Jeff Back, an early player in midtown Sacramento's surge of wine bars as a manager at 58 Degrees & Holding Co., has teamed up with his wife Gail to open what the couple is calling Folsom's "first upscale wine bar," The Back Wine Bar.

Half their inventory of 60 wines, about evenly split between international and domestic brands, is poured by the glass. "These are wines you can't find in supermarkets," said Jeff Back when asked about the stylistic focus of the couple's selections. Their list includes wines from such boutique wineries as Marelle in Sonoma County and Ancien in Napa Valley, as well as familiar brands like Rosenblum, Far Niente and Duckhorn.

Their chef, Matthew Nicolls, oversees a compact small-plate menu that includes Hawaiian ahi poke ($13), a shrimp-and-sole ceviche ($9) and assorted bruschetta ($9).

Jeff Back, a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a certified wine steward in the Court of Master Sommeliers and also holds a diploma from the International Sommelier Guild.

The Back Wine Bar, in the Raley's at The Parkway shopping center, 25075 Blue Ravine Road (at East Natoma Street), is open 3-10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; (916) 986-9100.

Aioli Bodega Espanol in midtown Sacramento is "a wonderful place to take a group out." Bistro 33 Midtown is "a great place to troll for the opposite sex or have a high energy night out with friends." Biba is "nearly up to SF standards." These are a few of the early comments being contributed to a survey of Sacramento restaurants by Zagat, publisher of a popular series of guidebooks. Whether this means Sacramento finally will be the subject of one of Zagat's popular burgundy-bound manuals remains to be seen.

Persons who visit the Zagat Web site have until June 15 to add their comments concerning the food, decor, service and cost of several area restaurants. Contributors must register with the site, a process that includes providing your email address and age. In response, they will get a copy of the 2009 edition of "America's Top Restaurants" when it is published.

As a nation eager to live better if not forever, Americans are hung up on the pyramid for guidance. First, there was the federal government's Food Guide Pyramid, remodeled three years ago as My Pyramid. Trouble was, those efforts were flawed and misguided for directing Americans to an honestly helpful diet, claim experts of Harvard University's School of Public Health.

As a consequence, they're introducing their version of the pyramid, called the Healthy Eating Pyramid. They've taken matters into their own hands, they say, because the government's versions were based on out-of-date science, didn't keep abreast of scientific discoveries, and were shaped at least in part by "people with business interests in their messages."

We likely will be hearing and reading a lot about the latest pyramid in the days and weeks ahead, but its message boils down to five key points:

- Regular exercise is the foundation, thus the running shoes and barbells along the bottom of the pyramid.

- Forget about tracking portion sizes, servings, grams and the like; the new pyramid is a simpler guide to what people should be eating, without fretting over the details.

- And what we should be eating is plants - vegetables, whole grains, fruits and healthy fats, like olive oil.

- Cut way back on the "American staples," such as red meat, salty snacks, sugary drinks, refined grains and potatoes; if you eat meat, pick poultry and fish.

- Take a multivitamin, and have a drink, but forget alcohol if you wonder whether it could be more potentially harmful than beneficial. "Those who don’t drink shouldn’t feel that they need to start," caution the Harvard authorities.

Petite sirah long has had its advocates, but its group of followers hasn't been particularly large or vocal. It's been called a "cult wine," though that suggests a following more limited than it actually is. What's more, petite sirah is showing signs of rising in popularity as wine enthusiasts discover how lush with floral aromas and blackberry flavors it can be. More consumers haven't ventured into petite-sirah land for two related factors: Petite sirah's inky color and rigid tannins are so intimidating they can scare off potential customers before they give it a chance.

Under his Quixote label, veteran Napa Valley vintner Carl Doumani makes one of those big, brooding petite syrahs. (Contrary to the approach of most other winemakers working with petite sirah, Doumani prefers the spelling "petite syrah," recognizing that the grape's parents are syrah and peloursin.)

Now, however, Doumani is releasing a more approachable petite sirah, the Pretense 2005 Solano County Petite Syrah ($15). Though its color is dense as night, the wine is immediately accessible. It's dry and medium bodied, with a smell of violets, a flavor that runs to both blackberries and raspberries, a satiny texture, and a finish that includes a snap of spice. The tannins are in full retreat. The alcohol is a modest 13.8 percent. And it comes in a screwcap bottle. The whole package, in fact, leaps off the shelf, thanks to Marin graphic designer Jim Moon's novel wrap-around label that looks like a crinkly brown-paper bag.

