Allen Pierleoni

Sacramento-area diners want their breakfasts served just right, and they want them now.

What's the difference between "palung" and "korma," and "mo-mo" and "pakora"? What is "aloo gobi," "raita" and "dal makhani"? Discovering the firsthand answers to such questions is a key part of the dining adventure, and we are always game.

Pizza, burgers and barbecue are among the most subjective food items ever put on a menu. Fans of each have their favorites and there's little chance of swaying them away from their go-to's. Disagreement among enthusiasts is common.

One summer day in 2011, we stopped in Truckee on a roundabout trip to Lake Tahoe and noticed a tiny bakery-cafe called Trokay. We went inside for breakfast, but nothing was being cooked on the stovetop that day, as the new hood fan hadn't arrived. However, if we liked baked goods …

My lunch pal and I talked about unruly cats and misadventures at overpriced natural-foods stores as we sat semi-patiently in a long line of cars creeping slowly along a two-lane road toward congested Richards Underpass, gateway to downtown Davis.

In simpler times, department-store lunch counters and restaurants were a thrilling part of any Saturday shopping excursion.

March 17 is St. Patrick's Day, and you know the drill: Irish- and British-themed pubs serve gallons of Guinness and generic green beers, fill their cooking pots with corned beef and cabbage, and prepare for the party-hearty. It's the one day of the year when everyone who isn't Irish becomes Irish in an honorary sort of way.

Mill Valley musician and veteran lunch pal Jim Mitchell was revealing the secrets of songwriting as we cruised along Highway 12. We were hopping from Marin County to Sonoma County. Destination: the cheese- and wine-centric town of Sonoma. Purpose: Grab a bite and take a look.

Long before fast-food chains came to dominate the American landscape, drive-in restaurants were the cool places to grab a basket of onion rings and a burger and hang out with your friends – no texting required (or possible).

Got a call from lunch pal Bill Bronston, raving about the Tak Food Market, a small Persian market-restaurant in a teeny strip mall in Carmichael.

It took less than 10 minutes to stroll the length of downtown Main Street in the Amador County town of Plymouth on Saturday, and that covered both sides of the street.

Grand-dame hotels in world-class cities seem filled with intrigue and character, generating an aura close to mystery – at least when the imagination is prodded.

Tahoe Joe's Famous Steakhouse in Folsom was seemingly humming along, but then abruptly went dark in May from lack of business.

We Sacramentans are ideally positioned to … well, get outta town. Within easy reach are destinations that are the envy of the world – Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and the Napa and Sonoma wine countries. Then there's the Monterey Peninsula, always a favorite destination.

We greeted Kinnee O'Reilly's Irish-themed pub in El Dorado Hills with enthusiasm when it opened in September 2011, featuring a menu of well-handled pub-grub classics and, of course, Guinness beer on tap. But the restaurant biz is brutal and diners' tastes are fickle, and Kinnee closed after only eight months.

With another year's adventures in casual dining under the belt, so to speak, here's a subjective list of the 10 places my lunch pals and I especially liked in 2012, in order of preference.

Somebody noticed the advertising insert in The Bee, the one that read, "Enjoy the holidays in Walnut Creek."

The concept of ramen sounds simple, as it's basically a triumvirate of ingredients.

We were at a table in Negril, appreciating the framed photos of Caribbean resorts on the walls, and eyeing a suspiciously motionless and silent red-and-yellow parrot perched nearby.

Today is Veterans Day, the federal holiday that honors the nation's armed forces veterans. It's appropriate to suggest a few related titles.

Goodbye, summer. Adios, grilled watermelon salad, corn on the cob and heirloom tomato gazpacho.

In case you missed the announcement in The Bee on Oct. 26, and online at www.sacbee.com, it was this:

Long before Ruth's Chris, Morton's, Sutter Street Steakhouse, Land Ocean and Chops began serving thick cuts of beef to restaurant-starved Sacramento, there was the Broiler.

Sammy "Red Rocker" Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" blasted from the speakers as we drove (at 65) to the new Sammy's Rockin' Island Bar & Grill in Old Town Roseville.

The recent Lake Tahoe Food and Wine Festival at Harrah's and Harveys in Stateline, Nev., at Lake Tahoe was over the top in a good way.

Max Byrd has been kicking around Davis since 1976, 30 years of that as an English professor at the University of California, Davis.

Admittedly, we're not on close terms with the finer points of Indian food, but we do know what's good.

We fired up the Batmobile the other day to see where it would take us. Two hours later we were on Highway 101 at the exit to historic Santa Rosa, 50-some miles north of San Francisco.

The subject was pizza and which restaurant in Sacramento serves "the best." Not a good starting point to the conversation, as "the best" of any dish is such a subjective concept that the notion is nullified before it even reaches the table.

It being an election year, this column has tried for months to wrangle an invitation to dine at the White House and run a review. How come they don't return phone calls?

Sometimes there are big surprises waiting in little restaurants. You just have to go inside.

The Bee Book Club will host a very special event at its Sept. 6 meeting, when Adam Johnson appears for "The Orphan Master's Son."

Some folks know them as "guilty pleasures," but this column prefers to think of them as "go-to" dishes. You know the ones: You get an urge for a certain something and immediately turn to a longtime standby. With that concept in mind, let's explore some go-to's that keep on goin':

Acclaimed novelist Laura Lippman is a master of mystery and psychological suspense, and can prove it.

The 400,000-member-strong National Restaurant Association reminds us that the three most popular ethnic cuisines in U.S. restaurants are Italian, Mexican and Chinese.

Time for a grab bag of odds and ends, beginning with a big-news phone call from Simon & Schuster senior publicist Emer Flounders. The foremost contemporary chronicler of the West – Larry "Lonesome Dove" McMurtry – has a new title coming out Nov. 6. "Custer."

The hamburger is a simple concept – a ground-beef pattie on a bun, with condiments.

At one end of the dining spectrum are chain-restaurant outlets that seem to pop up overnight. At the opposite end are fine-dining houses that most of us visit a few times a year for special occasions.

We were in Carmel-Monterey to check out three restaurants when we saw the World anchored a few hundred yards off Fisherman's Wharf.

For Tim Ward and his son, Josh, Mount Kilimanjaro was much more than the highest mountain in Africa, at 19,341 feet. They climbed the physical mountain together as a team in 2010 and by doing so each one summited an emotional mountain of his own.

The parking lot, the street out front and much of the surrounding residential neighborhood were smoky with the fragrant, primeval aroma of meat sizzling over glowing coals.

Heard any good books lately? As in audiobooks, which are a growing segment of the multimedia market.

The weather was too hot to stay in Sacramento, so we made a plan: Go for a bike ride and a swim at South Lake Tahoe, stopping at a few restaurants on the way up and down the hill.

If you're looking for a hot and humorous beach read, New York Times best-selling romance writer Susan Elizabeth Phillips can deliver.

You wouldn't guess it by the name, but the Roseville Gourmet is a Chinese restaurant. Its slogan is "California and Chinese cuisine," but the dividing line between the two isn't all that apparent.

Discovering a cafe- bakery is always a good thing. You get the best of two worlds – breakfast and lunch items from a sandwich-salad menu, and breads and pastries from the baker's oven.

Inside, rounds of freshly made pizza dough were lined up, ready to be hand-tossed, topped and slid into the brick oven. Diners sit at tables or on stools lined up along the prep area.

Our annual summer-reading roundup is coming to the a&e section June 17, but let's get a sneak peek, starting with "beach reads," which are big sellers every summer.

We last spoke with Aziz Fattahi some years ago, when we'd first encountered his marvelous Village Bakery in Davis, across from the train station.