There are plenty of things Long Beach’s food scene still needs to figure out. We could start with our near-total absence of proper dim sum. Or the fact that Ethiopian food simply does not exist within city limits. But the most painful gap—the one that hits hardest when you’re buzzed, hungry, and staring down a ride home—is this: we do not eat late.
And that’s not something you fix with a single restaurant opening. That’s cultural. That’s systemic.
Sure, Christy Caldwell holds it down at The Ordinarie, serving much-needed late-night grilled cheese and pot pie bites to the small, loyal crew willing to push past midnight. And yes, the Pike Bar’s kitchen stays open until midnight. And if you find yourself wandering Retro Row after dark, Hole Mole will always be there for you, dependable as ever. The Good Bar deserves real credit too—its menu is wildly underrated, especially for vegans looking to soak up a few beers—though the crowd can sometimes feel like its own endurance sport.
But broadly speaking? By 11PM, Long Beach tucks itself in. And then there’s The Stache.
Chef Melissa Ortiz makes the late-night bar menu Long Beach has long deserved.
Enter Chef Melissa Ortiz—the same chef who quietly reshaped expectations at the Bamboo Club with one of the most exciting menus the city had seen in years—now posted up inside our favorite classy dive, cooking what she casually describes as “straight-up good bar food.”
It started as a pop-up. Then graduated into something more permanent when she took over the former La Frida space next door (a restaurant that never quite found its footing before fading out and is soon to become something known as Sideburns). The room is still bare bones—papered windows, utilitarian energy—but inside, something important is happening. Chef Melissa has begun using the space for what it was always intended for—food—but is walking it over to Stache.
Three weeks in, she already has a following.
How The Stache bar’s food program has already built a following.
On a random Tuesday at 6PM, the place was buzzing. People were lining up for her $1 tacos. Yes. One dollar. In 2019. In Long Beach. On a Taco Tuesday.
And these aren’t sad, little afterthought tacos. They’re proper. Shreds of spicy pork marinated overnight in arbol, pasilla, and other chiles, or a deeply savory cauliflower-mushroom mix, tucked into tiny but mighty tortillas. Ask for the hot sauce. Then ask again.
And then there are the fried cheese curds.
Actual Wisconsin curds. Lightly battered in a delicate, tempura-like beer batter. Crisp, airy, golden. Served with house-made jalapeño ranch that somehow manages to be both gentle and dangerous. They are absurdly addictive. They are perfect with a beer. They are, quite honestly, what bar food wants to be when it grows up.
But Chef Melissa didn’t stop there.
The food at The Stache bar? It’s actually good.
Her burger is a quiet flex: chuck, brisket, and short rib blended into something rich and unapologetically beefy, topped with cheddar, caramelized onions, and Thousand Island. No nonsense. No distractions. Just confidence. It’s $7 with fries and it puts plenty of pricier burgers around town to shame.
There’s also a proper Chicago dog: crackly-skinned sausage, tomato, onion, sport peppers, mustard, and a house-made neon-green relish that cuts through everything with just enough sweetness to keep you reaching back in.
And almost all of it—tacos, burger, dog—is available vegan too.
“This whole experience has been humbling,” Chef Melissa told me. “I never thought I’d be making this kind of food. Not in a pretentious way—it just wasn’t what I imagined. But I love that it means the food here can be consistent no matter who’s in the kitchen. It’s basic, but it’s tasty.”
And honestly? That’s the magic.
Chef Melissa Ortiz continues to spread her magic across Long Beach bars.
Because this food doesn’t fight The Stache’s identity. It completes it.
Since opening in 2012, The Stache has filled a very specific Long Beach niche: a bar that cared deeply about cocktails and beer but never took itself too seriously. Think Seven Grand or Noble Experiment, but with less ego and more neighborly chaos. In many ways, it helped create the lane that places like The Hawk would later thrive in.
Now it’s becoming something else too: one of the few reliable late-night kitchens in the city. Food currently runs from 6PM to midnight daily. Later this month, it stretches to 3AM Wednesday through Saturday.
Read that again. 3AM. In Long Beach.
Chef Melissa’s technique might technically be above chili-cheese fries and deep-fried everything. But watching a chef of her caliber channel that skill into something this approachable—this comforting, this affordable, this beer-friendly—is exactly the kind of high-meets-low magic our city needs more of. It’s not flashy. It’s not viral. It’s not plated for Instagram. It’s just really good food, served late, in a bar that already feels like home. And for Long Beach, that might be revolutionary.
The Stache is located at 941 E. Fourth St.
