Like a nice bottle of Italian wine, Eataly L.A. has had time to breathe since it opened. The crowds that greeted the November opening of the Italian food emporium’s first West Coast location at the Westfield Century City had wait times of up to four hours, proving that, even in Los Angeles, gluten is far from shunned, Matija Blazic, the communications and PR manager at Eataly L.A., told Commercial Observer. (In response to the line insanity Eataly L.A. created a temporary Line-O-Meter on their Twitter account to give would-be visitors an update on wait times by a ranking of hot peppers.)

Eataly L.A. is the largest location for the brand at 67,000 square feet, edging out Chicago’s 63,000-square-foot market, according to the Eataly Web site. It encompasses four restaurants, multiple kitchens, nine-takeaway food counters, a cooking school, retail space, two chilled wine storage rooms and a clean room with customized pasteurizers to create authentic gelato and mozzarella, built by Clune Construction, a national general contractor with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.