Paradise bridges Rainbow Row’s bar gap

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

Even if you’ve never eaten at Paradise, chances are you can probably describe the place—a brick box that stands out in mid-’90s Miami style, with checkered tiles and metal planters and neon lights pulling your eyes away from the road. The restaurant/bar needs to stand out, though, as it could otherwise get lost along the Mine Shaft, the Brit and the rest of Broadway’s Rainbow Row.

But Paradise doesn’t just rely on bright-light looks to draw in customers—its claim to restaurant and bar success is that it functions fully as both. In fact, Paradise spends as much time in the kitchen as it does tending bar, staffing both an executive chef and a pastry chef. It’s because of that focus on food that Paradise is able to carry itself beyond simple bar fare.

Paradise travels past those bar boundaries by offering the kind of casual American dining that allows for inspiration from every corner of the world—there’s everything from Moroccan-braised chicken to balsamic-marinated Portobello mushrooms. But as far as most of the starters go, things are straightforward. Here, there are fried green tomatoes and crab cakes, even boneless chicken wings. What the restaurant does to move beyond just the usual, however, is dress its dishes with that popular new-American style. The best example (and thus one of the most worthwhile dishes) is the plate of well-seared scallops, served on a pile of lentils and topped with a mascarpone cream sauce and a balsamic pomegranate reduction.

From there, the restaurant moves to typical pasta plates (pasta primavera, linguini with steamed clams) and a number of fish dishes, the latter of which is where Paradise does some of its best cooking. On the seafood side is grilled mahi mahi, a more-than-generous seafood paella and the standout of the bunch, pecan-crusted wahoo, which is given a quick sear and finished with a vanilla cognac cream sauce. The best and smartest part about the dish, though, is that the restaurant pairs it with sweet potatoes and seasonal vegetables, an excellent and light fit with the fish.

For those with even simpler tastes, Paradise also lets you build your own burger, a familiar concept bettered by the restaurant’s lean buffalo burger. But the accompanying fries are a surprising pleasure: thick-cut potatoes with the skin still intact and seasoned ever so lightly, leaving the measurable levels of sodium up to the diners. But where the fries spare the salt, the burgers tend to pick it up—so much so that even those desensitized to salt might be wary of retaining water. Or, in this case, one of Paradise’s 20 or so specialty martinis.

If you don’t feel like ending a night at Paradise, you can start one instead during the restaurant’s weekend brunch. There’s a glaring problem with the brunch, however: The menu is simply too small. For a place that deals easily in transcontinental tastes, the brunch menu should be more than a few plates of eggs and a burger. But looking past that, Paradise does turn out a good breakfast plate with its coconut cream French toast. Each slice is turned smooth by the coconut cream and sparked by bites of cinnamon, a combination that improves upon the usual late-morning conventions.

Despite Paradise’s success on the restaurant end, it isn’t divorced from its 21-and-over base. Grab dinner late enough and you’ll watch the place turn over to the bar, eating alongside karaoke, bingo or some of the venue’s piano-based lounge acts. But Paradise takes care to keep a balance between its two sides. And for that, the restaurant certainly won’t be forgotten in its corner lot. If anything, it becomes an even more important stop, neon and all.

PARADISE PIANO BAR 1800 E BROADWAY | LONG BEACH 90802 | 562.590.8773 | OPEN FOR DINNER MON-THURS 5-10PM | FRI-SUN 5PM-MIDNIGHT | WEEKEND BRUNCH 10AM-2PM | FOOD FOR TWO $30-50 | FULL BAR

Tags: american, broadway, Food, Long Beach, paradise, rainbow row, Restaurants