Grand Casino Bakeries

Authentic Argentinian food. This is were we come when we miss home. This place is a must if you want to try Argentinian food.

Nice place to have a little breakfast. Nothing grand, but good. I had the breakfast buffet and it has your typical items like bacon, fruit, potatoes, etc. Five dollar bottomless mimosas when you get the breakfast buffet. Bottomless mimosas are always a good way to boost a Unilocal rating!

What a gem of a place! The empanadas are as god as any I’ve had in travels to Argentina and Chile, then there is the bread and baked goods. I had a rectangular Danish and it was incredible. I will be back here whenever I’m near culver city.

Great atmosphere. Great service. Great iced tea. One problem: Food absolutely without flavor. There’s not much more I can say. I want to love this place, but if Milanese sandwich is absolutely unremarkable there’s just no way around it.

I’d drive 50 miles if I had to for the pastries they make here.
I’d recommend

I’m not sure how but I’m surprised this place am still seems to be a little gem on the Westside. I’ve never seen it crowded and service is always fast and good.
There’s two sides to this place. The left side is the sit-​down restaurant and the other is the café where you can either sit or just carry out.
The my always have fresh empanadas for $ 2.20 each (beef, chicken, spinach & cheese, eggplant). I’m weird and like to eat the spinach and cheese and the chicken together but ALL of them are good. They’re a good treat for the office or event.
They have a large assortment of pastries and desserts. Their fruit tarts are always welcomed when I bring them for dessert.
They also take orders by phone which is greAt when you just want to run in and out since parking sucks in Culver City. Hmmm I wonder if they’re on Postmates!!!

Review for Alfajor cookies only!
Milky, sweet dulce de leche sandwiched between fluffy, buttery shortbread cookies. Absolutely delicious! I’m not a fan of shortbread or caramel, but these cookies have won me over. It’s not overly sweet, but just heavenly milky and creamy. So good!

Exploring the town with my sister and her boyfriend, I was trying to prepare for a Holiday party I was planning to dash over… not urging for settling for something basic, I came across this shop on Unilocal and that appealing dessert on the main photo got me hooked. Here’s how my experience went.
Ambiance:
Parking: Neighborhood but plenty of parking (structure or street)
Seating: Inside and outside. The bakery is mainly outside seating and the restaurant is inside. It can house about a good 50 people. Generally group seating.
Feels: Ma and pa shop split into a bakery and a restaurant. I vibe off a small charming restaurant very date night friendly. Decorated is some nice latin décor with some background music as well. Though it’s lightly dimmed, it’s still a place to enjoy.
Food:
Guava Squares (Recommend)
Unfortunately I had to compare it to Porto’s and I’m more of a Porto’s person. HOWEVER this is still a pretty good sweet.
Dolce Turnover (Recommend)
Crispy and sweet. This can get messy but definitely worth it.
Donuts (Recommend)
Round balls of sweet heaven. What else can I say?
Customer Service:
Our server was quick and patient with me. So many choices yet so little money…
Overall:
4 stars. This definitely has a nice charm. The menu is something different, price is reasonable, the feels were pleasant. Can’t really find a reason to knock on it.
TL;DR Tips:
* Restaurant is split into a restaurant and bakery
* Not mandatory to dress nice but it’s a good place for a date night.

Came here for brunch on Sunday. Got the spinach and cheese omelet it comes with choice of salad or potatoes. I opted for the salad. They give you ALOT of salad. Also comes with a roll. The omelet was quite tasty and loaded. The salad was fresh. I did not care for the dressing that was provided. Basically just olive oil, not much flavor. The coffee here is really good and is organic.
When we arrived, we grabbed a table outside. And it took quite some time for us to be acknowledged. Our waitress recovered and service was good from there on out. I got my coffee refilled, so all is forgiven!

This place made me so happy to find an authentic bakery where all the pastries were still fresh in the middle of the afternoon. I want to go back to try the restaurant, but with fine empanadas in the bakery I was fully pleased and convinced to make this my go-​to sweet shop.