"We give you 'Pretense,' with the assurance that now even those of modest means can have 'Pretense' in their cellar and on their dining table," says Doumani in a press release.

Unfortunately, Doumani says Pretense is a one-time-only wine, the consequence of a series of serendipitous happenings that began with the availability of the grapes from Oberti Family Vineyard in Suisun Valley.

In Sacramento, Corti Brothers has received a shipment of the wine, which could be on the floor as soon as today.

We found the wine a perfect accompaniment, incidentally, to the first burgers off the grill this spring. They were sweetened with grilled onions and spiced with a catsup-and-mayo sauce seasoned with horseradish, mustard, wasabi and lime. But the meat alone was the big hit. For the first time, we made the burgers with Five Dot Ranch ground chuck from Taylor's Market ($4.49 per pound). This is good beef, coming from a famly that's been ranching in California since 1852. Today, the Swickard family's holdings stretch from Lassen County to Napa Valley. The mostly Angus cattle they run are raised on open range with sustainable, "holistic" and natural practices. They don't use antibiotics on the herds, and they don't add hormones to their feed.

Five Dot Ranch beef was sold wholesale until the family recently opened its first retail store at Oxbow Public Market in Napa. In addition to Taylor's Market, Five Dot Beef is found at Davis Food Co-Op, Ikeda's in Auburn, and Natural Food Selection and Briar Patch Co-Op in Grass Valley. Local restaurants that use Five Dot Beef include Ford's Real Hamburgers, The Waterboy and The Kitchen in Sacramento, Hawks in Granite Bay.

One wine on my list of the 10 Best Wines of the Year - So Far is the youthful and agile Greg Norman California Estates 2005 Lake County Red Hills Zinfandel ($15). Last night we opened another of the golfer's wines, the Greg Norman South Eastern Australia Sparkling Chardonnay Pinot Noir ($20). It won't make the cut, though it is a sound and pleasant bubbly.

A blend of 61 percent pinot noir and 39 percent chardonnay, it's an unusually subdued sparkler for coming from Australia. The fruit is dry and austere, the bubbles fine, the beads languid. It's crisp and refreshing, and low in alcohol (11.5 percent). For its lightness, it's closer to prosecco than Champagne in overall style. While perfectly enjoyable, it had a restraint that didn't let it interfere with our excitement and conversation.

Why would anyone open a bottle of sparkling wine on a Monday night, anyway? Aside from our conviction that sparkling wine is versatile enough to enjoy with a wide range of foods, we did have something to celebrate. We'd just received word that our first grandchild in nearly 16 years and our first grandson was born at 3:18 a.m. May 13 in Bangkok. Here's to you, Rayden Light Kanah-Dunne.

After a two-week closure for remodeling, the Cliff House of Folsom has been reborn as Sudwerk Riverside Restaurant & Brewhouse. No beer will be brewed on the premises. However, the four regular beers and six rotating seasonal beers that have helped make Sudwerk Restaurant and Brewery in Davis so popular will be on tap.

Tim McDonnell, a San Francisco restaurateur who acquired the Davis brewpub in 2006, bought the Cliff House from Paragon Steak House Restaurants of San Diego in February and continued to operate it until closing the business for remodeling about three weeks ago. (Ron Broward continues to own Sudwerk's brewing operations.)

The makeover includes a new menu, but McDonnell is retaining the prime rib and steaks for which the Cliff House was recognized. He's expanded the seafood, burger, pasta and salad selections, and added pizza.

This is the second restyling of the restaurant, which began life as Tosh's in 1977. In 1989 it was made over into the Cliff House of Folsom. The restaurant occupies one of the choicer dining spots in Sacramento County, overlooking Folsom, Lake Natoma and the American River bikeway.

Sudwerk Riverside Restaurant & Brewhouse, 9900 Greenback Lane, Folsom, is open for meals 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and dinner 4-10 p.m. Sundays; (916) 989-9243.

If I'd get my hair cut more often I might be more up to speed on Sacramento's culinary scene. When my stylist - go ahead, chuckle - asked what I knew of the new wine bar at Marriott's Residence Inn at Capitol Park at 15th and L I drew a blank. Hadn't heard of it, I had to confess.

