Cracker Barrel comes to Northern California
Hankering for a platter of chicken-fried steak?
America’s “old country store,” the Cracker Barrel, has finally made its way out West.
Nearly 50 years after its founding in Tennessee, the combination Southern-style comfort food roadside restaurant and gift shop has just opened its second California business, in Sacramento. Earlier this year Victorville became the first.
Like its other restaurants, Cracker Barrel’s Sacramento eatery features a location-specific decor theme — in this case, a Gold Rush and River City motif.
On Aug. 20, customers filled Cracker Barrel’s signature rocking chairs outside as they waited for the front doors to swing open at 6 a.m., according to a Fox 40 report.
If you look closely, you’ll see that those rocking chairs have price tags. Yep, you might need to buy one and set a spell after downing Grandma’s Sampler, two buttermilk pancakes served with two eggs, one strip of bacon, one smoked sausage patty and a sampling of sugarcured or country ham. You also get your choice of the hashbrown casserole or fried apples with this combo.
On the lighter side is the Good Morning Breakfast, with two scrambled egg whites, turkey sausage, coarse-ground grits, sliced tomatoes and a side of fresh fruit.
The lunch and dinner menus boast dozens of entree, burger, sandwich and salad options, including such homey faves as chicken and dumplings, catfish, meatloaf and fried chicken livers.
For dessert, there’s a baked apple dumpling double chocolate fudge coca-cola cake, fro-
zen mug sundaes, nosugar-added apple pie and fruit cobbler baked inhouse daily with peaches or blackberries.
But not everything’s old-fashioned here. If you don’t want to while away your time in the gift shop or on the front porch, you can add your name to the waiting list online, then drive over.
DETAILS » Cracker Barrel Old Country Store is open from 6 a.m. daily at 1000 Howe Ave., until 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. www.crackerbarrel.com.
Lucille’s Bar-B-Que opens in Dublin
Bring on the ribs, the mac ’n’ cheese and the banana pudding.
Lucille’s Smokehouse Bar-B-Que is smoking at its third Northern California location.
The new restaurant, at the Dublin Place Shopping Center, joins Lucille’s first in the East Bay, a Concord location that opened five years ago. There’s also one in Rocklin, and several in Southern California.
The chain was founded in Long Beach in 1999 by Craig Hofman, a ’cue fanatic who scoured the South and Midwest — from Kansas and Texas to Tennessee and the Carolinas — for inspiration. Meats here are smoked low and slow over hickory wood for up to 24 hours.
Lucille’s, still familyowned, goes beyond the traditional barbecue joint menu (pork ribs, brisket, chicken, pulled pork, burnt ends) to offer the rarely-seen-in-these-parts Alabama chicken (marinated, smoked chicken with a white barbecue sauce) and Nashville hot chicken (fried, then tossed in a hot sauce).
Southern and soul food
offerings include fried chicken, jambalaya, catfish and Cajun shrimp. Also on the menu are beef ribs, tri-tip and a whole lineup of burgers. The appetizer menu is full of fried goodies (pickles, okra and green tomatoes), deviled eggs and shrimpcorn fritters.
Having taken over the long-closed Elephant Bar, Lucille’s Dublin is a big place, seating 285 customers and employing about 130 people.
DETAILS » Lucille’s is open from 11 a.m. daily until 10 p.m. most nights (11 on Friday-Saturday) at 7202 Amador Plaza Road; 925828-7427; www.lucillesbbq.com.
Top chefs cook for Montalvo arts benefit
Sen. James Phelan should have eaten so well.
About two dozen acclaimed chefs from the greater Bay Area will converge at his circa 1912 manse — now the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga — on Sept. 9 to cook for a good cause.
The occasion is the 15th annual Food & Wine Classic, and the event benefits Montalvo’s year-round array of arts and education programs.
New restaurants and chefs for 2018 include the Michelin-starred team from Adega in San Jose, David Costa and Jessica
Carreira; Jeremy Umland’s Ozumo from Santana Row in San Jose; modern Indian restaurant Rooh from San Francisco; The Palms, new this year to the historic Coggeshall mansion in Los Gatos; Bay Area chocolatier Recchiuti Confections; and San Francisco’s August (1) Five.
Returning participants include Alexander’s Steakhouse and Patisserie; Chez TJ and Chez TJ Pastry; Farallon and Farallon Pastry; Flea Street; Kokkari Estiatorio; Le Papillon; Luce; Madera; Majestic Yosemite Hotel; Manresa Bread; and The Sea by Alexander’s.
Look for more than 25 California wineries and wine merchants to be pouring samples and talking about their latest vintages. Also participating will be Champagne Collet, Champagne Taittinger, Fonseca Port and Taylor-Fladgate Port.
DETAILS » 4-7:30 p.m. Sept. 9 at Montalvo, 15400 Montalvo Road; tickets $250 general, $375 VIP; 408-961-5858; www. montalvoarts.org.
Two restaurants close in the South Bay
• Nine years after opening Calafia in Palo Alto’s Town & Country Village, Charlie Ayers — Google’s first executive chef — has abruptly closed the farmto-table restaurant.
“Money wasn’t coming through the door anymore,” Ayers told Palo Alto Online. “The costs were greater than the take. I couldn’t operate that way anymore.”
The restaurant was known for its “plant eaters” menu that was just as vast as the “meat eaters” one, offering grain and noodle bowls, veggie tacos and burgers, as well as several appetizers and entree-sized salads.
Ayers became Google’s first chef in November 1999, cooking for 40 employees in a cramped kitchen. By the time he left in 2005, he was running seven cafes and serving 5,000 people per day. He capitalized on the experience with a cookbook called “Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef who Fed Google.”
• LYFE Kitchen, the healthy eating concept first inspired by celebrity chef Art Smith, has closed its remaining Bay Area restaurant.
LYFE — the acronym stands for Love Your Food Everyday — was launched in 2011 in Palo Alto by former McDonald’s executives with much fanfare and appearances by Smith, who became famous as Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef. Former President Bill Clinton stopped by the Hamilton Avenue restaurant in December 2012 for lunch with LYFE executives.
According to Restaurant Business, the restaurant chain was acquired by the Carlisle Corp. in 2016. Carlisle closed Cupertino and other locations in 2017. The LYFE website shows there are now only four LYFE Kitchens left in the United States: three in Chicago and one in Memphis.