“Long Beach residents and visitors alike are in for a treat as dozens of local restaurants and pop-ups will offer unique over-the-top Burgers and value-priced Burger Offers when the 4th annual Long Beach Burger Week returns July 21-28, 2024.”
“Organized by local non-profit Long Beach Food & Beverage, the organization felt that in addition to encouraging local and surrounding "foodies” to enjoy what the expanding Long Beach culinary community has to offer, events like Burger Week support the local economy and put “butts in seats” of our valued restaurants. Besides... it's summertime and who doesn’t love a good burger?”
“Featured Burgers are value-priced at $5, $10, $15, $20, plus some combos offered at $25. A few of the more unique over-the-top burger offers may include Burger Hand Pies, Pupusa Burgers, Cajun Lobster-topped, IPA Cheese-topped, Bleu Cheese Peppercorn-topped, Pastrami-topped, Chile Verde Burger, and many more unique options. Boasting Metro LA as a sponsor, many restaurants will also be promoting special offers when guests show their Metro LA TAP Card.”
One of the featured restaurants in LBBW is the new ISM Brewing located on The Promenade in Downtown Long Beach. Proprietor Ian McCall and Executive Chef Alfonso “Fonzy” De Zuniga join us to describe their initial Burger Week special, Mahalo Madness, which is a delicious, hand-held delight which takes inspiration from the ISM Culinary Team’s favorite Hawaiian / Japanese Burger spots.
Hi, I'm Chef Rudy Soremin, Princess Cruises head of culinary arts, and the menu maker for a catch by Rudy, that's me, come sell with us when I want the Alaskan king crab of Food News. I listened to our cold restaurant show on AM A30KLA radio. And welcome back, it is the SoCal restaurant show, and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon, right here on AM A30KLAA, the home of Angels Baseball 2024. It can also catch us on the AM A30 Angels app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show, kind of putting it all together. Do keep up with us on social media, on all the platforms, a lot of good information there that connects Saturdays, and as a matter of fact, we're about to talk about Long Beach Burger Week. And I bet if you go to either our Instagram or our Facebook feed right now, you might see a picture of one of the delicious burgers that is going to be available during that event. And we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Proteus and West Coast Prime Meats. We love food festivals here on the SoCal restaurant show, and we love specialty menu item weeks. And why? Well, it gives you the opportunity as a diner to see these restaurants at their very best because the only reason they are participating in these events is they want to bring in new potential guests or guests that have been to the restaurant before, but may not have been there in a while, give them a reason to come back. So you as the diner have all the advantages because the restaurants want to wow you. So Long Beach Burger Week is coming up. As a matter of fact, it is July 21st through 28th. And this has really dozens of Long Beach restaurants doing specialty burgers for that week priced at a value. Ian McCall of Ism Brewing is no stranger to the SoCal restaurant show. We followed his career for a couple of years and were delighted about a year ago when he went off on his own and established Ism Brewing in downtown Long Beach. And of course, he jumped into Long Beach Burger Week right away because he's got a great chef, Fonzie, who comes from actually a fine dining background but is having a lot of fun creating menu items for Ism Brewing. And Fonzie and his sous chef went to work and not only did they come up with one special burger for Long Beach Burger Week, but they came up with two. And that is background. It is a pleasure to welcome Ian Studio, both Ian McCall and Chef Fonzie back to the SoCal restaurant show. Gentlemen, good morning and thanks for bringing in libations. You know, it's about the time of morning where we could use a little something. Yeah, good morning, Andy. Thanks for having us. Really appreciate it. Ian, let's back up a little bit because Ism Brewing is in its infancy right now. And already the major awards for your beer are starting to roll in. Can you talk a little bit about your recent recognition because you did well at one of the most prestigious craft beer competitions in the United States? And you're not even a year old. Yeah, thank you very much, Andy. I appreciate the question. Yeah, so the every single year in the beer community, we hold two big competitions. There's the Great American Beer Festival, which is held in Denver, Colorado in the fall. And then the opposing beer, the opposing beer competition is the spring. And that's held in coordination with the craft brewers cup, or sorry, the craft brewers conference. And it's known as the World Beer Cup. At this last World Beer Cup in April, we were lucky enough to bring home two gold medals and one bronze medal. It was a really huge win for us. One of those gold medals being for our Western Standard Time, our West Coast IPA. And that's a huge win for any, for any brewer, let alone somebody who really focuses on West Coast IPAs like we do. Because that's a very competitive category. It is a very competitive category, 381 entries in that category. It was the second largest. Incredible. Now, you have a coffee-based beer that also won some recognition that's a favorite of mine. We got to mention that along the way, Ian. Yeah, absolutely. You are a huge fan of caffeine. That's C-A-L-F like the cow, caffeine. And in that beer, it's an American brown ale that we infused with coffee and vanilla. Shout out to Moongo Coffee. We're utilizing their coffee in that beer each and every batch. I love it. You know, spread the wealth locally. Now, Ian, you're smart enough, you know, given what your background is, that just to do a taproom these days without having a very serious food component is probably not a good idea. So, you knew the food element was going to be important, but you have some restaurants, other restaurants that are on the promenade where you are in Long Beach. And what you didn't want to do is