Ellie’s in Alamitos Beach. Ginger’s directly next door. Jolie on Coronado Island in San Diego. And now, Chef Jason Witzl—along with an incredible crew that includes partner Molly Sirody and Chef Patrick Claytor, formerly of Heritage and Olive & Rose—is ready to introduce Gigi’s.
And they’re taking over a space that the community has long desired to have activated.
Gigi’s will take over the former Picarelli’s space at PCH and Loynes.
For years, the hulking, conspicuously empty space at 6204 E. Pacific Coast Hwy.—right where it meets Loynes Drive over on the Eastside—has generated one of East Long Beach’s most reliably recurring questions: What, exactly, is going in there?
For many in the neighborhood, the loss of Picarelli’s has felt weighty: Joe Picarelli took over the space in 2013 after outgrowing his original spot, which is now The Crooked Duck. It offered a perfect counterpart to the neighboring Enrique’s—and that is precisely what Chef Jason and his team are wanting to achieve with Gigi’s.
The generic answer? A wood-fired American kinda-diner-but-more-upscale-but-not-pretentious restaurant. The more elaborate answer? A genuine, from-the-heart space from a chef and restaurateur that never thought he would open another restaurant in Long Beach.
Gigi’s has been three years in the making…
The team received the space this week, launching construction on what Chef Jason hopes will become an approachable, deeply familiar neighborhood restaurant when it opens in the first quarter of 2027. It is a project nearly three years in the making, with Chef Jason first entering conversations about the former Picarelli’s space in 2023. And it is one he never imagined would actually bring him back to Long Beach.
“I told myself I was never going to open in Long Beach again—never,” Chef Jason said. “I was frustrated with the landlords, frustrated with the dining scene. It’s like we’re progressing, but not really. And then this space kept me thinking, kept pulling me back… I knew intrinsically that that space was special. I would drive by it or walk by it every day.”
At the time, the answer from his wife and business partner, Alexandra, was blunt: They were not financially ready to take on another restaurant. Instead, she offered him a challenge. Get the existing businesses in order and prove the company could support something new. If the space remained available after all of that, they could revisit it.
Chef Jason did exactly that. And somehow, years later, the cavernous restaurant remained untouched.
“It was waiting for me,” he said.
Gigi’s represents a shift from chef to restaurateur
Chef Jason’s restaurants have always followed a forthright, feminine naming pattern: Ellie’s, Ginger’s, and Jolie. Gigi’s continues that lineage, but its purpose is markedly different from the restaurants that came before it.
Ellie’s was an assertion of Chef Jason’s abilities as a chef, helping usher Long Beach into a new culinary era when it opened a decade ago: It was the ubiquitous L.A. bistro that Long Beach never had, defined by well-made pastas and Italian-Californian sensibility. Ginger’s allowed him to flex, offering an intimate, ambitious tasting-menu experience tucked behind it. Jolie allowed him to explore an entirely different city.
Gigi’s, meanwhile, is less about what Chef Jason can prove and more about what he can build for the people who helped him get here.
“I used to open restaurants for my abilities as a chef,” he said. “Now I need to open a restaurant for everyone who works for me and everyone who lives nearby it. They’re my family. And I think this is it. Simple as that: I just really think this is it. My overall goal is for me to step back as a chef and start being the restaurateur.”
The Gigi’s family is full of well-known, much-loved hospitality people.
Central to that is Molly, who began working as a brunch server at Ellie’s before steadily ascending through the company. She eventually became one of its most trusted managers, helping oversee the restaurants even after moving to Thousand Oaks and becoming a mother. Now she is no longer Chef Jason’s employee. She is his 50-50 partner in Gigi’s.
“Molly started as our brunch server, and now she’s my partner in this restaurant,” Chef Jason said. “That’s what I love about this.”
That employee-first mentality extends beyond Molly. Chef Jason sees Gigi’s as the foundation for something that could grow, create genuine career paths, and offer his staff the stability that restaurant work rarely provides.
It is an ambitious goal, but not one rooted solely in the endless chase for culinary relevance. Chef Jason now speaks openly about health insurance, paid vacations, and manageable working weeks for the people in his kitchens. He wants talented chefs to have lives outside of their restaurants—and recognizes that reaching that point requires him to relinquish some control.
Gigi wants to be chef-driven without feeling like it—and requires letting go of ego.
“I’m finally at ease with my ego, where I would love to get someone like Chef Pat, show them the ropes, and be like, ‘Let’s go. Let’s grow this thing.’”