Thus, over the weekend we dropped in to see what it was about. Actually, 3 Fires Lounge, which the place is called, isn't a wine bar so much as a casual cafe with a few international wines by the glass and several Belgian beers. While it's casual, it's also comfortable, with plush chairs and tall barstools spaced considerately through the dark and spacious quarters. Grab a table on the 15th Street side and you can watch joggers at Capitol Park, theater goers strolling to the convention center, and limos depositing prom attendees at Mason's across the way. There's also a whole lot of wide-screen plasma TVs. The name comes from fireplaces in the bar and the adjoining lobby.

The menu runs to modern bar food - barbecued duck-confit crepes ($13), risotto fritters ($6) and mango cheesecake ($6). The happy-hour menu 4-6 p.m. Monday through Friday includes a cilantro Caesar salad ($5), avocado egg rolls ($5) and a petite buffalo burger ($5).

When my stylist asks about the wine, I now can tell her to try the young and beefy malbec by the Argentine producer Gascon.

Let's wrap up the week with a lingering note from last weekend's Riverside International Wine Competition. Actually, the note has nothing to do with the competition per se, but with a ritual the night before. That's when the arriving judges are to bring to a welcoming reception and dinner a wine they'd especially like to share.

The wines were spread out on a table on a patio of the Mission Inn. Judges browsed the array, picked what grabbed their curiosity, and had a taste. Sometimes they talked about it, sometimes they looked for a potted plant in which to dump the rest.

I tasted one wine that so knocked me over I quietly grabbed the entire bottle and put it on the table where I'd be sitting when we convened for dinner. The wine was the wonderfully bright and fleshy Kelly Fleming Wines 2004 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It was dark, juicy, sweetly plummy and perfectly balanced, with notes of both Napa Valley herbalness and hillside tar. And it lasted and lasted. It's my strongest candidate yet to be added to the next revision of my 10 Best Wines of the Year - So Far.

At about $85 a bottle, someone was really generous to bring and share the wine. I suspect that person was fellow judge Celia Welch Masyczek, a veteran Napa Valley winemaker now making the wines of Kelly Fleming. She didn't let on that she'd brought the wine, but she snagged a chair at the table where I'd put it.

In Sacramento, the wine is available for $86 at David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods. It's also available by the glass ($27), the bottle ($99) and the magnum ($199) at Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville. Why there? Could be because Kelly Fleming is the wife of Paul Martin Fleming, the entrepreneur behind several restaurants, incljuding Paul Martin's.

Chocolate, caramel and salt. Put them together and what's not to like? People who are discovering the "salty caramel chocolates" at Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates at 18th and L in midtown Sacramento are learning just how marvelous the combination can be. It's become perhaps the most popular item in her lineup of spring chocolates. To learn how she makes them, and to pick up some tips on how to work with chocolate, sugar, butter and cream, we dropped in to her shop the other day. Meet Ginger Elizabeth Hahn:

What in the world were Robert and Margrit Mondavi doing in Sacramento last night, other than the obvious, which was savoring dinner at The Waterboy with a couple I didn't recognize? Dinner at The Waterboy is reason enough for a trek from Napa Valley to Sacramento, sure, but I suspect more was on the agenda than a meal with old friends. Probably had something to do with the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science nearing completion at UC Davis, underwritten with a $25 million donation from the legendary Napa Valley vintner.

Then another thought occurred: Could the Mondavis possibly be scouting out Waterboy owner/chef Rick Mahan as a candidate for a Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence? Never mind that the awards haven't been given out for about a decade. Though Mondavi subsequently lost his pivotal Napa Valley winery, the awards conceivably could be revived by the corporate officials who now own the place. Up to now, however, they haven't picked up many of the threads that Mondavi so famously wove into the fabric of the nation's culinary consciousness. But we can hope that they again will be proactive in promoting the smart, artful and, yes, moderate consumption of wine and food, always one of the abiding principles of Mondavi's philosophy. Revival of the awards would be a savvy way to reemphasize that connection between food and wine while also recognizing Mondavi's many contributions to the state's wine industry, and why not start with Rick Mahan?

