering a 10 percent discount for mobile app users who check in at the new location, Waldron said.
The expanded store will also have a monthly “marketplace” inside where local businesses vendors can sell goods to shoppers, she added.
I wish there were more things to DO in Westwood. Seems all there is are eateries. Sure, the Hammer and Botanical gardens, but that’s really it. Recreation would be nice. A bowling alley or something.