FIRST LOOK: The 2025 Baby Gee summer cocktail menu plays with everything from tiki to avocados

The 2025 Baby Gee summer menu, debuting its array of new cocktails today, showcases the bar’s candid ability to stretch from the accessible to the esoteric. One of its most robust menus to date—nearly 20 cocktails and mocktails grace the menu—it showcases the confidence and ability of owner Gianna John’s well-oiled machine of bartenders.

And then you have Gianna herself. Never more confident in her ability to eschew pretense while harboring complexity, taste, and nuance, this seasonal menu showcases a wild breadth of what is undoubtedly Long Beach’s second cocktail renaissance.

Baby Gee’s summer menu continues its play between pure Long Beach and pure Baby Gee.

Honestly, I find nothing more complimentary than suggesting Baby Gee to someone and they look it up only for me to receive a response along the lines of, “This looks like a dive bar.” And then they realize it is much more than just that. Firstly, dive bars run Long Beach and always have. Many regulars are still amazed at V-Room finally taking credit cards. And outsiders get a case of the Clutched Pearls when hearing the darkest of daytime bars often don’t accept cards. But with this, our drinking culture has also had a self-induced allergy to change.

Baby Gee has bridged the drinking culture of Long Beach—cheap’n’strong—and the desire to evolve and elevate. Their 2025 summer cocktail menu is a beautiful ode to this dichotomy.

You’ll find outright witty plays on club drinks. No joke. There’s a Long Island Iced Tea, where tequila and rum are exchanged for bourbon and matcha sake. The cola? Replaced with grapefruit soda. In the words of head bartender Noah Friedman, “If Baby Gee were at a club, this is what we would serve.” You have a play on the bartender’s nightmare: an espresso martini. “Reboot the Dongle” has root beer and absinthe meld with Belizean rum and espresso. There’s even a drink for the “vodka-soda” crowd, where Gianna melds pisco and herbal notes into a dangerously sippable, makes-me-feel-skinny concoction dubbed “Second Summer.”

Then, of course, Baby Gee swings for the bleachers. Botanical gin and hemp vodka meld with avocado and citrus for a kinda savory, definitively creamy drink: “Calico Queen.” A “Loose Screw Sour” that is any watermelon fan’s dream, where tart and sweet hit minty and spicy thanks to red shisho and lacto-fermented tomato water.

The new era of cocktails has arrived in Long Beach—and it is being led by places like Baby Gee, Tokyo Noir, and young bartenders willing to evolve.

It is always worth starting with The Stache Bar. Stache led the charge in showcasing that our city could have genuinely great spirits and offer a good ol’ PBR and shot of Jack simultaneously. They were the first to offer Old Fashioneds on the regular, feature Hudson Baby Bourbon, and provide a sense of evolution to what had been mainly a lower-shelf boilermaker culture.

Stache initiated the beginning of Long Beach’s first era of craft cocktails. Spaces began to take the creation of classic cocktails rather seriously—perhaps no better executed than The Ordinarie, which began to document and credit the cocktails born at their space while also respecting classics on a level that hadn’t been achieved previously. Michael’s on Naples. Wood & Salt. The Social List. Marlena… All followed. From there on out, well-crafted cocktail menus were essential to hospitality operations.

And what Baby Gee—and, in tow, Tokyo Noir—is upped that level. Playing with fermentation, foams, and fun-finding. And it has inspired other bartenders.

“Sure, some of the things offered could have been acceptable in the Shore or Long Beach years ago,” Roe’s Emilee Comeau told me earlier this year. “We were using things like Monin Blackberry syrup that just don’t fit in the current cocktail climate. With places like Baby Gee and Tokyo Noir and Marlena, we had to compete and update our program or we would continue to lose patrons.”

A peek at the array of cocktails showcased on the 2025 Baby Gee summer menu.

I am featuring seven of the 19 drinks available on the new menu. From porch pounders to club cocktails to sumptuously savory sips, it is both one of Baby Gee’s broadest yet most confident menus to date.

Calico Queen | Gin | Avocado | Orange blossom | Tangerine aperitif | Hemp | Thyme

Loose Screw Sour: Tequila Blanco | Lacto-fermented tomato water | Watermelon | Red shiso | Lemon | Egg white

Long Beach Iced Tea #2: Vodka | California Gin | Bourbon | Sake | Hojicha | Peach | Kaffir lime leaf | Grapefruit soda

Thai Lada: Aged Aquavit | Aguardiente | Suze | Coconut | Carrot | Chai | Lemongrass.

Reboot the Dongle: Private Barrel Belizean Rum | Espresso | Root beer | Cacao | Absinthe

Sleazy P Martini: Gin | Bacanora | Toasted coconut | Cocchi Americano | Elderflower | Lychee “caviar”

Second Summer: Pisco | Prickly Pear Brandy | Manzanilla | Tarragon | Cinnamon | Tonic

Baby Gee Bar is located at 1227 E. 4th St.