Ellie’s newly minted lunch prix fixe menu—which allows people to choose a full salad or veggie dish alongside an entrée and dessert—is one of the many ways the Alamitos Beach staple is trying to better cater to all aspects of its community. And it includes those who might not be able to throw down on dinner. Or prefer a lunch date or an evening one with the comforts of home. Or, even more simply, they just want a proper damn meal.
Either way, for $35 and three courses, it is quite the deal. And it runs Tuesdays through Fridays from 11:30 AM to 4PM.
The Ellie’s lunch prix fixe menu harkens to Chef Jason Witzl’s beginning days with the space.
“We really tried to get it to $25 but, with food costs and labor, there was just no way for us to price it out at that,” owner and chef Jason Witzl said, nodding to the days when Ellie’s offered a multi-course lunch on the cheap in their opening months. Still, at $35, their new lunch prix fixe menu is valuable.
Patrons have a choice of a salad—a little gems salad with pecans and red wine vinaigrette; their chopped salad; their Caesar; or their longtime staple, the shrimp and melon salad—or a choice of a vegetable plate—winter squash with farro; their popular garnet yams with fried egg aioli; roasted carrots with eggplant hummus; brussels sprouts with andouille sausage; or my personal fave, the roasted cauliflower with raisin pestata.
Following that, you have your choice of entrée. That includes a variety of pastas: their classic chittara; the newly updated tagliatelle with pork ragù and bone marrow; their shrimp and n’duja, now with gnocchi, a much better, heftier bite now; mafaldine alla vodka (get the spicy sausage with it); and, of course, their classic lasagna.
Or you could go for a burger. Or spicy chicken sandwich or fish’n’chips or chicken parm… There’s even a Wagyu sirloin with fries for a $10 upcharge. It’s a choose your own adventure—and if you go with a buddy, you can sample multiple things through the lovely world of sharing. And then end it with vanilla gelato drizzled in olive oil and Maldon salt.
The return to roots that has defined Ellie’s across recent seasons is one that is warmly welcomed.
Chef Jason Witzl had one helluva 2024. He opened up his Jolie’s space on Coronado Island in San Diego, he was lauded as Chef of the Year. This was on top of bouncing between that very space and his two Long Beach restaurants, his flagship Ellie’s and the neighboring Ginger’s. Even more, this was all after the strenuous years of the pandemic, where Chef Jason hit a triple hardship: The inability to move Ellie’s to the Compound in Zaferia; that, in turn, prompted the loss of his Ellie’s Deli concept; and then the permanent closure of his Lupe’s space in DTLB to make way for Toma.
Truthfully, 2024 showcased Chef Jason’s resilience far more than echoing the struggles he (and nearly every chef-owner) experienced over the past half-decade. And, well, another truth be told: it made us severely miss him here in Long Beach. Surely, his Ellie’s and Ginger’s spaces were running fine. But Ellie’s still missed that, well, Jason-ness.
The latter half of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 are proving warm welcomes for Chef Jason from the food community, where new iterations on fan favorites have come to both push the space forward but cement its love of its regulars.
With the Ellie’s lunch prix fixe menu comes, well, the entirety of the menu available during lunch.
The menu during lunch isn’t just the prix fixe offering: One can fully explore everything from bone marrow boards and steak frites oysters and carpaccio.
“We really are trying to find a way to be open more often while also catering to every patron we can,” Chef Jason said. “And I certainly hope people understand that we’re doing this at great risk: If we don’t have some consistency, we will have to return to dinner only hours—but who wants that? Who doesn’t enjoy a glass of rosé and some pasta at 1PM on a Wednesday afternoon?”
Amen, Chef.
Ellie’s is located at 204 Orange Ave.
