Is Lona's Wardlow Station Still Open? Bar Rescue Update (Long Beach, CA)

Lona's Wardlow Station sat on the boundary between Long Beach and Signal Hill, California, and had drifted into trouble under a passive owner whose decisions included installing a coin-operated lobster crane game that clashed with the bar's identity, plus a manager whose inexperience compounded the problems by the time Jon Taffer arrived for "In a Pinch." The show's recon and stress test surfaced a bar without a clear food or drink identity and a staff unable to execute under pressure, leaving the owner's finances increasingly strained. Taffer's team rebuilt the bar's drink program and rebranded it Lona's City Limits Cantina, a name meant to modernize the concept while keeping the original Lona's name intact, and retrained the staff ahead of the relaunch.

The new format leaned into a cantina-style menu and clearer branding than the bar had carried under its previous management. The rename stuck. Lona's City Limits Cantina has continued operating under that name at 1174 East Wardlow Road for more than a decade since the episode aired, and Yelp's listing for the address, updated in August 2026 with 181 reviews, shows continued activity and generally positive feedback on the food and service. The Signal Tribune covered the bar's Bar Rescue makeover at the time, noting its straddling of the Long Beach and Signal Hill city line, a detail that has followed the business into later coverage.

No subsequent ownership change or additional rebrand for the location turned up in this research pass, and the cantina appears to be the same operation, under the same modernized name Taffer's team gave it, that reopened after the 2013 relaunch. The cantina's Wardlow Road address sits a few blocks from the Signal Hill boundary, a geographic quirk the Signal Tribune highlighted when covering the rebrand, noting that residents on both sides of the line consider the bar part of their own neighborhood's nightlife scene.