Gigi’s arrives at a peculiar moment for Long Beach dining. The city has more talented chefs and ambitious restaurants than ever, but the proliferation of tasting menus, pop-ups, residencies and constant collaborations has also created a landscape that can feel disjointed—and, at times, exhausting. Chef Jason aptly describes it as less a recession in dining than “a recession of options.”
“People want options, and we’re running out of options in Long Beach,” he said. “I don’t mean options of great restaurants. I mean, on a Tuesday night, if you just want a piece of salmon but you don’t want to throw down at The 555 or leave your neighborhood, we’ve kind of lost that.”
That is the opening Gigi’s intends to fill: the restaurant where one can order oysters and a burger at the bar, celebrate with a filet and martini or simply sit down for a pot pie without needing a paragraph explaining its conceptual underpinnings.
For Gigi’s, think Hillstone or Houston’s: consistent hospitality and quality, well-made food.
Witzl repeatedly references Hillstone and Houston’s when describing the project—not because Gigi’s will imitate them dish for dish, but because those restaurants attract nearly every type of diner. Birthday celebrations sit beside business dinners; couples split steaks while solo patrons eat at the bar. The food is polished but instantly recognizable, and nobody has to study before placing an order.
That means abandoning the notion that familiarity is somehow beneath a serious chef.
“We’re not opening a fine-dining restaurant,” Chef Jason said. “I don’t have to feel weird about having a crab cake on the menu. I’m not going for a Michelin star. I’m going for a pot pie.”
The distinction is important: The food will not be careless simply because it is comfortable. With Chef Patrick overseeing, Chef Jason wants Gigi’s to “under-promise and over-deliver,” with menu descriptions that read plainly while the kitchen’s technical skill reveals itself in the details.
“We’re talented chefs, Pat and I,” he said. “This is our chance to take American classics and things people are familiar with, then use our skill set to make these whole, homey dishes amazing… We’re still going to chef it up—don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “We have the details in mind that are going to make this thing chef-driven, but without it being the identity of a singular chef.”
What to expect from the food at Gigi’s
The preliminary menu is broad, populist and unapologetically American, built around a new wood-burning grill fueled by mesquite and white oak. These are dishes that signal just how firmly Chef Jason is rejecting the belief that chefs must always pursue novelty: chicken pot pie. Meatloaf with caramelized-onion gravy and whipped potatoes. Filet mignon. And, yes, free bread service.
“Fuck it—we’re giving out free bread,” Chef Jason said, laughing. “We’re going to bring back that early-2000s level of hospitality. And we’re not saying no to modifications. We’re doing bread. We’re going to make you whatever the fuck we can, and we’re going to make the menu 100% approachable.”
Seafood will range from wood-fired king salmon to halibut au poivre and a whole-roasted Mediterranean sea bass with olive oil, herbs and grilled lemon. Sides? Whipped potatoes. Fire-roasted corn. Roasted yams. Maybe some charred asparagus and fries, with Chef Jason also considering a mac and cheese made with tiny housemade gnocchi.
A restaurant designed to endure
The opening menu remains in development—the artichoke dip may disappear, while an Asian chicken salad is likely to join it—but its identity is already remarkably clear. Portions will be generous. Prices will be intentionally accessible. And the kitchen will be designed to handle serious volume across the roughly 155-seat restaurant and patio.
“I really want this restaurant to be the neighborhood anchor,” Chef Jason said. “That’s where I live, too. I could walk there.”
Klauer Design is handling the interiors, mixing warm earth tones and greenery with a kind of Ralph Lauren Americana: polished, comfortable, and refined without feeling pretentious. Chef Jason hopes to open shortly after Valentine’s Day, with the broader target set for the first quarter of 2027.
Gigi’s could easily have become another grand declaration from one of Long Beach’s most prominent chefs. Instead, Chef Jason is trying to build something larger than his culinary ego: a restaurant comfortable with comfort food, confident in familiarity, and structured to create long-term opportunities for its workers.
He is no longer the chef who opened Ellie’s with something to prove. He is a decade older, responsible for multiple restaurants and increasingly aware that ambition can be measured in more than awards, reviews, and culinary complexity.
“I don’t care about all that bullshit,” Chef Jason said. “I want to open a place that is busy and I’m proud of and people love, and it makes sense in the neighborhood. It’s what a restaurant is supposed to be.”
Gigi’s will be located at 6204 E. Pacific Coast Hwy. It is expected to open the first quarter of 2027.