Quick, who is the only Sacramento chef ever to receive a Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence? Why, Biba Caggiano, who got the tribute in 1996, the same year that five other chefs were recognized, including Cindy Pawlcyn, who at the time had 10 restaurants in San Francisco and Napa Valley, including Mustards Grill and Fog City Diner; Nobuyuki Matsuhisa of Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills; and Norman Van Aken of Norman's in Coral Gables, Fla.

The honor included a 30-square-foot portrait of each chef by Santa Barbara artist Rise Delmar-Ochsner. Caggiano's still looms over the bar of her midtown restaurant Biba. Space for such large art is tight at The Waterboy, but if the awards are resurrected maybe Mahan could hang a portrait at his new place.

It's springtime, and the Dunnigan Hills in northern Yolo County are alive with the sound of...earth-moving equipment, concrete mixers, power saws and the like. Or if not now, Friday, when Sacramentans John and Lane Giguiere break ground for a $2.5-million winery capable of producing 150,000 gallons of wine a year when it is completely built out.

They expect to have the first phase of the facility finished in time for this fall's crush. They've had big plans before and succeeded. The Giguieres, with John's brother, Karl Giguiere, founded R.H. Phillips Winery in 1983, starting with 10 acres in the Dunnigan Hills and building it into one of the nation's larger wineries before they sold it in 2000, when it was producing 800,000 cases annually. By then, their first small vineyard had grown to cover 1,800 acres.

Their new venture is Matchbook Winery, to rise on a 320-acre parcel at the junction of Yolo County roads 92B and 15B three miles west of Zamora. The couple already tends 73 acres of wine grapes on the property.

Matchbook Wines is a winemaking operation the Giguieres created two years ago under the umbrella of their Crew Wine Company, headquartered in Sacramento. They have four brands - Matchbook, Mossback, Sawbuck and Chasing Venus; wines for the first three are made in leased facilities and will be consolidated at the Zamora site, while the wines of Chasing Venus are made in New Zealand.

The Giguieres won't have a tasting room at the new winery until they finish the next phase of construction, to follow in a year or two, says Lane Giguiere.

Word came in too late last night to make today's Bee story about challenges facing restaurateurs in Old Sacramento, but here's another sign of confidence in the city's historic district: Janie Desmond Ison is coming back to Old Sacramento.

In 1994 she opened Steamers at Front and K streets, built it into a popular coffee stop for tourists and locals alike, and then sold the business in 2000. It closed this past Dec. 31, but Ison and her husband Jim, who also own Cafe Vinoteca at Fair Oaks Boulevard and Watt Avenue, which they will continue to run, have been enticed to return to Old Sac and reopen Steamers.

When they revive it, expected between mid- and late-June, Steamers will be more varied and ambitious, though initially open just for breakfast and lunch. The Isons are putting in a full kitchen, they're getting a beer-and-wine license, and they'll be adding dinners on weekend nights during peak times for the district (watch for their striking interpretation of banana-cream pie).

Why the name Steamers? Janie Ison said it originally represented both the steam wand on an espresso machine and the steam trains of Old Sacramento, but after they get the new Steamers up and running they'll also at least occasionally serve steamer clams.

The Isons are so confident in Old Sacramento's dining scene they've signed a 15-year lease for Steamers. "We're very bullish on Old Sacramento," says Jim Ison.

After 35 years, a landmark restaurant site in Old Sacramento is dark. The Fat family has closed California Fat's Asian Grill & Steakhouse, which originally opened in 1973 as China Camp.

"It was a combination of things. Number one, the economy. Secondly, there's more competition in Sacramento and the suburbs," says Jerry Fat, chief financial officer for the Fat family's group of restaurants. "California Fat's had been on a marginal basis the past year and a half or so. We're all down as more restaurants come into Sacramento, so it seemed the prudent thing to do."

Old Sacramento is busy weekends and for special events, such as during the Jazz Jubilee over Memorial Day weekend, but on weekdays local residents tend to stay away, adds Fat.

The California Fat's space now is being used for events like receptions and banquets. The family is looking at its options for the building, but it isn't likely to again house a restaurant, indicates Fat.

This hasn't been an especially auspicious year for the Fat family's restaurant interests. The family also owns the building along Alta Arden Expressway that housed Romano's Macaroni Grill, which closed in late March, about the same time the Fats were shutting down California Fat's. On the up side, the lease for the building has another two years to run, and Brinker International, the parent company of Romano's Macaroni Grill, continues to pay rent, says Fat.

