{"id":820,"date":"2018-04-16T13:28:39","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T20:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longbeachize.com\/?p=10571"},"modified":"2019-08-08T13:05:04","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T20:05:04","slug":"ellies-new-spring-menu-proves-offer-best-food-long-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/food\/ellies-new-spring-menu-proves-offer-best-food-long-beach","title":{"rendered":"Ellie’s New Spring Menu Proves (Once Again) Why They Offer Some of the Best Food in Long Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Long Beach and food?\u00a0Click here to scroll through the archives of our foodie updates.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

****<\/p>\n

Photos by Brian Addison. Above: Ellie’s version of <\/em>mandilli de saea al pesto\u00a0<\/i>with braised lamb neck and pine nuts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chef Jason Witzl has achieved something of the impossible: the enclave of residents that occupy Naples are stepping out of their insular existence and traveling\u2014gasp!\u2014<\/em>toward the edge of Alamitos Beach, just before it becomes Downtown Long Beach.<\/p>\n

No longer relegating themselves to Chianina or Michael’s, women draped in jewels and men with stiff collars and personalities look out of place in the cutely cramped space that is Ellie’s. They offer eyebrow-raising, backhanded linguistic jabs paired with hand-on-the-shoulder, puckered-lips lines of prestige: “The food here is incredibly thrifty, Sandra\u2014just… Just so cheap\u00a0<\/em>and I don’t know why!” I heard one lady exclaim as she perused Witzl’s offerings that span a $50 New York strip to a $5 grilled bread’n’pork butter, one of the city’s best dishes. This was shortly followed by, “Everyone <\/em>in Naples\u00a0is talking about you, Jason,” once the chef appeared at the table to thank them for their patronage.<\/p>\n

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Above: Garganelli all’Amatriciana.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This internal dichotomy\u2014a neighborhood-y restaurant, offering takes on immigrant Italian food side-by-side with the city’s most affluent\u2014is a testament to not just the quality of food but the reality that the wealthy have little clue of what fantastic, contemporary dining is anymore.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most hilarious is the fact that Witzl himself is, by no means, pretentious, arrogant, or excessive.<\/p>\n

He is a self-described “condiment whore,” a “saucy bitch” who loves to lather things in layers of flavor. If it’s something as simple as a sandwich, he is unafraid to douse the wall of carbs with aioli and ground mustard and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and whatever edible lotion he can find.<\/p>\n

This lovable characteristic\u2014the one which, when seen in a friend, makes you grin after the server asks what kind of sauce your friend would like with their dish and they say, “Every one you have, please”\u2014plays out in the cuisine of Witzl.<\/p>\n

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Above: burrata and roasted heirloom tomatoes with black garlic.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He pipes this characteristic out through the flavorful, salty’n’sweet dollops of aged black garlic, created through a patient process that pours humidity and salt into garlic bulbs over the course of weeks. Its inky, dark body, once matured, is placed next to the creamy, white brilliance of burrata and colorful array of roasted heirloom tomatoes.<\/p>\n

This personality trait is in the hidden, hefty underlay of Green Goddess dressing that sits underneath a patch of red leaves’n’cress and shaved baby squash, tucked between sliced grapes and snap peas. The secret pool of sauce offers up layers of anchovy paste and egg yolk melded seamlessly with avocado and lemon\u2014a simultaneous, concurring ode to both Sicily and California.<\/p>\n

This drippy personality trait is soaked and rendered in his vegetarian-friendly, creamy sauce of melted leeks and ch\u00e8vre, creating a simultaneously sweet, caramelized onion-like dressing cut with a sharp tartness for his masterfully created\u00a0agnolotti\u00a0<\/em>dish.<\/p>\n

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Above: agnolotti with melted leeks and ch\u00e8vre.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This admirable obsession with sauce becomes tangible in Witzl’s delicate, if not outright artful take on\u00a0mandilli de saea al pesto,\u00a0<\/em>a typically minimalist dish that is also a Genoese classic.\u00a0Dubbed the “silk handkerchiefs” of pasta, Witzl and his crew cover the bases\u2014they roll out delicate sheets of pasta and create a pesto to go along with what tradition calls for\u2014but amps it up with shavings of raw squash, pine nut droppings to bring out the subtle nuttiness of his pesto, and a braised lamb neck that leaves the gaminess behind in favor of succulent, almost creamy bits of meat.<\/p>\n

Of course, Witzl’s love and talent for sauces isn’t his sole trick.<\/p>\n

As with his mandilli<\/em>‘s lamb neck, Witzl’s talent for handling meat in all its forms\u2014steaks, ground, sliced\u2014and equal talent for preparing them\u2014braised, grilled, or otherwise\u2014makes his sauces, garnishes, and accoutrements stand out colorfully and brightly on the palate.<\/p>\n

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Above: red leaf lettuce & cress salad with Green Goddess dressing, shaved baby squash, grapes, and snap peas.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Take his take on the Amatriciana red sauce, the classic Roman staple that is made with wonderfully fatty, uncured pancetta and tomatoes. Eschewing bucatini<\/em>\u2014the delicately-made long tube pasta typically served with the sauce\u2014Witzle aims for color thanks to a veggie-based, hallow garganelli<\/em>. The meat comes in\u00a0 Witzl offers up more pig flavor by way of his pork\u00a0polpette,\u00a0<\/em>a wonderfully meaty, sausage-like ball of wonder that makes it the city’s best meatball.<\/p>\n

In other words, there are few in Long Beach putting this type of thought, amusement, and curiosity into their dishes\u2014and Long Beach’s growing culinary scene deserves nothing less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Love Long Beach and food?\u00a0Click here to scroll through the archives of our foodie updates. **** Photos by Brian Addison. Above: Ellie’s version of mandilli de saea al pesto\u00a0with braised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":65720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18,455,376],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2691],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","tag-alamitos-beach","tag-ellies","tag-long-beach-foodie-update","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}