Sarah Bennett

Occupying an eggplant purple shack in a parking lot surrounded by Mexican restaurants and a vacuum cleaner repair store, Sliced & Diced is a little schizophrenic food shack that could only have happened in Long Beach. Start with two kooky friends--one white, one Latina--who share a mutual love of comfort food. Add a two year-old catering company and pop-up sauce-and-spice shop that inspired the cooking friends to go brick-and-mortar. Throw in some tortas dipped in enchilada sauce (pambazo style) and roasted yams loaded with chili or smothered in brown sugar (Southern style) and you might begin to understand the layers of big flavors coming out of this tiny eatery.

More »

Sarah Bennett

Not to be confused with the East Coast convenience store chain of the same name, Long Beach's Wa Wa is a quick-n-dirty Chinese restaurant with cheap combo plates and made-to-order specialties that has dragged office zombies out of their Downtown cubicles for more than a decade.

The red-and-white tiled storefront is nestled between a ceramics studio and a postal service outlet on First Street in the Arts District, a neighborhood that was vastly different when Wa Wa opened in 2001. But in the time that it has taken for the block's empty retail spaces to fill with indie boutiques and the city to realize that the street makes a perfect venue for art and music events (see: Buskerfest 2012), the Cambodian-owned Chinese fast food joint hasn't changed much.

More »

Photos by Sarah Bennett

In today's fancy food world of duck fat fries and $15 casual chain burgers, a simple, cheap sandwich shop is a welcome respite. Hand-sliced meats, fresh vegetables and a baked-this-morning French roll are all that's needed to make this girl swoon, but On Broadway--located in an unassuming corner store that looks more like a donut shop than a full-scale sandwich joint--goes far beyond what $5 should afford.

Owned by a sweet Asian couple that seems to recognize everyone that walks in, On Broadway offers a massive selection of familiar and imaginative deli items that keeps the tiny ice-cream-and-chips-selling storefront from being just another a mediocre snack shack.

More »

Photos by Sarah Bennett

Yeah, it's not the best shot--but click on the jump to see yummy food

Authentic Trinidadian restaurants--hell, Trinidadian anything--are about as common in Long Beach as Uzbeki cafés are in Mission Viejo. Yes, the Venezuela-adjacent Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago has sandy beaches, nearly year-round sunshine and the occasional palm tree, but a kitchen that cooks up curried goat and fried shark still seems an unlikely match in a city where ethnic food more often means a taco stand or Thai delivery.


But with a love of hybrid dishes and a Persian/Indian-via-Trinidad owner willing to explain it all to newbies, one-month-old Callaloo on East Anaheim Street fits seamlessly into the city's Main Street of immigrant life.

More »

All photos by Sarah Bennett

"What came first: the chicken or the egg?" That question is irrelevant here. Far more pressing is which came first: the "World Famous" Reno Room or Coco Renos, its adjoining, Baja-style taco stand?

Many theories abound as to how a four-table storefront serving Mexican grub intertwined itself with a dive bar of Long Beach proportions. On the corner of Broadway and Redondo Avenue--straddling the border of nice Bluff Park and nicer Belmont Heights--is a two-headed haven for the vegan, meat-hungry and drunk alike.

More »

Sarah Bennett

Sorry to all the animal-lovers out there, but "vegetarian pho" is definitely an oxymoron, so much so that the very association of it with Long Beach's Number Nine has left many avoiding the place despite its convenient location on Fourth Street's Retro Row.

A recent lunch with a vegetarian brought me into the tiny café, and though it is hard to eat hipster-friendly pho when the authentic stuff is right up the street (try Pho Hong Phat on Anaheim Street), Number Nine has more to offer than veggie-friendly Viet options.

More »

Sarah Bennett

Just a few short months ago, Lona's City Limits Cantina was called Lona's Wardlow Station and it was a Long Beach dive bar of epic proportions. Warm beer was served in large, frozen glasses, karaoke songs were belted out with blue-collar bravado and a claw game in the corner (called "Lobster Zone") was filled with live lobsters, which often kept animal-rights protestors outside for days at a time.

But that's the way locals liked it and owner Lona Lee--an old-but-tough broad with decades of experience helping Long Beach get drunk--never seemed bothered by the things that kept all but her trusty regulars at bay. Then, the TV show Bar Rescue came in, fired her entire staff and proclaimed her Wardlow Station to be a "bottom of the barrel" joint.

A fresh coat of paint and one destroyed lobster machine later, Lona's (pronounced like "Lana") is a re-branded version of itself, still full of charm, but with significant upgrades that now only add to its mass appeal.

More »

Long Beach's Cooper Arms Building on the corner of Ocean Blvd. and Linden first opened in 1924. It featured some of the first apartment homes in the city and offered unobstructed views of the water and "amusement zones." Early purchasers were promised their money back thanks to revenue-producing shops and restaurants located on the ground floor.

Since the post-WWI boom that sparked massive Long Beach growth, however, downtown has drastically changed with new buildings built atop historic ones and businesses struggling to fight against empty storefronts and a high turnover rate. Even in the last few years, the whole area around the Cooper Arms has become anew; the only restaurants to survive the last decade have tablecloths.

In this environment, 16 year-old Modica's Deli is an anomaly.
More »

Sarah Bennett

For more than 50 years, Long Beach's Park Pantry has occupied the southeast corner of Broadway and Junipero, baking sugary breakfast pastries and serving classic diner eats. In that time, however, a lot around it has changed.

Many of the city's other American-food havens gave up on their aging clientele and closed doors (RIP Hof's at the Marina), Broadway lined itself with gay bars and became better known as "the Rainbow Corridor," and the restaurant's namesake park across the street is now home to one of the most important skate spots in greater LA.

Still, In a neighborhood where a crowded coffee shop is more likely than a greasy spoon, the Original Park Pantry remains relevant--not despite its old-school ways, but because of them.
More »

Sarah Bennett

Pasty Bakery in downtown Long Beach could use a little help. A liquor license, a spruced-up exterior, a marketing campaign that actually tells people it exists--anything to ensure the sweet Welsh man who freshly bakes pasties with his Salvadoran wife in the back-corner storefront of Pine Avenue's dead movie-theater complex get the customers they deserve.

The one thing Pasty Bakery doesn't need help with, thankfully, is the food, which includes a small selection of meat, veggie and fruit pies all priced so low you can buy lunch with spare change.
More »