I'm all for recycling and reusing, but an incident in New Zealand shows that prudence may need to be raised with our environmental consciousness.

Two women in a restaurant had to be hospitalized after tasting what they thought was mulled wine. Instead, it was a dishwashing liquid with sodium hydrozide. The mixup apparently occurred because an emptied bottle of "Mountain Thunder" mulled wine had been filled with dishwashing liquid. Though a detergent sticker had been slapped onto the wine bottle, enough of the original label still showed to convince a server that the vessel still contained the requested mulled wine.

For more details, check out this article from The New Zealand Herald.

Sunday's final sweepstakes round at the 2008 Riverside International Wine Competition was long and chaotic, in part because it involved many more wines than I thought it would draw. After Saturday's tasting, when my panel and neighboring panels seemed to be nominating few wines for sweepstakes consideration, I figured Sunday's final round would include only about 40 candidates from the some 2600 entries at the outset of the judging.

We ended up with 64 sweepstakes nominees, however, which speaks well of the overall caliber of the wines in the judging, but raises the question of whether that big a field really allows enough time for the serious deliberation that should be given the wines the panelists concur are the very best in the field. Me thinks a better system needs to be created to trim the number of finalists so judges can more patiently and earnestly weigh and debate the merits of the very best wines.

Ultimately, the 64 wines were whittled to five sweepstakes winners, one each in five categories - sparkling wine, dessert wine, white wine, rose wine and red wine. The red-wine field was unusually diverse and tough, but when the votes were tallied the clear winner was a local wine, the warm, dense and bacony Michael-David Winery 2005 Lodi Earthquake Syrah ($28). It topped a field that included four stylish zinfandels, an unusual number of blends, a vivacious tempranillo, a shout from the past in a juicy alicante bouschet, and, curiously, only one cabernet sauvignon. I'm not sure what the weak showing by cabernet sauvignon says, but the first question that comes to mind is whether this is an aberration or crack in the varietal's standing as California's most highly regarded wine.

Today shouldn't be as long or as tough as yesterday at the 2008 Riverside International Wine Competition. Saturday, our four-person panel tasted through 137 entries, ranging from light chardonnays to weighty cherry wines. Today, we're scheduled to taste just 48; zinfandel, syrah and sherry for breakfast, anyone? And after that, we'll have the sweepstakes round, which traditionally involves about 40 wines, though it doesn't look as if we will face that many today. Our panel, for one, didn't nominate a single one of our gold-medal wines for sweepstakes consideration, and from what I've been hearing other panels also have been tight with coming up with candidates. Not sure what it means. A weak field? Stern judges? All that could change this morning, however.

My fellow panelists, incidentally, are Don Galleano, owner/winemaker of the historic Galleano Winery in Mira Loma, Riverside County; Carol Shelton, owner/winemaker of Carol Shelton Wines in Santa Rosa; and Doug Frost, a Kansas City wine and spirits consultant and writer. Galleano has an interesting shorthand comment when he comes across a wine he doesn't like: "Yuba City, I have no reason to go there."

By the way, if you find yourself hungry in downtown Riverside, consider Omakase, the only Japanese restaurant I've been in for some time that doesn't have sushi. What it does have is a boldly modern and creative take on Japanese cookery. A thick cut of seared steelhead trout, served on artichoke risotto, was spicy with arugula and tangy with lemon, while the sweet richness of roasted pork belly was intensified on one hand with a blackberry gastrique and mellowed on the other by potato gnocchi. And don't get me started on the light-hearted joy of the pineapple custard cake. Omakase is at 3720 Mission Inn Ave.

The bright side of a flight delay is that you finally have time to catch up on your reading. Fortunately, I'd tossed into my luggage a couple of new books as I headed for Sacramento International Airport yesterday. One of them is Gary Vaynerchuk's "101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World" (Rodale, $19.95, 236 pages, softcover). By the time I got to Ontario about two hours later than scheduled, I'd covered most of the book and strolled out of the terminal pretty much convinced that "101 Wines" is one of the more entertaining and, as the title suggests, inspiring wine books of recent years.

If the name Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't ring a bell, he's the wild guy responsible for www.winelibrarytv.com, where he simply sits down with a New York Jets spit bucket, a few glasses of wine, and walks viewers through a tasting. He's loud, confident and almost always entertaining. His descriptions often are hilarious. That spunk is seized adroitly in his book, which basically is a series of descriptions of 101 wines he'd recommend to his best friend.

