The much-awaited Gusto Green restaurant closed itself down the other week after chief Michael Magliano’s abrupt termination. The location belongs to Janet Zuccarini’s hospitality group, which includes the Felix restaurant in Venice too.
There was a sudden all-hands meeting with staffers to talk about leadership changes, maintaining the so-called Gusto culture, re-training and a menu with the expectation of a March 2022 reopening.
The hospitality group opened the restaurant in January 2022; with the guidance of Magliano, it was the US’s first restaurant that served hemp leaves in collaboration with Ziese Farms. For your information, Ziese Farms is the lone federally regulated vendor of hemp leaves for food. The signature dish of the restaurant is a crispy garbanzo beans-battered hemp leaf.
Magliano stated that he felt disappointed as the hospitality group did not explain his abrupt termination. Magliano worked in the capacity of a chef for over 10 years in California’s cannabis community. Magliano told LA Weekly that he is into cannabis sativa.
Magliano also said that Gusto Green and the building that housed it were curated through his community. He has a sense of satisfaction about the plant-forward and innovative menu that he created. To create the menu, he tapped into vendors and agriculturalists he has long been working with. Besides, he curated a terpene-centric cocktail menu without alcohol content for the progressive customer of the restaurant.
Magliano described himself as the first-ever chef who brought federally legal cannabis leaves to a Los Angeles restaurant through Ziese Farms. At the same time, Magliano brought hearts of palm from the agriculturalist he had known when working for The French Laundry and other ingredients from his past. As for Magliano, hemp is among the world’s most nutritious herbs.
The Farm Bill of 2018 does not prohibit industrial hemp or its derivatives. However, cannabinoid restaurants in the US have faced legal challenges. One of those locations is the now-defunct first cannabidiol restaurant known as Spring. Lowell Cafe is another cannabis restaurant that assesses its future again after its closure. Spring is not far away from the Gusto Green restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles.
Describing Magliano as an extremely talented chef, Zuccarini wished the man the best for his future. Unfortunately, the visions of Magliano did not fall in line with those of the restaurant group. Despite Magliano’s termination, Zuccarini stated that the group is committed to its promise of offering tasty plant-forward food through an exemplary team in place to welcome customers.
