In Long Beach, there is an embarrassment of riches in the form of Thai and Cambodian noodle shops. There are also neighborhood-believed pizza institutions in nearly every corner of town. Taco stands and shops also have recently saturated the city. But what we need around here is dim sum and more craft cocktails. At the soft-opened Midnight Oil in downtown Long Beach, serial bar and restaurant owner Leonard Chan is betting on the genius pairing of both inside one concept.
“Dim Sum was always a big deal when we went out with family,” Chan tells L.A. TACO. “My mother had 10 brothers and sisters, and my father had two siblings, meaning these gatherings sprawled across multiple tables in large Cantonese restaurants in Chinatown and the San Gabriel Valley.”
However, Chan didn't intentionally combine these two great eating and drinking pastimes into one business. He is open about the fact that Midnight Oil was supposed to be a Japanese izakaya concept until he found a colleague of his who was also working on opening an izakaya down the street.
He didn’t want to be that guy to open a similar concept, especially as someone with eight other restaurants and bars in Orange County who knows a thing or two about running successful hospitality businesses.
“I ended up grabbing drinks with Kevin Lee (bar lead at Tokyo Noir), and he let me know that Chef Yoya was working to have an omakase and izakaya right down the street on the 4th,” he says.“So the three of us got together soon after that. I learned more about Yoya's menu and then decided to flip to ‘The Apothecary’ [Chinese concept] for the main space you see now right then and there. My thought was that Yoya was going to knock it out of the park with his izakaya, so why not create a concept that would be synergistic and provide the community with more options?”
And just like that, out of respect for the community and obeying to the basic economic principles of supply and demand, Midnight Oil and its unique, evening-only dim sum menu were born.
Chan has roots in China and Taiwan. For Midnight Oil’s bar director, he hired partner Peter Ross, whose cocktail menu ranges from an intriguing matcha negroni variation with orange liqueur and gin to a bit more savory and experimental drinks like a “Fried Rice” cocktail with baijiu, rice punch, pineapple, basil eau di vie, and sesame oil. There’s also a highly orderable highball with Japanese whisky, absinthe, and green chartreuse.
The apothecary-inspired dim sum and cocktails concept is just the first of two other concepts within Midnight Oil. Another tiki speakeasy, inspired by Creature of the Black Lagoon, is also in the works next door from Chan. He’s also working on a bigger, more extravagant concept inspired by a Chinese “illicit gambling opium den,” he says.
Foodwise, the dim sum essentials are offered: steamed har gow (shrimp dumplings), sesame balls, steamed pork buns, shiu mai (pork and shrimp dumplings), and grilled lo bag go (Chinese grilled turnip cakes), in addition to a fried rice dish and other bar bites, like battered shishito peppers and even a crispy, savory boba shop-style popcorn chicken that David Kuo of Little Fatty consulted on.
Midnight Oil has been quietly soft-opening for a little over a month, as Chan took it over from the longtime downtown Long Beach favorite Rosemallows (owned by former Beerbelly and Love Hour proprietor Jimmy Han). The restaurant wasn’t necessarily ready to open while under heavy construction, so Chan kept the bar open to keep Rosemallow’s former staff employed.
“We tried desperately to open up as fast as we could to retain the old team from Rosemallows,” Chan says. “Big ups to them for being understanding as we scrambled to get things open. We are super thankful that they stuck around.”
The apothecary-inspired dim sum and cocktails concept is just the first of two other concepts within Midnight Oil. Another tiki speakeasy, inspired by Creature of the Black Lagoon, is also in the works next door from Chan. He’s also working on a bigger, more extravagant concept inspired by a Chinese “illicit gambling opium den,” he says.
“I am an admitted dive bar aficionado, but for our spots, we are looking to give our guests a slice of escapism—whether you had a rough week, just wanted to be transported somewhere else with friends and loved ones or maybe even make new ones,” he says.”
So far, the best-selling items for customers who have wandered in have been the “fried rice” cocktail and the popcorn chicken, two things Long Beach has been hard-pressed to find.
“Long Beach is definitely a different beast than O.C.,” Chan says. “But the biggest surprise has been the overwhelming amount of support we have had in such a short time of being open.”
Midnight Oil officially opens on Friday.
255 Long Beach Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90802