"I have selected wines that break down barriers, create new styles, and ooze charisma," he says in the introduction. He likes blended wines over varietals, and tends to prefer wines with big, ripe, concentrated flavors. "Fruit bomb" is one of his favorite descriptors. His taste often isn't my taste, but I do like the freshness, bluntness, humor and color of his descriptions.

Unlike a lot of wine books that talk of specific wines, his selections generally are current. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they will be easy to find. Vaynerchuk lives in New York City, and several of the wines he's chosen, being European, may be easier to find there than on the West Coast. What's more, several of the wines were made in small lots.

Nonetheless, I found the book's enthusiasm so infectious that as soon as I got to my final destination, Riverside, I headed to La Bodega Wine & Spirits, which locals told me is the city's best wine shop. I walked in with my Vaynerchuck book and with the help of a clerk attempted to find among the shelves 10 wines I'd marked as especially provocative. Unfortunately, the shop didn't have a single one. Maybe I'll have better luck back in Sacramento. I'd sure like to get my hands on his No. 90 wine, the Peirano Estate Vineyards 2006 Lodi The Other ($13), a "dark, dark, dark" blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah, and his No. 15 wine, the Topanga Vineyards 2006 Clarksburg Grenache Blanc Celadon ($28), which he says would "Buster Douglas" similar Rhone-style California wines priced much higher. (According to his Vaynercabulary, "Buster Douglas" means to unexpectedly destory the competition, and is taken from James "Buster" Douglas, who in 1990 knocked out undefeated world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in Tokyo.)

Why am I in Riverside? Not for the amazing hot-rod show under way just outside the hotel, though I do hope to tour it this afternoon, but for the Riverside International Wine Competition about to get under way. Like Vaynerchuk, I'll be looking for wines to bring some "thunder" to my palate.

Before long, Californians no longer may have to fret about getting busted if they have a glass of wine with their picnic at a winery. Not that people who do this actually look worried. Deep in state regulations governing the consumption of alcoholic beverages, however, is wording that suggests that wineries aren't to allow visitors to open and consume anywhere on the premises a bottle of wine they've just bought in the tasting room.

Under legislation drawn up by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) and Senator Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa), the law is being clarified so wine-drinking picnickers need not run the risk of being charged with a misdemeaner. The measure, AB2004, passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee yesterday and now heads to the Assembly floor.

To clear up another wine-related matter, Wiggins next week is expected to introduce legislation to allow home winemakers to share with others the wines they make. Many already happily do this, but Wiggins recently learned that the practice technically is illegal.

According to a section of the state business and professions code, homemade wine is to be for the winemaker's own personal consumption. No one else - "not a judge in a competition, not your neighbor, not even your spouse if he/she did not participate in making the wine" - is to drink the wine, says Wiggins in a press release issued today.

As it stands, the law jeopardizes long-running home wine competitions, including the California State Fair's, Wiggins suggests. She says she will introduce her bill with an urgency clause so it would take effect as soon as the legislature passes it and the governor signs it, perhaps in time for this year's State Fair homewinemaking competition.

The six contenders for the 2008 SushiMasters Finals have been chosen, and the lone Sacramento representative is bound to be one tough opponent. He's Billy Ngo of midtown's Kru Restaurant, who won Best of Show honors in dramatic fashion last year after slicing a finger early in the competition.

The other finalists are Koji Ogawa of Sakura Chaya in Fresno, Tomaharu Nakamura of Sanraku Four Seasons in San Francisco, Akifusa Tonai of Kyo-ya in San Francisco, Takuya Matsuda of Sushi Bar Nippon in San Diego, and Aung Soe of Geisha House in Hollywood. The finalists are chosen through a series of regional competitions about the state.

This year's finals will be earlier than usual, moving up to June 10 at the Sacramento Convention Center. Sponsored by the California Rice Commission, the finals will be open to the public and also will feature sushi and sake tasting. Tickets are $65. For more information, visit the commission's SushiMasters Web site.

A Lincoln reader just back from France says he found the best falafel ever in Paris. Falafel isn't a dish I associate with France, but given the country's shifting demographics it makes perfect sense that an outstanding falafel should be found in the city that still reigns as the capital of fine cuisine.

