The Filipino restaurant joint Inside Compound is the liveliest place in Lengthy Seaside

One in all Lengthy Seaside's most notable improvements is the Union restaurant situated in Compound, an artwork gallery and neighborhood house with sculptures, work and an out of doors backyard within the Zaferia neighborhood. Behind the range is Eugene Santiago, chef and founding father of Southeast Asian fusion pop-up Baryo. Union's menu is stuffed with playful dishes, like a riff on Spanish papas brava made with cassava, charred broccolini and radicchio. Bartender Stephanie Butchko's cocktail menu incorporates components like pandan, Sichuan pepper, lemongrass and tamarind.

“It seems just a little like Bestia when it first opened in Downtown LA,” says Luis Navarro of Navarro Hospitality Group, the restaurant's lead marketing consultant. “That is one thing that Lengthy Seaside deserves, in a spot the place it needs to be. We needs to be experimenting with house as a lot as we do with meals.” Navaro and his spouse and accomplice, Brenda Rivera, refined the Union idea from its preliminary phases to its first week of dinner service in January.

Portrait of bartender Stephanie Butchko and chef Eugene Santiago at Union in Long Beach. — Bartender Stephanie Butchko and chef Eugene Santiago.

Earlier than Santiago got here on board and opened Union, Compound and its on-site restaurant house confronted some uphill battles since opening in 2020. A pandemic-related momentary closure in 2021 introduced chef Jason Witzl of the situation of southern Italy Ellie's to cease the plans to maneuver the place. restaurant from Alamitos Seaside to Compound. Chef Arthur Gonzalez of Panxa Cocina additionally plans to take over the house earlier than his demise in 2022.

Santiago's culinary profession contains stints in Las Vegas below chef Kerry Simon at Carson Kitchen and on the Onerous Rock Resort & On line casino earlier than opening Baryo, which started popping up in Lengthy Seaside in 2016. Santiago melded Philippine consolation meals like pancit and kare kare with California. manufacturing and sensitivity. The pop-up gained him vital popularity of breaking with custom and jokes from those that needed a extra conventional strategy, particularly Asian aunties, Santiago says. Santiago brings this spirit of experimentation to the Union amid the rising recognition of Filipino meals in Southern California. “Whereas I used to be nonetheless working in eating places, my pop-ups have been actually an extension of me defending my psychological well being and my creativity,” he says. “Baryo went by means of many iterations. I used to be allowed some artistic freedom with it and that's in the end what impressed Union.”

Union will not be strictly a Filipino restaurant although. Their menu attracts inspiration from a large number of Asian cuisines and contains fried hen tucked into bao buns, steak served with a golden raisin chile crisp, a large-format pork kare kare and complete sea bass slathered in a nam sauce brilliant inexperienced jim.

Whole seabass with nam jim sauce, and pomegranate seeds at Union in Long Beach. — Branzino complete with nam jim sauce, pomegranate seeds.

A black bowl full of noodles and vegetables at Union in Long Beach. — Pancit with greens, leek, black garlic, butter, lemon, soy sauce.

Half roasted chicken with root vegetables at Union in Long Beach. — Half roasted hen with roots.

Fried chicken bao sandwiches at Union in Long Beach. — Fried hen bao buns.

Santiago was chosen by Compound founder Megan Scripps Tagliaferri to handle the restaurant; he thought his cross-cultural culinary strategy resonated properly with the locals. “He's such a pleasant and humble human being, and that's precisely what we want for this challenge,” she says. Tagliaferri, who’s the inheritor to the Scripps media fortune, tells Eater that she is conscious that the neighborhood surrounding Compound is underserved, with 60 to 90 p.c of youngsters within the neighborhood being meals insecure. She tells Eater that the Union workforce is “devoted to [reducing] meals disparity all through the neighborhood,” however declined to present specifics on the packages the restaurant will run to achieve that objective.

Though Tagliaferri thought-about the opening of Compound in Drake Park towards the japanese fringe of the LA River, the “artistic pulse” of Zaferia, because of its many studios, architectural companies and long-standing eating places comparable to Pho Hong Phat, Los Compadres and Good Time, it was proven. extra appropriate for his imaginative and prescient. “There are a whole lot of artists and meals areas on this space and meals and artwork are connectors – it's a approach for folks to take a seat, have interaction, educate,” says Tagliaferri.

Within the coming months, Union will proceed to solidify its menu, whereas, Tagliaferri says, Compound will introduce some initiatives centered on serving the neighborhood.

Union at Compound is situated at 1395 Coronado Avenue in Lengthy Seaside and is open Wednesday by means of Saturday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to eight p.m.