Get Ready for IZOLA in Sorrento Valley (the East Village Favorite is Expanding!)

Jeffrey Brown and Jenny Chen had no baking experience, no professional ovens, and no storefront when they decided to start IZOLA in 2020. They’d just been chased out of Paris by COVID. So they baked anyway – in a Home Depot oven, on the third floor of their East Village photo studio.

The first batch was 12 croissants and five sourdough loaves, lowered to the people waiting below in a basket.

People came. Then they came back. Then they brought their friends. Six years later, IZOLA is one of the most talked-about bakeries in San Diego – and it’s opening a second bakeshop at Biovista, Longfellow’s life science campus in Sorrento Valley. As Brown puts it: “There has been a truly unreasonable amount of butter from France.”

96 Layers, Four Days, and a Ramen Croissant in Development

IZOLA’s croissants take four days and 96 laminated layers to make. That’s the discipline.

What goes inside them is where things get interesting: Bibimbap. SoCal Date Shake. A Ramen Croissant with noodles, a jammy egg, mustard greens, and miso is currently in development.

Brown’s line on all of it: “We respect the hell out of the technique. That doesn’t mean the ideas inside it have to stop in France.” New flavor drops are planned through mid-2028, so the croissant you love this month might not exist next month. That’s by design.

Kids Crawling Around, Dogs Eating Crumbs, and Live Music Playing

IZOLA is hard to categorize on purpose. It’s a bakery with fast-casual speed and details borrowed from fine dining – food timed to arrive hot from the oven, linen napkins, real knives and cutting boards, and a team trained to ask “what would make this more delightful?” and act on the answer.

Brown’s favorite view of what IZOLA looks like when it’s working: kids crawling around, dogs eating crumbs, friends and families lingering, live music going. Spontaneous, real community. That’s what they’re building at Biovista.