His appetite whetted, he wants to know where he can find a fine falafel around here. His question reminded me that many years ago the falafel was one of my favorite foods. Basically, a falafel is patties of mashed garbanzo beans mixed with herbs and various Middle Eastern spices, then fried and served with a tahini sauce. The patties, both wholesome and intense, can be served on their own or slipped into pita bread, which is the way I customarily have preferred them. In recent years, that's how we have prepared them at home, and only rarely have I gone out looking for falafel.

With my curiosity newly aroused, however, I've started a search for notable cafe falafels, and need your help. So far, I've sampled the falafel at Maalouf's Taste of Lebanon along Fulton Avenue (big, hot, fresh, rustic and about as salty as they were spicy) and at Cafe Morocco along Alhambra (rich, coarse, grainy, a bit dry). Both were fine, but I suspect better may be out there, and would appreciate some guidance.

Based on those visits, two things about the falafel sandwich seems to have changed over the years. For one, they're much bigger than they used to be. Secondly, the pita hasn't appreciably improved, and in fact seems to have exchanged some of its character and flavor for its more substantial size.

At any rate, if you have a favorite falafel, or have heard of someplace celebrated for the dish, please let me know.

The County of Sacramento's traffic-signal method of alerting diners about the health status of restaurants is being acknowledged with one of the nation's more prestigious honors in consumerism.

Officials of the county's Environmental Management Department announced this morning that the agency is receiving the 2008 Samuel J. Crumbine Consumer Protection Award for Excellence in Food Protection.

The agency is being singled out specifically for a program it began last year involving green, yellow and red placards at the entrance of restaurants to notify guests how the businesses measured up during their latest public-health inspection. A green sign indicates no major health issues were found, a yellow sign indicates violations were uncovered and corrections are pending, and a red sign indicates that violations were so severe the restaurant is closed. Last summer, public-health authorities reported that about 88 percent of the county's food establishments, which include grocery stores and school cafeterias as well as restaurants, were getting green cards; just one percent were being hit with a red card.

The award's 12 judges, all public-health practitioners, were impressed with how local officials brought the local food industry aboard in introducing the program, food-safety classes they started to help restaurant workers avoid health issues, and the publication of inspection guidelines in several languages, among other provisions of the effort.

"The County of Sacramento has demonstrated leadership, innovation and a commitment to food safety that transcends the boundaries of their county. It is a guiding light for local food-safety programs throughout the nation," said Gary Erbeck of the County of San Diego Department of Environmental Health, chair of the award jury.

Named for one of the country's more celebrated public-health sanitarians, the Crumbine award has been handed out over the past 53 years. It will be presented local officials at the annual Educational Conference of the National Environmental Health Association in June in Tucson.

Twenty years ago, a charming little restaurant occupied a converted Victorian at 24th and K streets in midtown Sacramento. It was called Pava's, a name that still resonates with oldtimers not just for its grilled lamb chops, housemade ravioli, fruit cobblers and hearty breakfasts but for its loyal following, which ranged from the powerful to people who still were being called hippies.

When fire destroyed Pava's in 1990 after a 14-year-run, a Bee editorial lamented its loss and fretted that both the initiative and homeyness it represented also would be lost. The editorial was prescient, for the lot that Pava's occupied has stood largely vacant for nearly 18 years.

Now, however, Sacramento developer Thomas Allan Roth and Bay Area restaurateur Matthew Engelhart are drawing up plans for a restaurant to revive the individualistic spirit if not the name and culinary style of Pava's. Both have confirmed that they've signed a letter of intent to bring a branch of Engelhart's Cafe Gratitude to 24th and K.

Engelhart opened his first Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco in 2004 and now is up to four branches in the Bay Area, with a fifth to open this summer in Healdsburg. "It's a school of transformation disguised as a vegan organic restaurant," says Engelhart of the restaurant's concept.

He says he is being drawn to Sacramento in part because of its proximity to Vacaville, where he has bought a farm to help keep his restaurants supplied with the seasonal, sustainable, organically grown ingredients on which his menus are based.

