Every seasonal menu at Marlena feels less like a reset and more like another chapter in Chef Michael Flores’s ongoing conversation between California and the Mediterranean. Add to this owner Robert Smith’s incredibly astute, if not outright witty, knowledge of wines, and it is no wonder that three years in, it continues to be one of Long Beach’s finest restaurants.
Chef Michael has steadily refined an identity that is distinctly his own, particularly in the fluidity with which he flows between his stellar, previous spring menu and this one. It is one rooted in the produce, farms, and fisheries of the Golden State while borrowing techniques, flavors, and traditions from across the Mediterranean, particularly its eastern shores of the Levant. (The latter was particularly emphasized in a special he recently offered: a play on Turkish İçli pide where Josper grilled lamb heart was met with toum sumac onions, and lettuce.)
That philosophy remains front and center with Marlena’s new summer menu, where peaches, corn, tomatoes, squash, basil, fresh herbs and seafood dominate the offerings. Rather than trying to recreate the food of Italy, Spain, Greece, Lebanon, or Jordan outright, Chef Michael instead uses those culinary traditions as a framework through which California’s remarkable agricultural bounty can shine
And it’s a style that has become one of the defining characteristics of Marlena since it opened.
Marlena’s summer menu is filled with dishes that showcase exactly that approach.
If there is one constant in Chef Michael’s cooking, it is his devotion to the farmers’ markets. Long before ingredients ever reach the kitchen, the menu begins with what’s available that week. It is why so many Long Beach menus evolve naturally throughout the year, with spring giving way to summer, not through gimmicks but through the simple arrival of peaches, sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes, and squash blossoms.
The Bufala ricotta toast layers creamy, full-fat ricotta—Bufala ricotta borders on a beautifully smooth, pudding-like consistency with just this slight graininess from the milk proteins—over sourdough before topping it with market tomatoes, basil and condimenti—a deceptively simple dish that succeeds because every ingredient is allowed to speak for itself.
Likewise, the Spanish mackerel crudo pairs pristine fish with clarified melon juice alongside Weiser Farms melon—the undeniable king of melons in California—and some fennel with pickled shallot. It’s a plate that feels simultaneously Japanese in its restraint, Spanish in spirit, and unmistakably Californian in its reliance on peak melon and fennel.
Summer’s sweetest fruit arrives in the Regier Farms yellow peaches and burrata, where pistachio pesto, saba and basil complement rather than overpower the peaches. It is perhaps the menu’s clearest expression of Flores’s cooking philosophy: ingredients harvested at their peak need little embellishment.
Never skip a pizza…
That same seasonal thinking extends to the restaurant’s pizzas, which, since their inception, have joined Long Beach’s gorgeously growing list of fine pies.
The corn pizza layers Parmigiano-Reggiano and stracchino with a sweet corn-and-onion purée, squash blossoms, and basil into what feels like a culinary painting of the sun. Yellows, oranges, and bits of green against stark whites reflect summer warmly.
And the newly minted housemade sujuk pizza introduces the bold, spice-laden sausage found throughout the Levant. With bombs of fenugreek and cumin—with a bit of heat thanks to Aleppo pepper—in the wonderfully fatty sausage, it makes the perfect pairing for a simple, roasted tomato sauce. And it is all topped with the softer mozzarella and the punchier manchego, along with peperonata, reinforcing Marlena’s broader Mediterranean identity.
Chef Michael also tweaked one of the space’s most loved pies: his blue oyster mushroom pizza. He’s added a porcini mushroom cream sauce as its base, punching up the umami to new heights. With salty cuts thanks to fontina and Greek olives, and a hit of sweet with marjoram, it is an easy understanding to its popularity.
…or the pasta at Marlena in Long Beach.
A mentoree of Chef Evan Funke—it is not uncommon for Chef Michael to simply text Funke if he has a question, a culinary flex that is just outright badass—Marlena’s pasta program continues to evolve with the seasons as well.
Summer’s busiate—a masterful shape perfected by pasta chef Julianna Hernandez—is dressed in a deconstructed pesto Trapanese and caciocavallo.
Drawing inspiration from the Sicilian staple—instead of mortaring the almonds, he uses small slices of the nut, creating a texture to pesto Trapanese I’ve never experienced—the dish allows bright herbs and exceptional dairy to take center stage.
The corn agnolotti—similar to the fall menu staple that is his butternut squash agnolotti—follows the same logic in letting its main ingredient take the limelight. Folding sweet market corn together with Fresno chiles, amaretti cookies, and Parmigiano-Reggiano, it is a definitively sweet dish with subtle bits of spice and richness.
Fish and pork highlight Marlena’s new offerings from their Josper grill.
The larger entrées similarly avoid unnecessary complexity.
A 14-ounce Pachamama pork chop—the star of the Josper grill menu—arrives alongside a perfectly salty creamed spinach, with bits of burnt spring onion purée and chicharrón bits. It’s the Salt Lover’s dish of the proteins,
The seafood offerings, meanwhile, celebrate our privileged proximity to extraordinary fish.
An Alaskan halibut is paired with a classic Provençal sauce and potato pavé. Light and satisfying, given the starch, it is a bright contrast to the branzino. That fish—whole and butterflied in all its fishy glory—comes drenched in brown butter and layered with slivers of toybox squash and a dusting of breadcrumbs. Both Mediterranean compositions built around pristine ingredients rather than elaborate technique.
That restraint has become Marlena’s defining strength. Chef Michael understands that California cuisine has never been about strict regional authenticity; instead, it has always been about place. Living in one of the world’s great agricultural regions means drawing inspiration from everywhere while remaining loyal to what’s growing just beyond the restaurant’s doors.
The result is a menu that feels globally informed yet deeply local—a celebration of farmers markets, changing seasons and the remarkable diversity that has long defined California cooking. As Marlena continues to mature, it has become increasingly clear that Chef Michael isn’t simply making Mediterranean food in Long Beach. He is creating a distinctly Californian cuisine that just happens to speak fluently in the flavors of the Mediterranean and the Levant.
Marlena is located at 5854 E. Naples Plaza.
