Cali Chilli

Cali Chilli opened in late May 2022 at 4111 North Viking Way in Long Beach’s Lakewood Village, north of the airport on a quiet restaurant strip far from Artesia’s Pioneer Boulevard. The menu is led by chef Manjunath Mural, whose Singapore restaurant the Song of India earned consecutive Michelin stars; Eater LA framed the Long Beach project as his first Stateside partnership, built with area restaurateur Sanjeev Kapoor (Yellow Chilli in Tustin). The house calls the cooking “unauthentic Indian”: Indian technique and spice meeting California, Mexican, Italian, Korean, and Southeast Asian ideas on purpose, not as a apology for straying from a curry-house script.

This is the guide’s clearest special-occasion / higher-check Indian-fusion room so far: brass bar, LED barstools, brunch, cocktails, and entrée prices that Press Telegram called among the steepest Indian tabs in town. The brand later added a Downtown Los Angeles location in Little Tokyo (AVA complex, 200 South Los Angeles Street). Treat the Viking Way address as the original Long Beach flagship unless you are booking DTLA.

Eater’s opening feature centers Mural’s thesis that Indian food in the diaspora is often trapped as cheap family-restaurant cooking, and walks through signature plays: chicken tikka with parmesan and white truffle oil; eggplant layered with paneer and butter masala in place of pasta lasagna; butter chicken under puff pastry. Press Telegram critic Merrill Shindler rated the room 2.5 stars (on his local scale), called the experience enjoyable if you can absorb the check, and catalogued the same fusion board: kulchas with truffle or chorizo, wasabi or peppercorn raita, pesto paneer from the tandoor, Cali quesadillas and nachos, Korean-style sticky ribs, beef short ribs in Kashmiri curry, chicken pot pie, chai tiramisu, and weekend brunch plates such as bacon naan wrap and ghee waffles.

The restaurant itself is not a Michelin-starred California listing; the Michelin language in press and marketing refers to Mural’s Song of India record. Public review chatter tends to praise the butter chicken pot pie, inventive small plates, and polished room, while noting the location can feel out of the way and the bill higher than Artesia or strip-mall Indian defaults. Menu items rotate; Mural told Eater he expected biannual updates, so treat named dishes as reported signatures rather than a permanent checklist.