Two stars because our server was nice and the orange juice was good.
Ordered empanadas with salad, about ¹⁄₃ of the salad greens were starting to rot and laced with black slime. Curiously, they don’t dress the salad but drop off a dirty dressing dispenser full of cloudy, separated vinaigrette. If you want actual vinaigrette (rather than just oil) you have to put your finger over the top to shake it. Either everybody is eating their salads with only oil, or those dressing bottles contain traces of who-​knows-​how-​many fingers. Super unappetizing. How hard is it to dress a salad? The «fried» empanadas were passable, but definitely undercooked (pale and chewy rather than golden and crispy), and the chimichurri was, sadly, under-​seasoned and served in a communal dish without a spoon.
Boyfriend is a big eater and wouldn’t hear my objections to his decision to order the brunch buffet. Terrible idea. Old dried up waffles with corn syrup anyone?
As I said, the server was nice, when we finished quickly and asked for the check she asked what was up, so we told her that we were disappointed. She kindly offered us some cookies from the bakery to make up for the awful $ 50 experience. Unfortunately, and through no fault of hers, the cookies were terrible, and no wonder: a peep at the ingredients revealed that they were essentially flour and margarine. Who bakes with margarine?
Maybe we ordered the worst things on the menu, but it’s my belief that a restaurant is only as strong as its weakest dishes. Also, you can’t make good food with subpar ingredients. For a $ 50 brunch I expect much, much better.

I have been coming here since I was a kid. I have only eaten here on one occasion, and prefer to just grab some pastries to go. There are good and you get a great deal. My sister loves their churros. I usually buy half a dozen or dozen to split with my family every time I go. The staff is great, and are really good about making the line more quickly.
If you are lucky you can find street parking on main st. If not there is a public parking structure one block over.
I moved to the valley a year ago, but when I find myself in need of a sweet snack in Culver city, I swing by.

Yummy Argentine bakery right on main street. We came for coffee and dessert after dinner, and were impressed with the big selection of pastries, tarts, cookies, and cakes. I had a pastelito de membrillo (quince paste), which is similar to the guava pastries I am used to, and a café con leche.
Everything was really reasonably priced. My only complaint is that the pastries and cakes generally weren’t labeled. Not being an expert on Argentine pastries, I’d love a little help on identifying things.
Wish I knew about this place before!

So… I’ve been here… A lot… Like Unilocal tells me I’ve checked in 26 times, mostly bc they have a check in special where you get a free drink when you order an entrée. I lean towards the sangria bc drinking during the day does not make you an alcoholic, it makes you a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings, drunks have fun.
If you’re hungry for red meat, their skirt steak (medium) is the way to go. If you want something medium rare or bloodier… Order a different part of the cow. Grand casino seems to bring out the most flavor in a skirt steak when they cook it medium. Make sure to ask for the specials when you’re here for dinner.
Brunch on a weekend can get a little busier and it takes longer to get your food. On a side note, I’ve never had to wait for a table even on a weekend brunch. They have a bfast buffet on Sunday.
They also have an afternoon weekday happy hour that’s pretty decent (cue sangria consumption). Their empanadas are pretty bomb and they coat their garlic fries and garlic.
If you need a pick me up, get an Argentinian Yerba mate con leche. I take mine with sugar… It mollifies my hanger.
Park at the trader joes parking structure (second floor and up) or at the Cardiff parking structure. All the parking structures in downtown culver city are two hours free parking.

¡Bosta! Facturas secas y duras. Una triste versión de lo que era el Gran Casino en su época. Lástima porque un un día eran muy buenas.
This place was a real letdown. It’s a shame because in the past it was very good. For some reason unknown to me this place has declined significantly in the quality of its pastries. I previously would drive from South Orange county to here to get the pastries. I did that again recently after having spent some time away from the place and was extremely disappointed. The flavorful fluffy facturas are no longer, replaced instead by hard flat flavorless facturas. What a shame.
I give two stars because I didn’t see any insects or vermin infestation and because you don’t get sick from eating the food. But they need to step their game way up!

It’s always a great experience at Grand Casino. I especially love going with the kids, because it’s such a family friendly restaurant. The food is delicious, the menu has something for everyone and the restaurant itself is very spacious.
The wait staff is always friendly and attentive, so the overall experience is just so pleasant.
Highly recommended. Plus, they have tango classes on Mondays and a free drink with your Unilocal check-​in.

