Ah, the return of Chef Melissa Ortiz to Long Beach. On the surface, it’s a collaboration between herself and Chef Jose Molina. (He’s not only an apprentice of Chef Melissa but heads up the underrated food program at SALA’s Cuevita concept, where the collaboration is being hosted.) Taking over Jan. 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, and Feb. 1—Thursday through Sunday of the next weeks minus this upcoming Saturday—this marks her first return to a Long Beach kitchen in quite the time.
And for those that don’t know, Chef Melissa has been one of the most important forces shaping how Long Beach eats. Not through splashy press releases or trend chasing, but by consistently putting food on plates that ask the city to lean in a little closer, to trust her, and to try something unfamiliar. From her truly path-creating work at The Bamboo Club to her time at The Stache and later at her nothing-short-of-stellar tenure at Rose Park’s Pine Avenue location, Chef Melissa has built a reputation for cooking that’s thoughtful, deeply personal, and just adventurous enough to gently rewire local expectations.
“I just wanted to make food that went well with wine because I’ve fallen in love with wine,” Chef Melissa said. “That’s the food I love to eat when I drink crazy good wine. Lots of wine bars around the world have wild, good food with flavors that have rocked my soul—this is just an example of that.”
Welcome back, Chef—and, surely, you are in for a ride, Long Beach.
The wonderfully witty, quietly quirky, if not outright comfort-gone-avant-garde food of Chef Melissa Ortiz.
There has always been subtle sophistication in Chef Melissa’s food. Her tea-brined chicken sandwich that debuted when The Bamboo Club opened was and remains a stellar example of that: Steeping loose Thai black tea leaves from a local Cambodian market, Chef Melissa pressed the tea to concentrate it, and then threw in the chicken breasts with plenty of salt and ice. The next day, she toasted additional tea leaves and added them to buttermilk to brine the chicken yet again.
Or her work at Rose Park’s Pine Avenue location—an ahead-of-the-curve menu if there ever was one. Eschewing every single land protein—you read that right: there was not a single bit of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, duck, venison or goat to be found—and sticking solely to produce, fish, and seafood, Chef Melissa mixed the structure of her military background with the freedom of her travels and heart to create wonderfully SoCal-centric amalgamation of flavors and profiles that weren’t (and basically still aren’t) found at any other restaurant in the city.
An oceanic play on nduja: Typically a spreadable, spicy salume made from pork in the Calabria area of Southern Italy, Ortiz uses a seasonal fish—this round, it’s yellowtail; next up will be swordfish—that’s muddled into a cream base of Calabrian chiles and Plugrá butter.
And her simply named “clams and beans” dish? Nodding to her own Mexican heritage—with hints of Indian, Levantine, and Italian flavors—she used the bounciness of shrimp to imitate the tendon-y quality of sausage. The result was a shrimp chorizo melded with ancho and guajillo chiles and sitting in a red broth. That concoction was made with the scraps of fish from the nduja and the shells of the shrimp used for the chorizo, straddling the space between a pozole and cioppino. Lime. Lemongrass. The mighty guajillo. Fermented chile…
It was food that pushed Long Beach’s comfort—and this time, she is reminding us just how she did that.
Chef Melissa’s menu at SALA is no deviation from her love of tasty travel and savor scrutiny.
Drawing heavily on her love of traveling across the world—particularly to Portugal and Thailand—Chef Melissa has returned, in her own words, “more zen.” Chef Jose, a former apprentice of Chef Melissa, laughed genuinely when she turned to him and said, “I’m calmer in the kitchen, right?” This type of banter would have been unheard of back when Chef Melissa was running her previous kitchens. Admitting she “never found anything right,” she has spent the past several years breaking bread—and that means literally, philosophically, and culinarily.
The result is—like Chef Matthew Robert’s over at Alder & Sage, whose mantra has been a departure from ego after steamrolling through kitchens in his professional beginnings—a chef making food without the immediate concern of success. And with it, reminds us she is anything but ready to make people feel immediately comfortable.
Clearly, the headcheese katsu sandwich stands out. Yes, you read that right. A pig’s head boiled to the point of disintegration. Then cobbled back together in a terrine mold for the most gelatinous, collagen-filled Frankenstein-gone-foodie assembly of edible art you’ve yet seen. Then breaded and fried.
