The Bungalow Kitchen Is Back — and Brent Bolthouse Is Reinventing It Again

The Bungalow Kitchen is back.

After being closed for roughly six months, the waterfront Long Beach restaurant has reopened at 2ND & PCH with a completely refreshed culinary direction, a new executive chef and a renewed focus on being a neighborhood restaurant.

And the reopening is getting some serious star power.

John Stamos and Caitlin Stamos, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson and nightlife and hospitality veteran Brent Bolthouse will come together Sept. 24 for a special one-night charity event at The Bungalow Kitchen, with proceeds benefiting the Mayor's Fund for Long Beach and its work supporting children, youth and families throughout the city.

For a restaurant known for bringing people together, it's a fitting way to celebrate its return.

“The return of The Bungalow Kitchen is a great moment for Long Beach, and I’m especially proud that we’re celebrating its return by giving back to local families,” said Mayor Rex Richardson. “Proceeds from this event will support the Mayor’s Fund for Long Beach and its Early Learning Hub, helping connect young children and their families to the resources they need to thrive. It’s a great example of how our community can come together to celebrate while making a meaningful difference.”

The event runs from 7 to 10 p.m. and will feature artisan cocktails and locally inspired seasonal bites. Tickets are $75 per person, with ticket proceeds benefiting the Mayor's Fund for Long Beach.

While Stamos may be the name that gets attention, the biggest change inside The Bungalow Kitchen is happening in the kitchen itself.

A New Chef, A New Menu

Longtime Long Beach chef Eric Samaniego is taking the reins as executive chef, bringing more than a decade of experience at Michael's on Naples to the newly reopened restaurant.

Samaniego's new menu combines seasonal California ingredients with French technique and Italian influence, with an emphasis on handmade cooking and ingredients sourced from local farms. The restaurant says it is also focusing on organic and regeneratively sourced ingredients and preparing its dishes without seed oils.

Among the dishes making their debut are Saffron Cavatelli with Maine lobster, Calabrian chili, cream and cherry tomatoes; Grilled Spanish Octopus with cannellini beans and romesco sauce; Steak Frites; The Bungalow Burger; Farmers Market Salad; Lasagna with braised beef short rib; Spaghetti Carbonara; Diver Scallops; and more.

The approach is intended to be elevated without becoming overly formal.

"The opportunity to build this menu from the ground up was incredibly exciting," said Chef Eric Samaniego. "After years of focusing primarily on Italian regional cooking, this gave me the freedom to bring together everything I've learned throughout my career, from French technique to California seasonality, into one restaurant that reflects the way people want to eat today."

Before joining The Bungalow Kitchen, Samaniego spent more than 10 years at Michael's on Naples, where he developed extensive knowledge of Italy's 21 culinary regions. His career has also included Little Sparrow Café, French brasserie Komsa and working alongside acclaimed chef Charlie Trotter.

Most recently, he served as Culinary Experience Chef for Fisher & Paykel before returning to restaurant cooking.

The Bungalow Kitchen Is Back to Its Roots

The restaurant's reopening is also a return to its roots as a neighborhood dining destination.

The waterfront patio is at the center of the experience, while the indoor lounge serves the full dinner menu along with elevated bar bites.

A newly designated private dining space provides an option for intimate celebrations, business dinners and special occasions, while the popular Game Room and its signature pool table remain part of the restaurant.

The bar-bites menu gives guests plenty of options for a more casual visit, including Italian olives, arancini, white cheddar madeleines, hamachi crudo, steak tartare, mortadella skewers, moules frites, The Bungalow Burger and several sourdough pizzas.

For dessert, there's vanilla pot de crème, chocolate tart, profiteroles and seasonal fruit crumble.

"The Bungalow Kitchen has always been about bringing people together," said Bolthouse, owner of The Bungalow Hospitality Group. "We're incredibly proud to reopen with a renewed focus on great food, genuine hospitality and creating a place the Long Beach community can enjoy any night of the week. Chef Eric shares that vision completely, and we can't wait to welcome everyone back."

Why The Bungalow Kitchen Was Closed

The reopening follows a roughly six-month closure that began in early spring after the restaurant faced scrutiny from the city of Long Beach over its operations.

According to reporting by the Long Beach Post, the city issued warnings before the subsequent shutdown, with officials raising concerns that the venue was operating outside the permitted scope of a restaurant as it increasingly functioned as a late-night club environment.

Bolthouse disputed the characterization of the venue as a nightclub.

"It was never a club," he told the Long Beach Press-Telegram. "We were always a bar lounge."

But Bolthouse also said the company ultimately decided that the lounge direction wasn't where it wanted to take the business.

"We made a conscious choice," Bolthouse added, "that (the lounge) wasn't the direction we wanted to go as a company."

The six-month pause gave Bolthouse an opportunity to rethink the restaurant, bring in Samaniego and completely overhaul the menu and business model.

Brent Bolthouse Has Been Creating LA Experiences for Decades

If anyone knows how to create a place where people want to gather, it's Bolthouse.

The nightlife impresario and businessman has spent decades creating some of Los Angeles' most recognizable entertainment and hospitality experiences.

Earlier in his career, Bolthouse promoted such hot spots as the Roxbury, the Viper Room and House of Blues. During his partnership with Sam Nazarian's SBE, he was involved with Area, the highly exclusive large-scale Hollywood nightclub, and Hyde Lounge, a major player in the celebrity-heavy VIP nightlife and bottle-service culture of mid-2000s Los Angeles.

He later opened The Bungalow in Santa Monica, which became a fixture for more than a decade, and created Neon Carnival, the massive Coachella after-party that became an event in its own right.

The Long Road Back

The Long Beach location has had several lives.

The original partnership with acclaimed chef Michael Mina dates back to 2018, when Mina and Bolthouse began developing a restaurant concept for the future 2ND & PCH development.

The pandemic ultimately helped reshape the idea, and the restaurant opened in March 2021 as The Bungalow Kitchen by Michael Mina, with Mina overseeing the menu.

Mina's partnership with the Long Beach location ended in 2023, after which Bolthouse moved the venue toward a bar-and-lounge concept.

Now, the restaurant has come full circle — but with a different chef and a different culinary vision.

And this time, the focus is on making The Bungalow Kitchen a place Long Beach residents can return to again and again.

The reopening event with John and Caitlin Stamos and Mayor Richardson on Sept. 24 adds a little Hollywood glamour to the occasion, but the restaurant's new identity is firmly rooted in Long Beach: local ingredients, a local chef, a waterfront setting and a fundraiser supporting local families.

The Bungalow Kitchen is open Wednesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to midnight and Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m. Weekend brunch is planned for a later date, along with wine dinners, happy hour programming and seasonal culinary events.