May 29, 2026 · Updated May 29, 2026
Long Beach enters beach season with a compact dining strip built for people who just came off the water or are heading back to it: beachfront cocktails and seafood at Five Ocean Bar and Grill, handmade loaves and good espresso along Park Avenue, and a craft brewery expected to open this fall.
Long Beach has always fed people differently than other Long Island beach towns. The city sits on a barrier island between the Atlantic and Reynolds Channel, its restaurant strip running along Park Avenue and the boardwalk rather than spreading across shopping centers and highway frontage roads. When the beach season opens in late May and the boardwalk fills with people burning off sunscreen and sea salt, the dining scene operates the way a compact beach city is supposed to: close tables, quick service, and menus built for people who just came off the water or are heading back to it.
Here are the spots worth knowing as Long Beach enters another summer.
Five Ocean Bar and Grill is the top recommendation for anyone who wants to eat and drink with the Atlantic in their field of vision. The restaurant operates a full bar alongside its menu, with outdoor seating facing the boardwalk and the ocean beyond. It is the kind of place where a late-afternoon beer stretches into dinner and nobody needs to explain why. Expect a line on weekend evenings in July and August; arriving before 5:30 p.m. or after 8 p.m. gives you better odds on a table without a wait. The menu runs toward American bar-and-grill standards with an emphasis on seafood, appropriate for a city that can see fishing boats from the waterfront.
Lost at Sea occupies a different register than Five Ocean: slightly removed from the beachfront noise, with a menu designed for people who want to sit down properly rather than watch the waves. The name fits a city that has always had one foot in the Atlantic, and the kitchen works with the ingredients that come naturally when you are a few miles from open water. It is a reliable dinner option for date nights, small gatherings, or anyone who has spent the day on the beach and wants something that requires more than a paper napkin.
Not every Long Beach meal needs to involve a bar. Blacksmith's Breads is a bakery and cafe that takes its product seriously: handmade loaves, pastries, and a breakfast-and-lunch menu built around what comes out of an actual oven. Long Beach has a morning crowd that runs and surfs before most of the island is awake, and Blacksmith's is positioned for them. Early hours, good coffee, and food you can hold in one hand on the way to the boardwalk. If you are staying in Long Beach for a week this summer, this is the kind of place you find on the first day and return to every morning after.
Gentle Brew Coffee fills the role that a neighborhood coffee shop is supposed to fill in a beach city: a place with good espresso, reliable drip, and an atmosphere that works whether you are reading at 7 a.m. or catching up on email between beach trips. Long Beach has developed a more deliberate coffee culture over the past several years as its year-round population has grown and expectations for well-made drinks have risen. Gentle Brew holds its own in that context and is the kind of spot that residents point to when explaining to visiting friends why Long Beach is a place people live rather than just visit.
Long Beach's city-operated beach concessions belong in any honest summer dining guide. The concession stands along the beach are functional, reasonably priced, and embedded in the experience of the boardwalk. Italian ices, corn dogs, cold drinks, and soft-serve are what most people are actually eating at 2 p.m. on a hot Saturday in July. The city manages the concession contracts and updates the lineup each season; the Long Beach city website posts beach concession information ahead of the season opening.
Bright Eye Beer Company has been working toward opening a brewery in Long Beach, with a target window of September or October 2026. That puts it outside the peak summer period, but close enough that visitors planning a fall return should note it. Long Beach has not previously had an operating craft brewery within the city, and a successful opening would add a gathering-place dimension to the dining strip that the city has been missing. Details on tap selections, food, and hours will emerge closer to opening; tracking the brewery on social media through the summer is the best way to stay current.
The rhythm of eating here runs differently from eating in a regular suburb. Breakfast happens early because the beach crowd gets an early start. Lunch is often handled at the boardwalk concession stand. Dinner arrives late because nobody wants to leave the water while there is still sunlight. The restaurants that do well in Long Beach understand this and staff accordingly.
If you are arriving Friday evening from the city after work, expect dinner at most restaurants to be at capacity between 7 and 9 p.m. Call ahead or book online even for places that do not require reservations in the off-season. Summer in Long Beach changes the calculus.
The Park Avenue corridor is the practical anchor for dining. The avenue runs parallel to the beach a few blocks inland, and the restaurants cluster here and in the streets immediately adjacent, walkable from both the boardwalk and the Long Beach Rail Road station. You can arrive by train from Penn Station, eat at two or three places, and be back on the platform in time for the last comfortable westbound train of the evening.
Long Beach's position on a barrier island means fresh seafood should feature in any honest guide to eating here. The city is not far from the Freeport Nautical Mile, where fishing boats unload catches and several wholesale and retail operations sell direct. The restaurants that source from those connections can offer clams, fluke, striped bass, and other species that arrived the same morning. The best places can answer the question of what came in that day; it is worth asking. The Long Beach farmers market, which operates on weekends through the summer season, sometimes includes local seafood vendors alongside produce and prepared foods.
Long Beach has a year-round population of around 35,000 that supports its restaurant strip through the winter months when the summer visitors are gone. That community is what keeps places like Gentle Brew and Blacksmith's operating at a level where the quality stays consistent rather than declining to meet summer-crowd volume demands. The restaurants that survive the off-season are usually the ones worth visiting in July. When you find a place in Long Beach that is clearly beloved by the people who live there year-round, you have found the better half of the summer dining options.
Locals who have lived in Long Beach for years will tell you the dining scene has improved meaningfully over the past decade. The deliberate coffee culture is newer; so is the more serious approach to fresh ingredients at several of the sit-down restaurants. Long Beach has attracted residents who moved from Brooklyn and other parts of the city looking for beach access without sacrificing the things that make an urban neighborhood livable, and the food has followed that demographic. The result is a dining strip that earns a trip on its own, not just as an afterthought to a beach day.
