Bar Envie owner Geoff Rau has partnered with wife-and-husband, master baker-and-master brewer team Harmony and Levi Fried of the Long Beach Bread and Beer Labs to formally convert the space into a Beer Lab.
Having only opened in April with a menu headed by lauded Chef Carlos Jurado of Selva—the latter of which was named one the best restaurants in the region by the Los Angeles Times and the former, Bar Envie, named one of the best new cocktail bars in the nation—the news comes as a bit of a shock for those in the industry.
Though the neighborhood, which has seen the space go through multiple iterations since The Red Leprechaun closed in 2019, is likely to be thankful this will be a smooth and quick transition, with Rau saying they will take the next two weeks to reconfigure the space before reopening.
Hosting a tap takeover last night to announce the news, Rau said that he “will be a partner in the new venture [an LLC] but not really involved in the day-to-day-operations of the space. My wife and I want to spend more time in the Big Easy [where we own a home] and while we appreciate what we attempted here at Bar Envie, it’s hard to beat the real thing.”
Jurado will not be involved in the kitchen, moving back over to Selva full time. And while there are definitely big plans by the Beer/Bread Lab folks—something we will expand on in another piece—the good thing is that Zaferia is getting some of the best pizza in Long Beach.
“We are happy to work with Geoff and [his business partner] Patrick [Malone] and we are looking forward to bringing our beers and sourdough pizza—not vegetarian—to this new location,” Harmony said, quote-unquote.
Bring on the meat’n’beers.
[…] Rau says, via Brian Addison’s Longbeachize.com, the team “will take the next two weeks to reconfigure the space before […]