HIP DOWNTOWN COMMONS JAZZES UP SAC
Two new Sacramento destinations — DoCo, anchored by the Golden 1 Center, and The Kay — are hot spots for bites, sips and fun
Historic Old Sacramento preserves the frontier town’s Gold Rush past. Think of the adjoining Downtown Commons, a 1.8 million-squarefoot work-in-progress dubbed DoCo, as taking the surging city into the future.
Anchoring Sacramento’s hip new lifestyle and entertainment destination at DoCo are the Golden 1 Center, an 18-month-old concert venue and home of the NBA Sacramento Kings, and the Kimpton Sawyer Hotel, a Kings and Kimpton collaboration that opened last fall. And while the downtown revitalization side of all this — the role of the Kings and the millennial reverse-migration to downtown — is certainly interesting, what’s most exciting for visitors isn’t the urban socioeconomics. It’s what’s happening on the 3-acre plaza that surrounds the center.
The Downtown Commons plaza, which is also owned by the Kings, is suddenly filling with restaurants — Echo & Rig steakhouse, for example, and State Fare — as well as retail shops (Getta Clue, Urban Outfitters), bars (Fizz Bubbles) and theaters (Cinemark DoCoXD). Some are open now; more than 20 oth-
ers will be unveiled in the coming weeks. And artist Jeff Koons’ 18-foot-tall Coloring Book No. 4 is one of three grand pieces of public art that grace the plaza.
The idea behind all this, says Kings owner and chairman Vivek Ranadive, is to create “a place for people to live, work, network, play and enjoy culture.”
We recently cruised DoCo and The Kay, the adjacent, closed-to-traffic K Street Mall, looking for itinerary inspiration that included bites, sips and plenty of ways to play. What we found could fill multiple weekend getaways.
Our first discovery was at the new Kimpton Sawyer Hotel, where the Punch Bowl Social melds craft cocktails with Southern diner-inspired eats — think biscuits and mushroom gravy — concocted by restaurateur and “Top Chef” judge Hugh Acheson. You can sip, then stay to play: There are eight bowling lanes here, plus virtual-reality stations, private karaoke rooms, pinball and video games, foosball, Skee-Ball, bocce, pool, shuffleboard, darts and wall-mounted Scrabble.
By day, Revival at the Sawyer is a 200-seat restaurant on the hotel’s third floor. By night, it’s a highspirited rooftop bar and lounge that rocks with DJ-spun tunes. The bonus is the adjoining open-air deck, dominated by an infinity pool surrounded by seven cabanas, fire pits and crowd-friendly seating — and views of DoCo below and the Tower Bridge in the distance. (You did see the Oscar-nominated “Lady Bird,” didn’t you?) Whatever you do, don’t miss Revival’s sweet-meets-savory, cotton-candied bacon drizzled with maple gastrique. (Kimpton Sawyer Hotel, 500 J St., www.sawyerhotel.com, www.punchbowlsocial.com,
revivalsacramento.com)
Just around the corner, three massive Old Hickory smokers turn out ribs, brisket and pulled pork for barbecue lovers who pack the massive dining room at Sauced BBQ. Sauced launched in Livermore in 2012 and has since opened outposts in Walnut Creek, Petaluma and now at DoCo, where the down-home Allman Brothers vibe gets an assist from the corrugatedtin ceiling and vintage barnwood paneling.
Say yes to the burnt ends, caramelized morsels of smoked brisket. Sauced’s double-entendre name is reflected in the bar menu that includes 250 brands of brown whiskey. (1028 Seventh St.; www.saucedbbqandspirits.com)
Check out the Coin-Op Game Room, too, a funky bar-cade in an alley, with a lineup of nearly 60 oldschool arcade and pinball games. Who didn’t like Galaga, Donkey Kong, Tetris and Street Fighter? You can play them all here — and enjoy cocktails and bites, too. (908 K St.; www.coinopsac.com)
Pizza is sublime in the hands of pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani, a Bay Area native and 12-time world pizza champion, whose restaurants include San Francisco’s Pizza Napoletana and Capo’s, as well as Walnut Creek’s Slice House. His
Pizza Rock is the coolest pizzeria in Sacramento — the menus are tucked inside classic-rock album covers and the full-scale front end of a semi-truck seems to have crashed through a brick wall and now hangs suspended above the bar. Gemignani’s wood-fired, charred-crust pizzas are handmade in seven styles — Napoletana, Romana, Sicilian, classic Italian, classic American, Chicago and Detroit. (1020 K St.; www.pizzarocksacramento.com)
Prefer to do some foodie shopping? Amid the 500 jars of spices and herbs that crowd the shelves at Allspicery, you’ll find urfa biber, a Turkish chile pepper. The versatile condiment is all the rage in fine restaurant kitchens because, as one chef put it, “It improves everything it touches.” (1125 11th St.; www.allspicery.com)
Two flights below the 70-year-old Crest Theatre Walk, you’ll find the Empress Tavern, a brick-lined cavern that could be a dining hall in a medieval castle, complete with meat-heavy fare, including salt-and-pepper duck wings and a short rib stroganoff. Interesting aside: Empress is the creation of chef Michael Thiemann, whose vegetarian restaurant Mother rocked Sacramento when it opened in 2014. Equal time for omnivores, perhaps? Mother is
just upstairs and a left turn from Empress. (1013 K St. www.empresstavern.com)
If you’re a wine lover, head for the Downtown & Vine wine bar, where you can choose a customized wine flight from 20 rotating options or go by-the-bottle from a wine list of 100 whites, reds and sparklers. (Get a sip before you commit.) There’s also a short food menu that’s perfect for grazing. (1200 K St.; www. downtownandvine.com)
And if you’re an art or tequila devotee, you can indulge both those passions at Mayahuel, where the cuisine is authentic — don’t miss the Bocaditos de Mexico, six bites from six regions — and the tequila never ending. The bar menu includes 165 tequilas. There’s a taco bar and mezcaleria, too, with 50 mezcals, Oaxacan cocktails and five types of tacos. And the restaurant doubles as an art gallery, vibrant with wall murals and rotating exhibits by Mexican artists. (1200 K St., www.experiencemayahuel.com)