Multiple Long Beach businesses landed in Yelp! Elites’ rankings for the best restaurants throughout Los Angeles County. And Shlap Muan—North Long Beach’s chicken wing king—and Pickle Banh Mi—the Orange County transplant that serves up the city’s best bánh mì—each landed in the Top 10.
“The one thing we care about the most is making everyone feel welcomed,” said Shlap Muan owner Hawk Tea. “To be recognized in the Top 30 last year was phenomenal. Now: Top 10? Wild beyond our comprehension. Thank you to everyone who visited and appreciated our hard work. We love you.”
Shlap Muan proves—once again—it offers up Long Beach’s best wings.
To understand Hawk’s passion is to understand the roots of Shlap Muan (which means “chicken wing” in Khmer). After trekking back from San Francisco, Hawk saw an amazing opportunity with a space that was inherently connected to his childhood: His parents’ Chinese-meets-Cambodian-meets-American restaurant in North Long Beach—the very space Hawk learned the flavors of his family’s heritages.
Arriving on the city’s shores in 1991 after staying at the Nong Samet refugee camp at the Vietnam-Cambodia border camp in order to escape the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, Chhay and Leeann Tea were like many other Cambodian families coming to Long Beach. And like those many families, they were rattled yet resilient: They knew they had to make a life for themselves and they chose, like many, the go down the route of food.
What Hawk has done to their shop—which used to feature a seemingly endless amount of Chinese, Cambodian, and Asian-American offerings in a fast-casual environment—is hone down their menu while homing in on their Cambodian side: Offer a handful of great items instead of a buffet of options—and that meant piping bowls of kuy teav, servings of lok lak, and heaps of garlic noodles…
…and further into it, Hawk’s wings, Those wings have come to have a reputation of their own: Inextricably Cambodian-American, with flavors like “Cambodian Dirt”—a lemongrass take on lemon-pepper—and “Pekang”–an outright witty deconstruction of the five-spice awesomeness that is Peking Duck—Shlap Muan has proven its worth.
Pickle Banh Mi can proudly proclaim they introduced Long Beach to a proper bánh mì.
Pickle Banh Mi—the tiny-but-mighty bánh mì joint that has brought Long Beach the Vietnamese staple lathered in its purest, most traditional form—is a story of Vietnamese women (and their family members) owning both their food and their entrepreneurial power.
And with their first location beyond the Orange Curtain having opened back in July of 2023, those women, especially daughter/son and niece/nephew to the matriarchs, sister and brother team My and Sean Nguyen—the latter of whom is the general manager at the Long Beach location—have long been ready to let Pickle Banh Mi show the world its wonders.
From the traditional—like bánh mì đặc biệt, the cold cut bánh mì that has defined the sandwich since its origins, or the bánh mì bò nướng sả, a lemongrass beef that has subtleties of sweetness amid its savory and herbal qualities—to the witty and fun—like a play with Peruvian lomo saltado for one or the use of chả cá thăng long, the famed turmeric-dill fish dish, for another—there is no bad bánh mì order at Pickle Banh Mi.
And the menu doesn’t stop there: Joining it are an array of rice dishes—including a stellar roasted pork belly rice plate, cơm heo quay, where succulent bits of pork belly, skin crisped to perfection, are lined atop steamed rice and a side of pickled veggies—and spring rolls galore—including the nem nướng cuon version, where house made pork sausage is grilled before being layered with veggies and herbs in rice paper.
Zuzu’s Petals, Noodle Shack, 555, Chiang Rai join the Top 100
Zuzu’s Petals (#27), Phnom Penh Noodle Shack (#69), 555 Steakhouse (#78), and Chiang Rai (#80) made the Top 100—though I think most will agree how egregious those numbers are and how many other spaces were excluded. Ammatolí, Selva, and Tacos La Carreta—all making Los Angeles Times food critic Bill Addison’s Best 101 Restaurants list—didn’t even rank. Nor did insanely popular spaces like Gusto and La Parolaccia, each of which joined Ammatolí in being recognized by James Beard earlier this year.
Alas, the persistently consistent issue with rankings is that they are always slightly off—but hey, Long Beach receiving recognition is Long Beach receiving recognition. And that deserves applause.