2.5 Stars. I’ve only been to the bakery side, so I can’t speak to the actual restaurant food. The pastries I had were pretty mediocre. The little donut hole with dulce de leche, had barely any caramel in it and was not very good. The apple tart was better, but nothing special. I’ve had their chocolate chip cookie before too and did not like it. Dry and very little flavor.
I also don’t think they have AC because I was there on a very hot morning and it was too warm to enjoy sitting inside with my food.
I did like the espresso and they do have great prices.

3.5 stars rounding up to 4.
This place reminds me of a church trip I took to Argentina many years ago. It’s where I was first turned on to Yerba Maté and other fine foods of this country.
This is the bakery portion of the restaurant next door and they offer a variety of donuts and danishes called facturas in the Argentinian spanish. Most of them are relative inexpensive too at $ 0.99 for a danish. I wasn’t sure what I wanted but when the girl serving me pointed out that they had empanadas too, I knew I had to get one of those so I ordered a chicken empanada. In addition, I ordered a Dulce de Leche factura, apple fritter factura and a cup of coffee to help wash it all down.
The empanada was decent. The chicken was minced and was overly tender and pink in color to the point that I was a little concerned that it might have been undercooked which wouldn’t be good at all. I wasn’t offered the chimichurri sauce as someone had suggested in another review so that might have improved the flavor. I’d give this 3.5÷5 stars.
The Dulce de Leche factura as not as sweet as I was expecting it to be. Dulce de Leche usually has a very sweet and unique flavor of which I am a huge fan but this didn’t seem to missing that flavor for some reason. 3.5÷5 stars.
The apple fritter factura wasn’t too bad and I’d give it a ⁴⁄₅ stars.
There are other facturas I’d come back to try in the future. Everything is freshly baked on the premises and the girl at the counter shared that the bakers come in around 8 pm and stay over night baking everything for the next day.
They have fresh baguettes and other cakes and cookies too. It’s a good place with reasonable prices for the sweets. I’ll be back again if I’m in the area.

I love this place. The coffee is great and the Argentinian pastries amazing. The food is good, but the bakery is why I come.
The service has always been great. They seem to love working here.
I love the outdoors patio. Great people watching! There is always something brewing on Main Street.
It doesn’t have the smooth, minimal design for so many new places, but that is part of the charm.

My friends and I came here for lunch and it was a beautiful day to be in the outdoor area enjoying lunch. Unfortunately it was a bit of an odd meal in terms of service and food quality. It had a higher end feel being there so it was nice to be in, but we thought the service and food would reflect that. Our server would disappear for a while, messed up some of our orders and some things were just lacking on flavor.
I got a chicken chimichurri sandwich and there wasn’t much chimichurri sauce on there at all and salad didn’t come with dressing and server was gone for too long to even ask. Others had either messed up meals or they were lacking anything special too, but still felt nice to be here.
The bread from their bakery on the sandwich was great and we got some bakery treats after that were really good. I agree with others that you should come here for bakery items, not so much the meal.

Pretty good Argentinian style food but ultimately I thought their bakery is better than the restaurant.
Not many places serve true Argentinian fare so Grand Casino is good for that. We tried their Happy Hour menu and to be honest it did not have a distinguishable Argentinian taste to it. Instead it was too similar to Mexican cuisine and for those reasons I would stay away from the HH menu despite the great deals.
I also ordered their spinach empanadas per a recommendation from a Peruvian friend and they were quite good. Pretty hefty and I thought the breading was really good.
The garlic fries were far too salty and they give you a massive bowl so it is hard to even finish.
The chimichurri steak taco was okay. I liked the big slice of avocado but it was nothing spectacular. The $ 1 tacos from food trucks are just as good if not better.
$ 7.05 total for two HH dishes. ($ 3.50 each)
Before I left I was able to buy some alfajores and those were really good. Shortbread was on point as was the dulce de leche filling. Delectably soft and just the right amount of sweetness. I’d come back to get some of those as they make great gifts and snacks.