Food+Lab in Silver Lake Swivels Overnight Into Picnic Sandwich Shop

Emerging from a Sunday of gluttony, fresh-seeking Silver Lakers might be starting to notice that their local outpost of Food+Lab is no more. The healthy-leaning sandwich, salad, and side shop first opened its doors in 2010, but now signage is down and the place has been scraped.

In its stead comes Picnic (not to be confused with Picnik, the Pasadena sausage hall by Eduardo Ruiz that recently lost its lease). The new Sunset Blvd daytime dining option has shades of its former tenant on the menu, offering a changing array of sandwiches for dining in or takeaway (delivery by bicycle, of course, will be available soon). Options will rotate frequently and be sold as-is, without substitutions, along with a few small sides and some coffee. With the inbound arrival of Knuckle & Claw to the same strip of Sunset, the area is about to receive a serious dose of sandwich love.

Picnic is the brainchild of Shanna Lynn Milazzo, the former sous at The Federal Bar in NoHo who would run pop up dinners out of The Dime on Fairfax. For the past 18 months she’s been the executive chef at The Belmont on La Cienega, departing there in September to start work on her own sandwich shop, eventually landing on the Food+Lab space in Silver Lake.

The abrupt turnaround happened last weekend (though the Food+Lab lettering has been torn down, the wooden sign behind it still shows the faded name), with Milazzo opening her doors on the last day of January as part of a lease agreement. Now Picnic is up and running with hours from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. six days a week (closed on Tuesday).

Picnic
3206 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026