After a month of experimenting in the kitchen (while also hosting a stellar coffee popup), Buvons Wine Bar, the restaurant expansion from the neighboring Buvons Wine Shop, has opened under the watchful eye of owner and chef Alicia Kemper. With a sleek, French-meets-Californian menu that beautifully highlights the seasonal and vegetal, it is a reflection of a Long Beach small business owner with the resilience to move forward.
Buvons Wine Bar: Let’s talk about the food.
Perhaps there is no better representation of Buvons Wine Bar that Chef Alicia’s stellar sunchoke dish featuring different textures of the root vegetable. A beautifully savory sunchoke purèe. Sunchoke chips. Brunoise of sunchoke—fried and tossed in brown sugar, smoked paprika, and cayenne—that has just enough moisture in it to make a bacon-like quality. All surrounded by a ring of radicchio—a gorgeously pink Weiser Farms Rosalba radicchio variety that echoes Veneto and Castelfranco but with much more subtlety on the bitterness—tossed in a house-made vinaigrette with pickled pomegranate.
The result is a radical return to something that used to be ubiquitous throughout California as Chef Alicia partners with her kitchen manager, Zoe Unverferth: the bistro that focuses on seasonality, using their tiny-but-mighty garden to every extend they can, and elevated simplicity.
Just take a glance at the space’s house-made ricotta plate, which Chef Alicia rightfully describes this season’s version as “spring on a plate, putting nearly everything we have from the garden.” English peas. Sugar snap peas. Fresh herbs—basil, mint, pea trills… All tossed in olive oil and citrus across house-made ricotta. Happily herbal and sumptuously savory, it is the kind of dish one would enjoy on the space’s patio, the slight hum of the neighborhood around them, enjoying what many view as the Californian life.
There are seared scallops with celery root steamed with butter in a rondeaux before being drizzled with a yuzu-butter combination made from the scallop drippings in the pan. Season cheese boards. Whole artichokes with “seasonal dippins,” the current ones being dijonnaise, a warm lemon butter, and an herb cashew dip. Classic mussels in a white wine broth. A play on carbonara featuring smoked eels. It’s a California bistro expressing its French side’s finest.
And don’t forget, obviously, the wine list at Buvons Wine Bar.
Curated from the neighboring shop that has become a staple in the Zaferia district, Buvons Wine Bar’s wine selection offers one of the finest arrays of natural wines in the city—from the funky to the more proper.
“Our house champagne comes from Jacques Lassaigne,” said Luna Sallusti, Director of service and events. “The Vignes des Montgueux—and we have this bottle because of the seven-year relationship Alicia has personally built with Jacques.” It is but one example of a nearly 20-bottle list that spans whites, reds, roses, and oranges.
To watch Alicia, on one end, and Luna, on the other, is to see the pair come to life: Adding a food component to Buvons feels like “the natural next step—it’s the culmination of Alicia’s 18 years in both the culinary and wine worlds,” Luna said. And with that, Alicia echoes: “By curating both our wine and food programs, I’m merging my passion for French natural wine with simple, thoughtful cuisine that complements it.”
And like Alicia building her relationship with wine makers and food lovers and Luna coming into the picture to offer her own expertise, Alicia’s story is also about resilience. It is something definitively worth telling.
For Buvons owner Alicia Kemper, the restaurant space has become something she can fully own.
Like many small business owners, Alicia has faced many uphill battles: Opening a natural wine bar might have brought in the younger drinkers—despite one’s opinions on natural wine, one thing is clear: it helped introduce wine to Gen Z, which is a win no matter how it is diced—but an increase in drinking awareness amongst younger people paired with everyone spending less money has proven frustrating if not outright taxing.
“The past few months have been a real test and, admittedly, there were some moments when I genuinely thought about walking away. But then this space,” Alicia said, gesturing to the adjacent space just south of Buvons, “was meant for more. I have always believed that. But I also needed something that makes it my own. So I began by hand-sanding the benches.”
This isn’t the only detail of the space that is hers. She painted the walls herself. Updated the artwork. She had her mom make the curtains. Made it more cozy. These subtleties? They can definitively provide a sense of ownership, both tangibly and psychologically. And with it, she has brought Long Beach—much like Nonna Mercato in Bixby Knolls—a much-needed, French-centric space worthy of the title of bistro.
Buvons Wine Bar is located at 1145 Loma Ave. and opened Wednesday through Sunday from 5PM to 11PM.
