Gambrinus

CLOSED??? This is why we can’y have nice things. This is a dark day for America and probably is a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who is rubbing our faces in it on our own turf. Now where will I drink beer made from turnips and listen to crap European techno music???

I checked the menu on the website and went there with my friends this Saturday to try some eastern european food, but was disappointed. That place is no longer exists! Now it’s a Spanish place with only 10 items in the menu. They apologized and promised to add more items in few weeks…

Wow ive had a lot of burgers but this is one awesome burger for $ 4. Personaly i love the cheese they chose and the pickeles, you have to try! to understand.
A must try!

great selection of Russian bilini crepes and delicious foods that as well as drinks and great atmosphere. unique and refreshing. Thank you for this cultural exchange of food spirits and ambience.

One star just for food. The service was terrible! Worst I ever experienced in my life. Me and husband was waiting 30 minutes for menu! After that 30 minutes for cold drinks and 40 minutes for food which came cold. We didn’t get any apology or discount for obviously disgusting service. If you guys want to stay in business, please hire normal stuff. They lost my trust, don’t recommend going there, unless you want to experience really bad russian USSR style service and atmosphere.
P. S. And this place is overpriced

One star because of quick service… BUT… WARM BEER AND MICROWAVE HOT DOGS? really? The service was horrible, as a bartender you want to converse with your people but the girl on Wednesday at 6:30 pm was not trying to at least get feedback from the very few customers she had. It was only us and a couple at a table. Sorry won’t be coming back here ever again… warm beer really? The only thing cold here is the mug.

Quality has drop tons ! Food no longer good! But Baltika beer still Good…
The place is getting on the market for sub-​lease so thats probably why they don’t care anymore about quality

Since I’m Russian, I have a pretty solid point of reference regarding the authenticity of the food. But before I go there, let’s talk quality. The crawfish were embarrassing. I realize that previously frozen seafood which has traveled thousands of miles and was then defrosted and steamed probably won’t taste great, so my question is, why serve it? Why serve mushy, bitter, cat food quality seafood? Why, perhaps because people would buy it, my bad. My family seemed to enjoy the chebureki which were half moon shaped and wrapped in what appeared to be puff pastry. Odd. The peroshki tasted good, but again, puff pastry??? So odd. The blinchiki were truly delicious and tasted like Russian comfort food. This joint also has an excellent beer selection and good kvas. My last qualm is the staff’s unfamiliarity with the restaurant’s check in discounts. Although it was resolved, it’s still pretty embarrassing to have to explain to the waitress what Unilocal is and what checking in means, and why there is a 10% discount. Get it together, people.

I usually go to Gambrinus on special occasions, tonight being a date night with my BF. The vibe, service and most importantly food quality certainly has changed. I ordered the blini which was quit bland and did not taste nearly as good as it usually does. Sadly, I learned the regular chef, Irina, no longer works there. I’m not so sure if we will be returning to Gambrinus after this recent experience. It was truly disappointing.

Today we and our Russian friends were here and I’m not sure if we would be back ever.
Blini, salad and russian drinks were ok. I could not say though that everything was super delicious, it was just ok. Borsht was really old and thick (probably leftover from yesterday), pirozhki — just puff pastry with filling — it’s not original russian food and not pirozhki!
The most important reason why I’m giving one star is terrible service! It was the worst waiter that we’ve ever met! We waited just 40 minutes to get drinks and 1 hour to get our food! Waiter was really stupid and horrible. She kept forgetting what we ordered! She lied, they had a lot of orders, although only 4 tables were occupied!
After all she could not split the bill in half and we had to pay cash to our friends.
When we were asking for a bill we asked to consider the fact that we were starving for one hour after we ordered food. As a result, we did not receive any discount or even apology: «We can’t give you a discount because we have so many orders».
It is a good place with normal food but horrible service makes it 0 stars!

Friendly. Nice environment. Musics/​TVs not too loud so you can hear yourself talk. Munchies for beer is awesome too.