duplicate what was already there. You wanted to create your own identity. So, you teamed up with Chef Fonzi. And Fonzi, when Ian came to you and kind of gave you the overall of what he was looking for, you know, what was his concept of the menu that they needed. Then you realized in terms of what he wanted to do. Because, of course, beer and pizza is the obvious combination. You have a pretty good pizza joint that's a couple store fronts away, no pizza. So, Chef Fonzi, take it away. Thank you. Thank you. Well, when Ian and I got introduced to each other, we talked about the menu. And obviously, like you said, pizza was the obvious thing for burgers like everybody does. So, I think with my background, I wanted to do something a little bit different just to showcase what we can do different in the community and cater to them as well just because even though my background is a little bit more unlike the Mexican and Latino, you know, influence, I try to do American food, Mexican, I see if it makes sense, instead of, you know, Americanized Mexican food. So, we take that, you know, in consideration to create a menu that was going to appeal to the public and that we can bring some crowd to not only enjoy the beer, but food as well. And Fonzi, so far, any surprises in terms of, you know, how the guests have reacted to any of your menu items, something that you particularly liked, but you weren't sure of, perhaps, that has been an overwhelming favorite, you tell us. Well, you know, we started out with the sandwiches and the try-dip smoked, you know, that's something that I'm really proud of. And everything seems to be working pretty well, you know, we introduced some tacos, we introduced the sandwiches, we introduced some chicken wings, which are really with winter right now, the chicken wings are taking off really well, as long as the sandwiches as well. And you created a sauce for the chicken wings, Chef Fonzi, because everybody's got chicken wings, and, you know, you definitely have to differentiate yourself. Yes. Well, we have three different ones, but the biggest one is called it "Totanka," and it creates that homage to the movie, you know, "Totanka," I mean "Bufalo," if it makes sense. So that's a Bufalo sauce with that little butter and brown sugar, just to tone it down a little bit, and it's so spicy but sweet at the same time. And you've recently started brunch, correct? We did, so we did launch brunch a few months ago. Unfortunately, we had to tone back on brunch, it was a lot of labor costs, and we didn't really see a return on it. Now, being said, one of our biggest items on that brunch menu was our chilequiles. Fonzi lovingly calls them the "chilequilers," and we actually made the decision to keep that on our menu full-time. We would love to bring back brunch in the future, and it's definitely still on the table as an option. I don't know if it's breaking news or not. Unfortunately, Michael's pizzeria is going out next door to us within the next week or two, and Ubuntu Cafe is coming in. They're going to be running a full breakfast, and my goal is that they are very successful and that we can kind of continue to keep that ball rolling with them and bring back brunch in the future. Well, you know, as you were explaining to me, and on my last visit, there's a whole kind of reorganization and redevelopment that's going on in downtown Long Beach. You have a very active business improvement district, and I think the light bulb has finally gone on because you are so well situated in the city of Long Beach that there should be a lot more foot traffic that's generated. And this is now kind of a work in progress, and hopefully you can ride that wave. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm very optimistic about what's happening in downtown Long Beach right now. We're definitely seeing some rebounding post-COVID. You know, one of the unfortunate repercussions of COVID is that so many of the office buildings downtown are still empty. You know, we're only seeing a 40, 45%. I'm sure somebody will correct me on this number, but it seems like a significantly lower percentage of our office buildings are still closed. And we just don't have, we don't have the lunch crowd. People who are working from home, they're not coming out for lunch because they got to work. And then there's not a whole lot of people coming in to work. So, lunch and brunch, I think they're taking a huge hit. Unless you're a dedicated breakfast spot, I think it's really hard, at least our experience is hard to build that clientele. Now, I think it's there for the future, just not at this moment in time for us. Now, you know, what you're saying is absolutely sensible. And, you know, the other thing is in terms of, excuse me, the office buildings, you know, still not having a great census for the offices where people are still coming in. Mondays are very light and Fridays are very light. So, you know, you got Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to work with and, you know, not so easy. And before we take our first break and pick up the conversation on the other side and talk about burgers because that's what we're here to do. Please give us your location on the promenade in Long Beach and also the website. Yeah, so you can find us in person, our brick and mortar and restaurant is on the promenade in downtown Long Beach. The address is 210 East 3rd Street. We are Sweet A. You can find free parking directly behind us in the loft parking structure and we do validate for three hours. More information on that can be found on our website, which is ismism.beer. Super simple, www.ism.beer. In your seven days, correct? We are open seven days a week. Yep. Monday through Sunday. We open at 11 o'clock every single day. Our kitchen goes till nine o'clock every single day. We might stay a little bit later on Fridays and Saturdays. Ladies and gentlemen, it is the team from Ism Brewing, one of the restaurants that's participating in the upcoming Long Beach Burger Week. We're going to talk burgers on the other side. It is the SoCal restaurant show. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. Please stay with us. (acoustic guitar music) (upbeat music)
