Sacramento emerging as cuisine capital.
Eating up Capital City
Three years ago, the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau established a program to promote the city as “America’s Farm to Fork Capital.”
Pushing agriculture and restaurants may not be as important as being the legislative home of the sixth- largest economy in the world, but it’s certainly sexier. In addition, the marketing staff can make a strong case for its importance as an agricultural powerhouse for such distinctions as growing 80 percent of the world’s almonds and domestic caviar, and for its production of high-quality rice that fills the steamers in some of Japan’s best sushi restaurants.
“I feel that Sacramento has a cool soul about it,” says Michael Thiemann, who moved back to his hometown in 2013 to open Empress Tavern after cooking around the world and spending four years as Tyler Florence’s corporate chef working at Wayfare Tavern and other projects. “It’s more collaborative than competitive. It’s more a town than a city, and it’s surrounded by farms.”
But does that really translate to the plate?
I decided to find out, researching and visiting 17 of the city’s top restaurants. I chowed down on a sausage feast at LowBrau, forked into juicy lamb chops at the Empress Tavern, and marveled at the lasagna that chef owner Biba Caggiano has served for 30 years at Biba. She’s the queen of Sacramento dining and the closest thing Sacramento has to a celebrity chef, with nine cookbooks and “Biba’s Italian Kitchen,” a television show on the TLC and Discovery channel.
In the past few years, she has seen big changes in the quality of restaurants in her adopted city. “It’s getting better and better all the time,” she says.
Never having spent time in Sacramento before my recent foray, I can’t prove or disprove that statement, but I did find a fresh energy in the dining scene, and while some places showed signs of ambition without the needed focused execution, I found some things to love.
For many years, Caggiano — along with the Kitchen, which serves a $135 fixed-price menu — were about the only places that garnered a national reputation. For 25 years, Randall Selland has featured his own brand of dinner and a show with a dining counter surrounding the demonstration kitchen. The 60 diners are ensconced for the whole evening, and mingle during the feast and at an intermission. It’s still the hottest ticket in town and sells out up to two months in advance. Even though I planned ahead, I was unsuccessful in scoring a place at the table.
Selland and his wife, Nancy Zimmer, have been a force in the dining scene, opening Ella and Selland’s Market Cafe and in June debuting Obo Italian Table & Bar.
A little more than a year ago, Kelly McCown, formerly of Goose & Gander in St. Helena, signed on as the Kitchen’s executive chef. McCown was at one time the chef of Ella, so it was like a homecoming, even though he was raised in the Bay Area.
Thiemann credits McCown with shaking up the dining scene by creating a chefs’ collective.
“I saw there were a handful of guys doing cool things, but no one was coming together,” McCown said. He set up forums so chefs could discuss issues. He also hosted collective dinners and used his contacts to bring in nationally prominent chefs to get Sacramento more exposure.
“I think it kind of grew organically,” he said. “It wasn’t anything I set out to do. There’s all these guys here that are doing all these things, and people should know about it.”
As an indicator of where the culinary scene is headed, he points to the fact that the food at the Golden 1 Center (the Sacramento Kings’ arena) scheduled to open in October will be sustainably sourced.
McCown is one of the participants in September’s Farm-to-Fork Celebration, a month of farm tours, wine tastings, street festival and restaurant events. The celebration culminates in a Sept. 25 dinner for more than 700 people who will sit at one long table stretching over the landmark Tower Bridge.
While the PR apparatus has shifted into high
gear in the last couple of years, the Sacramento dining scene has gained even more traction as prices in the Bay Area have escalated and talented chefs are looking for less expensive alternatives. More chefs are finding their way back to Sacramento.
Earlier this year, Andy Mirabell and his wife, Olia Kedik, returned to his hometown to open Skool on K Street, a branch of the 6-year-old restaurant in San Francisco’s Design District, featuring a similar Japanese-California fusion menu. They now live in Sacramento and return to the Bay Area to check up on their flagship.
When I visited Kru, one of the top Japanese restaurants in Sacramento, I was surprised to see Ricky Yap in the kitchen. Yap is the talented chef who helped earn Akiko’s a place on my Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list.
Those who have made the move from the Bay Area to Sacramento say that leases are more reasonable and the cost of obtaining a liquor license is a fraction of what it is in San Francisco. Yet Thiemann warns that even though the cost of doing business is less, the profit margin is about the same. Sacramento diners don’t earn as much and are more price sensitive, he says. In the end it takes vigilance to turn a profit.
“It’s a similar stress level, but a different package,” he says. Still, he loves being on the ground floor of an emerging dining scene.
While many restaurants have embraced the farm-to-table approach, two established personalities have led the way: Rick Mahan, who owns the 20-year-old Waterboy in Midtown, and Patrick Mulvaney. In 2006 he opened Mulvaney’s B&L in a converted 1893 brick firehouse. When you see the dozens of little wormholes in the arugula leaves, you know he takes organic seriously, and it’s clear in all preparations that the produce is pristine.
Still, much of the buzz centers on some new players, including Saddle Rock, which opened earlier this month and took the name of a local restaurant that opened in 1849 and closed in 1995. The menu reaches back to the Gold Rush for inspiration in both food and drink.
Saddle Rock hadn’t opened yet on my trip, so I can’t attest to the quality of the food, but early reports are promising. However, one of the best meals I had was at Hawks Public House, which opened in December. Chef Justin Green masterfully uses the area’s bounty in such items as Humboldt Fog goat cheese with local honey, summer bean salad with figs and fried almonds, and braised pork with bronze fennel. What he creates would easily stand with the best in San Francisco.
Thiemann’s Empress Tavern, which debuted a year ago, also promotes a strong link to the past — it’s in the basement adjacent to the Crest Theatre, which opened in 1912 on K Street. Thiemann also opened Mother, a vegetarian restaurant, a few doors down from the theater.
During the day, diners order at the counter at Mother, selecting from a blackboard menu that includes harissa broccoli with almonds and green olives; taco salad with black beans, corn nuts and cilantro aioli; and chicken-fried-mushroom po’ boy. At night he turns the space into a pop-up, producing a 12-course menu with a different theme, including Korean. The restaurant is near the Capitol, but even though it’s in a transient location, it has been embraced by locals, which he thinks shows that residents are becoming more sophisticated and adventuresome.
Even a few years ago, all the menus of the top restaurants used to look pretty much the same, he says. “Now we’re seeing a lot of other formats working.”
I found some “formats” work better than others, so here are my 10 picks for the best dining in Sacramento.
Mulvaney’s has a big-city vibe with its rustic recycling of an existing building. The scarred concrete floor, the makeshift open kitchen in the rear of the dining room and schoolhouse chairs bring the past into the present. Chef Patrick Mulvaney uses the regional bounty in about every dish. Arugula salad is tamed with crumbles of soft goat cheese and wedges of apricots. Fettuccine is tossed with two kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of squash, wax beans and loads of shaved raw garlic that adds pungent interest to the blend. Green and yellow wax beans and spicy miso become the base for a fillet of California black cod. And at dessert: an excellent apricot crostata. 1215 19th St.; (916) 441-6022. www. mulvaneysbl.com. Lunch TuesdayFriday, dinner Tuesday-Saturday.