My friend and i visited the place with our Salvadorean friends who traveled the world and who are used to different types of food. Here is what i want to say: the food was AMAZING! If you want to try the real Russian food — this is the right place. I wont say anything about the service because i wasn’t paying attention to that, we had fun and enjoyed our borsch lol))
Okay, so pelmeni are THE BEST! Omg how do you make it? Even i can’t cook it like these guys did.
Borsch is so awesome that i almost cried!
Salads Shuba and Olivier are simply like from my childhood when we ate those at the New Year’s eve.
Blini (crepes) are THAT tasty that we wanted to order more, but there was no room for it, we were full :)
And the last thing is KVAS!!! If you have never tried a typical Russian drink just order kvas, you won’t regret it :)
I hope it helped :)

Blini were delicious. Mine came with salad, sour cream, and a dill sauce that I used on the blini. Afterwards, I realized the dill sauce was probably the salad dressing!
My son ordered crawfish, brave soul, that he is. Neither one of us had ever tried them before. He ate most of ‘em. I tried a couple, but, to me, they did not taste like lobster. At all.
Overall, Gambrinus seems to be a pier bar atmosphere, with Russian food and drink items available, Happy Hour deals were good. The blini were 20% off, and appetizers were Buy One., Get One Half off. My son loved his plate of french fries, but the half off price was still $ 3.50. If I would have paid $ 7 for that same plate, I would have been unhappy.
They would not honor my Unilocal deal. I did contact Unilocal,and they have promised to credit my $ 10 back to me.
I would definitely return for the blini, and to try the piroshki, and pellmeni (sp?). If I came in with another adult, I might try some of the bar specials too. One note: Don’t come here if you are in a rush. Service to me was European style. For someone used to fast-​paced LA life, it seemed a bit too leisurely.

Stopped in Gambrinus on a lazy Sunday to grab drinks and some food. Nice local bar feel on the pier with a touch of Russian culture. Started off with the House Gambrinus brew, nice and refreshing on a sunny day. I had the Chebureki to eat — some sort of fried pork turnover — which was fresh, crispy, and pretty good. Girlfriend had the splini, which was just luke warm (clearly my Chebureki was to blame) but not bad.
Only issue I had was the service — quick to take our initial order, but slowwwww to bring it out, especially considering everyone else there was just watching the Olympics with a beer. That’s really in line with my recommendation here: eat elsewhere, then go for a beer with some friends to relax.

Was in Redondo Beach a few days ago with a friend and she took me to a little restaurant and bar on the pier called Gambrinus; a Russian restaurant.
It doesn’t look like much when you are walking down the boardwalk, as nothing there looks very good walking down the boardwalk, but once you walk in, it is very nicely constructed and furnished. There are only about 6 tables (I did say small didn’t I), a few cocktail tables and the bar which seats about ten. The little restaurant was very clean inside.
What impressed me was not only the food (Russian, just in case you forgot) but also the service. The server/​bartender was Katya Z. (I had her write it down as I would never had remembered).
For lunch we had the Chebureki (like a calzoni), which was very good, and also the Cabbage Rolls, which were excellent. The salad, a coleslaw, was also excellent. Both served with sour cream and A FABULOUS hot sauce.
If you are looking for different kinds of beers, you really should stop here. My friend had a Pilsner (forgot the name), which was very good, and I had a Czechoslovakian beer called Staropramen (like an American Brown), and that was excellent.
Two lunches, two beers cost us US$ 34.00. Not bad at all. If you are looking for something different, it is definitely worth a try. And you can sit there and watch all the boats and tourist walk by.
Thank you for your time.