It’s a wonderfully gross excess of a sandwich in all the right ways. Challenging texturally, where the viscid and gummy meet the buttery and creamy, thanks to grilled brioche from Hey Brother Baker and a house slaw. A wild amalgamation of flavors where lemongrass and bay leaves meet fish sauce and garlic, all cut with slightly sweet, lightly pickled cucumbers.
And it doesn’t stop there…
There’s a pappardelle dish, which seems pedestrian enough. But it is bathed in a shrimp-head-meets-bottarga concoction. Roasted whole shrimp are cooked with an array of Thai goodness—ginger, garlic, lemongrass, Thai chiles, lime leaves—and tomato paste, simmered for three hours and strained. All before it is blasted with fish sauce and lime zest. Once it is topped with tuna tartare, it will easily be the most intense, umami-oceanic bomb you’ve had in a while.
“I actually made this in Thailand because I was craving pasta really bad when I was there,” Chef Melissa said. “So I went to the local market and, honestly, just decided to use their ingredients. And it just worked in the best way. It’s definitely an intense umami bomb.”
A full look into the offerings from Chef Melissa Ortiz’s collaboration with Cuevita’s Chef Jose Molina.
For lovers of umami and oceanic leanings, the menu beautifully ranges from approachable to outright mind-boggling in terms of textural complexity. Crab shells stuffed with the previous homeowner’s meat, egg, and pickled mustard greens… A gorgeous sunflower oil—the unrefined real stuff from Georgia’s Kakheti region—drizzled atop labneh… Stuffed yellow chiles, tempura-d a la chile relleno style, stuffed with a potato puree and sat atop mint chutney…
And that headcheese and pappardelle, of course.
Labneh: Kakhetian oil | Sicilian olives | Hey Brother Baker focaccia
Portuguese sardines: Sourdough | tomatoes | Thai chili
Rock crab recheada: Kewpie | soft egg | pickled brassicas
Burrata: Salsa macha | honey | Hey Brother Baker focaccia
Crispy peppers: Tempura | potato | Mint chutney
Kofta: Beef | Pork | Madras curry mole
Headcheese katsu: Pork terrine | Slaw | Buttered bread
Pasta with shellfish sauce: Tuna tartare | bottarga
Ribeye: French onion tapenade | beef
Chocolate salami: Georgian dried persimmons | vermouth | figs | Iberia cookies
The need to celebrate challenge and eschew mediocrity in the Long Beach food scene.
Long Beach is a city that loves comfort, tradition, and familiar flavors—and Chef Melissa, in a sense, respects that. But she also challenges it.
Her menus often feel like conversations between California’s own strange, beautiful abundance and the rest of the world. She has an obvious reverence for seafood, treating it not as a luxury flex but as a storytelling medium, across all its expressions. Bright. Briny. Raw. Fermented. Cured. And, yes, sometimes funky. Sometimes outright delicate. She leans into the esoteric—the herbs you can’t quite pin, the unexpected tang, the sauces that linger in your memory longer than the dish itself. Her food doesn’t shout—though it can be audacious—but, rather, it nudges. And in doing so, it has helped expand the definition of “normal” on a Long Beach menu.
In a city still defining its culinary identity—though, if 2025 proved anything, it is nearing it with strength and boldness—Chef Melissa had helped carve out space for something deeper than trend or hype. Or, as she puts it, “the really fucking tiring rat race.” She’s shown that Long Beach diners are more adventurous than they’re often given credit for. And that a neighborhood restaurant can be a place for discovery, not just familiarity. Her legacy isn’t just the dishes she’s cooked, but the palates she’s shaped—and the chefs who now feel empowered to push this city forward, one curious plate at a time.
Chef Melissa Ortiz’s collaboration pop-up with Chef José Molina takes place on Jan. 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, and Feb. 1 at SALA’s Cuevita concept, located at 3853 Atlantic Ave. Cuevita operates Thursday from 5PM to 9PM; Friday and Saturday from 5PM to 10PM; and Sunday from 4PM to 8PM.
