The Attic’s $55 Southern Nights returns—and offers Long Beach a reason to go out

There is something deeply welcoming about a restaurant giving you a reason to say yes to dinner. Yes to gathering a few friends or a date for two. Sure to letting someone else handle the cooking. And certainly to an evening that feels considered and generous, with a price you know before you sit down.

That is the appeal of Southern Nights. It’s the returning prix fixe series from The Attic’s team, led by Chef Cameron Slaugh and General Manager Iano Dovi. At $55, the Fridays-and-Saturdays-only October menu moves through four courses, beginning with snacks for the table and ending with a choice of supper. It gives Chef Cameron room to explore the season while giving diners something equally valuable: a clear invitation to participate.

For a Long Beach restaurant approaching 15 years of service, that invitation carries weight. Southern Nights offers a compelling picture of what a neighborhood institution can become when it keeps finding new ways to feed the people around it.

attic southern nights 2026 long beach — The shared starters included with The Attic’s Southern Nights menu. Photo by Brian Addison.

The food of Southern nights: hospitality with autumn at the table

The October menu begins with a shared array of starters, including one of the best dishes to come out of the series: a sweet corn custard topped with caviar. That wonder of an offering is paired with buttered radishes dipped in Old Bay seasoning and oysters topped with a Concord grape granita. Even on paper, the opening establishes the evening’s range: familiar ingredients and a little luxury mixed with humbleness.

Diners then choose between an end-of-the-season tomato salad with bacon and herb vinegar, or a fresh cheese offering with poached quince, walnut oil, and charred escarole. One holds on to the last of tomato season; the other turns toward fruit, nuttiness, and the bitterness of greens.

The “Inter” course offers a choice of crispy octopus with green apple slaw and sweet potato mash—a nod to one of Chef Cameron’s inaugural dishes when he took over the kitchen in 2020. Or you can opt for one of the best autumn dishes in town that doesn’t feel trite: roasted pumpkin with cranberry, sumac, and pipes of chanterelle mousse that give off a fois gras-like vibe. The octopus pairing sets fruit and sweet potato against the sausage’s savory presence.

And for the mains…

Supper brings a damn near perfect chicken ballotine—a line of whipped chicken liver and meat reassembled before being wrapped in chicken skin—with black trumpet mushrooms, wilted chard, and roasted garlic.

Or, if you’re feeling like you’ve had enough meat, there is a dreamy bowl of cracked farro. Layered with an array of wild mushrooms, that aforementioned chanterelle mousse, a hint of sherry, and plenty of bright, almost yogurt-like tartness. It’s a savory lover’s reverie of a dish.

For Chef Cameron Slaugh, food is always about community—which is precisely what Southern Nights is about.

Since the end of the pandemic, there’s been more and more discussion about costs in the hospitality industry on each side of the restaurateur-patron aisle. It was a choice topic when Southern Nights launched in 2024 and remains one today: In a world that birthed $100 bagels and $85 calzones, who food is for becomes crucial for those who can’t consistently afford the seemingly endless uptick in the cost of eating out.

Some are moving away from the luxurious and focusing on what’s valuable: Chef Jason Witzl’s new concept, Gigi’s, is “not going for a Michelin star but going for a pot pie.” Chef Ulises Pineda-Alfaro of El Barrio has long offered his seven-days-a-week “Recession Menu,” along with an all-you-can-eat taco night every Wednesday for $25.

casual long beach restaurants challenges 2026 the attic — The Attic, one of Long Beach’s staples in Belmont Heights, has entirely altered its approach to hospitality, wine, and food over the past five years. Photo by Brian Addison.

For Chef Cameron Slaugh, it isn’t just about the value but the expereince.

“I think there’s value in more than just, well, value,” Chef Cameron told me when Southern Nights debuted. “I’ve long grown up with food as an experience, where you sit at a table for hours as tray after tray of dishes are brought out. And while I can’t perfectly mimic what I experienced in my home growing up in a restaurant, I can certainly create an experience for people that also happens to be valuable.”

Even more, the patrons can tailor the experience through various upgrades. Want steak frites instead of one of the other two options? No problem; it will cost you $15. Want an additional item? They’ll happily oblige if you are willing to pay. Ultimately, with or without the upgrades, one thing remains clear: Southern Nights at The Attic is one of Long Beach’s highest-quality experiences for its cost.