Stopped in for a drink and the waitress never mentioned a minimum. I sat there for about 25 minutes drinking the beer (got the big one). She didn’t mention a minimum until I tried to close. I asked her if there was a sign and it was literally covered up by another sign. I figured she’d cut me a break because the sign was covered but she didn’t and was super mean about the situation. Wasn’t the money, totally the principle.
Also, the waitress didn’t point out that there was an ATM in the restaurant and did not want to return my card until I purchased another item.
They were talking shit before the card situation. That’s how they roll in there. They talk mad shit thinking people ain’t picking up on it. (Written on behalf of a friend who was pissed over his experience here)

I love this place! It is not only about delicious food and convenient location in the center of the pier, it also brings me back home (which is Russia). Staff is friendly but mind that Russians don’t like to rush so there might be some wait.
I come here pretty often with my friends and they love it. Try visiting here from noon till 3pm on week days to get a deal of 20% off on burgers and BLINY (Russian pancakes with resemblance of crapes). If you buy at least $ 10 worth of food they also throw in free drink and salad. I tend to overeat all the time because everything is so yammi and options are infinite. My favorites are SHUBA salad (layers of herring, cooked root veggies with mayo), BORCH (beet and cabbage soup) and PIROJKI with cabbage. They tend to run out of beer so plan to visit Naja’s afterwards if you have a beer belly.

Visited on a Wednesday evening, June 27, 2012 (sorry, long overdue review!)
The girl brought me here as it was the only place with decent Russian food in the area (she’s from St Petersburg). Someone else called this a gastropub? No. And the girl thinks the pelmeni (I compare it to dumplings, but she was insistent it is not the same) was the freezer kind. And the pelmeni was Americanized with their addition of a side of parmesan — she literally lol’d about that.
Frozen or not, no complaints here. It was good, but nothing to write home about… just on Unilocal.If you’re a local, and don’t want to make the trek to Hollywood for authentic Russian food, give this place a go.

— Locale Destination —
It’s in the middle of the boardwalk, on the left side of bathroom, in Redondo Beach.
Russian gastropub with Russian foods and regular appetizers.
It wasn’t emphasized «Russian» theme but you see definitely «Russian» flares on menu. The nice and airly opening setting is great for enjoying the boardwalk and sunset. Nautical theme décor, bar, and several booths on top of regular tables. The server was friendly Russian lady. The service (especially for foods) are slow but I’m totally forgiven due to their good beers and foods.
Happy hour: Weekdays (not holidays), 4 – 7 pm. All draft $ 2 off (UNDER $ 3.50 for a 23 oz mug!!). Buy one appetizer for the full price, get the second equal or lesser value for half off! All blini/​crepes and burgers 20%off! That’s a steal!
Bravo for Redondo Beach!
— Gluttony Expedition —
*** Beer ***
Many Eastern European varieties — Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Polish etc. Both draft and bottle.
Czechvar: Heavier and nicer Budweiser draft beer. It’ OK but bland. Nothing special.
Baltika: Russian bottle beer. Very light body with full of «wheat» flavors. Interesting but I prefer the beer with body.
Golden road IPA: Nice balanced IPA. I like it.
*** Food ***
They have typical bar foods like burgers, fish & chips as well as «Russian» foods — Blini, Chebureki, Russian ravioli etc.
Chebureki: Deep fried pie stuffed ground beef with cheese. The shell was light and crispy. The beef lacked in flavors. Dipping sour cream on the crunchy pie was quite refreshing (you see it a lot for Russian dishes). Overall, it was a light and good dish.
— Conqueror’s Deduction —
Good beers with a big 23 oz mug for under $ 3.50??? (Happy hour)
My beer loving friend seriously thought about moving here for it (I’m not kidding). It’s not just a beer, but also good «Russian» foods. I like Russian foods — homey yet good foods if you didn’t know. What a great hidden gem. I like here.
Redondo beach is such a hidden gem!!! We’ll come back here for sure!

This was not the location where I expected a Russian restaurant but I couldn’t resist trying it once I found out about it. It was the small size I expected it to be but a bit less packed, which was a nice surprise actually. There was a cheesy Sax player there, too, but it didn’t bother us.
We went with some of the Pirozki, which were very good as well as the meat pies. The variniki were also quite good– they were like giant tortellinis. I was a little disappointed that they were out of a several beers on the list but it was fun trying out new ones I haven’t had before I was definitely feeling it the next day.
I loved the open-​air atmosphere on the water and to think I could get some good Russian food and beer there is a bonus! They will see me back there again!