A small room, a few good hands.
Chez Bacchus is a room shaped by the people who run it. The wine program is a sommelier’s curation, not a distributor’s list. The kitchen is a chef’s composition, not a generic playbook. The room is small enough that you will likely see all three of us in a single evening.
John Hansen
John Hansen is the Proprietor of Chez Bacchus and an Advanced Sommelier certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas — one of roughly three to four hundred such certifications granted in the United States. He passed the Advanced Sommelier exam in 2005; verifiable in the Court’s public sommelier directory.
At Chez Bacchus, John’s daily work is the wine program — sixty-plus selections across fifteen-plus regions, every wine available by the glass and the carafe, and a corkage policy that waives the fee when matched. He chooses producers with a sense of place: Domaine Fouassier in Sancerre, Vineyard 29 in Napa, Domaine Laroche in Chablis, Castelletto in Barolo, Le Grand Bouqueteau in Chinon. The Hungarian Furmint and the Juránçon Sec on the list are there because they should be on more lists than they are.
John can usually be found in the dining room. The conversation between a sommelier and a guest about what to pour next is, in his view, the part of the meal that often goes underexamined — so he attends to it personally.
Danny Le
Danny Le is the Executive Chef of Chez Bacchus. He came to the restaurant by way of Napa Rose at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel — one of the few AAA Five-Diamond restaurants in California — where he spent years working in a kitchen that took seasonal sourcing seriously and treated each plate as composition rather than catalog.
At Chez Bacchus, Chef Danny composes a California cuisine drawn through French technique and a number of global accents (Asian most prominently — usually as a subtle riff rather than a fusion). He sources from local farm partners, including Black Sheep Farms in Long Beach. The dinner menu turns over with the season; the Chef’s Table evening turns over with each Friday and Saturday.
Chef Danny visits the table when the moment is right for it. At the Chef’s Table he is the host of the evening — explaining each course and the thinking behind it before he steps back to the kitchen for the next one. Dishes guests have come back for include the Strawberry Romanoff flambé, the Crispy Tempura Fried Shrimp, the Braised Kurobuta Pork Belly, and the Skuna Bay Salmon.
Master Sommelier · Costa Mesa
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan is a Master Sommelier, certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas in 2007. Based in Costa Mesa, California, he collaborates on the Chez Bacchus wine program with John Hansen — a working relationship that predates the restaurant and shapes how the list reads.
The Master Sommelier title is, in the United States, one of the most rigorous certifications in the wine industry — the diploma examination is famously selective, and the list of those who hold it is short and traceable through the Court’s public directory. Michael holds his alongside his work with Jackson Family Wines.
For Chez Bacchus, that collaboration means the list does not stop at the bottle. Producer selection, regional balance, vintages, and the by-the-glass economics that allow every wine to be poured at a single-glass price — all of it benefits from a second pair of trained palates.
Not to be confused with the basketball player.
The Rest of the Room
The rest of the team — the servers, the bartenders, the kitchen line, and our Director of Hospitality who runs catering, private events, and the Chef’s Table — is the reason the room reads the way it does on a given evening. They are small in number and intentionally so. Most have been here long enough to know the regulars by name.
In 2025 the room was named Best Fine Dining in the Downtown Long Beach People’s Choice Awards — an award we are quietly proud of because it is voted by guests rather than chosen by panel.
We refer to staff by function in our concierge channels and the agent — Director of Hospitality, Executive Chef, Advanced Sommelier — so the practice survives the people, and the people are free to move on without us having to redo the materials. If you have visited and a particular member of the team made the evening, tell us. We pass it on.