Champion.

The Evening

Three rounds. Three new menus. One room deciding.

On Monday, September 14, at Partake Collective in Downtown Long Beach, the diners in the room cast the final votes of the 2026 Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe. When they were counted, Executive Chef Danny Le of Chez Bacchus had won.

The Grand Prix Fixe is not judged by a panel. Eight Long Beach chefs are seeded into a bracket; two cook head-to-head each evening, three courses apiece, served side by side to the same table of guests. Those guests score each plate on presentation, taste, storytelling, and cohesion, and the chef who wins the room advances — with an entirely new menu required for the next round.

Chef Danny cooked three times. He won his opening round on August 25 against Chef Eduardo Chang of Sushi Nikkei, a menu Longbeachize described as “California-driven cooking … a tight progression from the sea to a richly braised centerpiece.” He won the semifinal on September 8 against Chef Jessie Franco of Zuzu’s Petals, in what the same writer called the tightest battle of the competition. And on September 14, in a sold-out finale opposite Chef Jordan Domingo of Slao, under the round’s theme of Seminal — the menu a chef would call their own — he won the room a third time, with the highest diner score of the evening.

We are quietly proud of this one for the same reason we are proud of the People’s Choice award from 2025: it was decided by people who sat down, ate, and said what they thought. There is no better jury for a cook.

With Thanks

To the people who made the evening.

To Brian Addison and Samuel Cornejo of Longbeachize, who built the Grand Prix Fixe and wrote every round of it. To Partake Collective, whose kitchen hosted all seven dinners. To the seven other chefs in the bracket — the competition was as strong as the city’s dining has become. And to the guests who bought a seat, tasted six plates, and voted with care: thank you.