Chef Jason Winters of Speak Cheezy has had a roller coaster of a ride through his culinary career. And in the beginning, there was a moment when Speak Cheezy and Chef Jason both felt like they had something to prove.
Chef Jason had spent years obsessing over sourdough, fermentation and pizza—first through his Urban Pie pop-ups before eventually settling into his brick-and-mortar on 4th Street—and then came the kind of national validation most neighborhood pizzerias could only dream about: the Washington Post named Speak Cheezy among the country’s best pizzerias.
But Long Beach’s pizza landscape has changed considerably since then. The city has become increasingly serious about its pies, with a wave of operators exploring everything from California-inspired slices and naturally leavened doughs to Sicilian-style squares and deeply regional approaches.
And Chef Jason, rather than resting on Speak Cheezy’s accolades, seems intent on reintroducing himself.
The result is a curious little ecosystem beginning to form around Speak Cheezy: the pizzeria itself, increasingly broad in what it offers; Speak Freezy, Chef Jason’s playful shave ice project that is abandoning the artificial rainbow of classic Hawaiian-style syrups for something distinctly Californian and seasonal; and now Little Uglys, a nascent sourdough bagel operation that Chef Jason plans to literally perch on the sidewalk outside his restaurant.
Speak Cheezy keeps expanding its pizza vocabulary…
Speak Cheezy remains the anchor of it all—and Chef Jason has quietly been expanding both its menu and its hours.
The restaurant now opens at 11:30AM rather than noon, has added Mondays to its schedule and stays open until 10PM on Fridays and Saturdays. Come September, he also plans to introduce a Monday service-industry night with 20% off for industry workers, along with Tuesdays, when children 12 and under can receive a free half-cheese, half-pepperoni pizza with the purchase of an adult pizza.
The pizza and offerings themselves are also branching outward. Beyond the sourdough pies that built Speak Cheezy’s reputation, Chef Jason has increasingly leaned into other formats. There are Sicilian pizzas at lunch, made with what he describes as a highly hydrated, almost focaccia-like sourdough. There are limited Detroits. Red, white, and pink pies galore. Salads. Wings. House-made ranch (including a stellar Calabrian chili ranch).
…and the pies? Well, they keep selling out.
“The Detroits, we only bake 10 of them a day until we sell out,” Chef Jason said. “And even though people have been arguing online whether they’re ‘real’ Detroits or not, they sell out.”
And he is tinkering with the everyday pie once again: Chef Jason says he intends to introduce 12-inch pizzas in September for takeout and delivery, offering customers a smaller and slightly less expensive alternative to Speak Cheezy’s current 14-inch format.
In other words, Speak Cheezy is no longer simply the restaurant that garnered national praise. Chef Jason is trying to figure out what the next version of it looks like. And much of that experimentation is happening beyond pizza.
Speak Freezy goes from Hawaiian rainbow to California farmers market
Speak Freezy, the shave ice concept within Speak Cheezy, is perhaps the clearest example. Shave ice, particularly in its more classically Hawaiian-American iterations, often embraces an unapologetic wall of brightly colored syrups: blue raspberry. Red 40 cherry. Hyper-purple grape. Fluorescent green lime. And seemingly every flavor and hue in between.
Speak Freezy initially played in that world. Chef Jason is now largely abandoning it.
“Speak Freezy abandoned the artificial syrups,” Chef Jason said. “We got rid of the 30-flavor wall, and we’re just going down to a couple of different flavors a week based on the farmers’ market.”
It turns the project into something far more California than Hawai‘i. The same filtered water used to make Speak Cheezy’s pizza dough becomes the ice, shaved on a Japanese kakigori machine. The fruit syrups, meanwhile, are made using what Winters describes as a Korean cheong-style process. And the results can be wonderfully odd.
Speak Freezy goes elegant…
One such flavor—an ode to summer—has been a Sun Gold tomato syrup drizzled with olive oil and topped sea salt. Savory, sweet, and creamy simultaneously. Or his other hymn to the season: a peach shave ice with a chamomile cream and bee pollen. Coming next? Likely plum. And as California’s growing seasons change, so too will Speak Freezy.
“We’re just really, really focusing on just local fruit from, you know, the farmers markets and seasonal,” Chef Jason said. “What is growing? What tastes best right now? And what disappears if you don’t eat it while it is here?”
Even winter becomes an opportunity rather than necessarily a reason to close the operation.
“How are we going to sell ice in the winter? Well, we’re going to sell a pumpkin ice,” Chef Jason said, rattling off Concord grapes and huckleberries as other possibilities. “We’re just gonna try and reel people in just by seasonality alone. And just make it special and more curated, the ice.”
What is this about sourdough bagels? Meet the Little Uglys
“Little Uglys” is the name of his newest project, a sourdough bagelry that will begin as a pop-up, where peole will have to follow its Instagram to see where they’re at. They are lumpy. They’re blistered. They aren’t particularly interested in uniformity. Chef Jason thinks that is precisely the point.
“They’re all hand-rolled, boiled, rough, tough,” Winters said. “They’re all different and imperfect. I mean, they’re just like us.”
Little Uglys will make its initial appearance during SummerFest before beginning another weekend run, with Chef Jason ultimately envisioning a morning operation running from 7AM to 11AM.
And these aren’t simply Speak Cheezy dough shaped into rings.
Diving into the world of bagels and Little Uglys with Chef Jason Winters…
Chef Jason is putting the same fermentation obsession that defines his pizza into the project: The sourdough bagels undergo a 48-hour fermentation before being hand-rolled and boiled, a process that he says creates noticeably more texture across their crusts.
“There’s a lot more crackle and, like, microblistering,” he said. “We’re still dialing them in, but they’re really good.”
Even the cream cheese is getting the fermentation treatment, made in-house rather than purchased ready-to-serve. But Little Uglys will initially resist the contemporary bagel shop urge to stack everything imaginable between two halves.
“I’m trying to go minimal,” Chef Jason said. “I’m not focusing too much on the toppings to start.”
Rip’n’dip will be the initial style for Little Uglys…
Instead, he wants bags of hot bagels, tubs of housemade fermented schmear, and the kind of bagel that is good enough to rip apart with your hands while standing on the sidewalk. Chef Jason said, at least while he dials in bagels with toppings, he doesn’t even necessarily want to cut the bagels when they are fresh.
“One of the reasons why I want to focus on the bagels is that the ice is not available year-round,” Chef Jason said. “We want to find a new revenue stream at 7AM.”
That simplicity is intentional—but it doesn’t mean he isn’t going to explore potential collaborations.
“We are working with Chef Yoya [Takahashi of Homareya] to use his koji for our house-made fermented schmear using Clover milk,” Chef Jason said. “I’m also talking to Ian from ISM Brewing & Kitchen. We’re gonna grab a special malt from him for our bagels.”
Eventually, Little Uglys could become much more. And perhaps that makes the project an appropriate next chapter for Winters himself.
That hope for “something that works” is a real admission—and worthy of praise.
Speak Cheezy doesn’t need another national list to establish that its pizza belongs in a larger conversation. Instead, Chef Winters appears more interested in seeing how far the fermentation-driven philosophy behind those pizzas can travel.
Into thick Sicilian slabs. Into farmers’ market shave ice. Or into fermented cream cheese. Into a hot sourdough bagel torn apart on 4th Street at seven in the morning.
“I really hope this works, man,” Chef Jason said.
There is something refreshingly unpolished about that admission. And fittingly, something a little cute and ugly about it, too.
Speak Cheezy is located at 3950 E. 4th St.