Lots of restaurants these days boast of seasonal, sustainable, organically grown provisions, but Cafe Gratitude takes the commitment a step further by using the ingredients in solely vegan dishes. The Cafe Gratitude menu is a study in positive vibes, with each dish bearing a name meant to be self-affirming: "I Am Present" is an appetizer of buckwheat flatbread with mushroom herb confit and cashew mozzarella, while "I Am Terrific" is the restaurant's version of pad thai - vegetable noodles with kale, cucumber, tomato, sprouts, teriyaki almonds and a Thai almond-butter sauce. Desserts include "I Am Amazing," lemon meringue pie in macadamia-nut crust.

"The restaurant's décor is derived from a board game developed by the owners and built into each table. It encourages diners to express gratitude for one another and for the bounty the universe has bestowed upon anyone likely to walk in the door. After seating us, the hostess looked in our eyes and asked, 'What's great about today?'” wrote Gregory Dicum in the New York Times last fall after visiting the Mission District branch of Cafe Gratitude.

Roth gives three reasons for wanting a Cafe Gratitude on his lot: His own vegan diet, his memory of Pava's as "a wonderful place to go," and Engelhart's style of cooking, which he has found "delicious" and "consistent." "Pava's was busy most of the time, so this seems like it would be a perfect fit," adds Roth.

He owns buildings housing two other restaurants in the neighborhood - Rick's Dessert Diner and True Love Coffee House - as well as a three-story 1926 structure on the northeast corner of 21st and L he is looking to convert into a restaurant. Though prospective operators have toured the building with the thought of putting a "high end" restaurant in the structure, the shaky economy has cooled their enthusiasm. In the meantime, he's moving ahead with hopes of opening a restaurant on the old site of the revered Pava's within a year.

Working with only the wire cage, label, foil and cork from no more than two Champagne bottles, artists created more than 500 miniature chairs for this year's Champagne Chair Contest sponsored by the home-decor chain Design Within Reach.

Now, the 50 winning chairs are on a national tour, which pulls into Sacramento May 6. From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., a reception for the exhibit will be at Design Within Reach's Sacramento studio, 1020 16th St. And, yes, Champagne will be served. Seating, however, could be a challenge.

To see a few of the winning entries, visit the Design Within Reach Web site.

Davis Ranch in Sloughhouse isn't expected to start harvesting its sweet corn until mid-June or thereabouts, and when it does there's to be something new at the popular roadside stand along Highway 16 - barbecued beef and pork ribs, tri-tip roasts, chicken and hot dogs.

Tom and Pam Krumbholz, who own Incahoots BBQ Pizza and Grill in Plymouth, will bring their mobile kitchen to Davis Ranch this summer to help round out the produce stand's menu. The unit is expected to be in place on weekends from late June or early July through the harvest, says Pam Krumbholz. In addition to the meats, the Krumbholzs will be experimenting with grilled produce, raising the possibility that hot corn on the cob will be available.

In recent years, Davis Ranch has been expanding its range of produce beyond the corn that first brought celebrity to the spot. In addition to beets, grapes, artichokes and a whole bunch of other fruits and vegetables, the current lineup includes Sloughhouse asparagus. The stand is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, though when the corn starts to come in the schedule will be 6 a.m.-7 p.m. daily, says store manager Jim Ayers.

As I ambled along backroads about Murphys in Calaveras County and Sutter Creek and Amador City in Amador County the past few days, I couldn't recall a splashier show of spring poppies in the foothills. Hardly hill or hollow was without a bright patch of the golden blooms.

The display made me thankful for at least two reasons: One, that the legislature in 1903 had the good sense to name the golden poppy California's state flower. Second, that Gov. Schwarzenegger wasn't in office way back then. I suspect he would have caved in to the lily, lilac and lupine lobbyists and vetoed the measure, just as he buckled to cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay partisans a couple of years ago when legislators voted to declare zinfandel the state's "historic" wine grape.

Yeah, I hold a grudge, but that isn't the culinary point of this item. Andrae's Bakery in Amador City is. No matter how many times we stop at the shop, the Andraes seem to be stocking their already crowded display cases with something new. This time around it was a zesty pistachio and orange brioche. We resisted the oatmeal cookies and Basque cake, but not that or the brownies and the cranberry-and-walnut sourdough bread.

If you stop, be prepared for a long line and claustrophobia. The shop, which also has extensive selections of cheese and housemade sandwiches, is small and almost invariably crowded. But that's going to change. The Andraes are drawing up plans for roomier new quarters in neighboring Sutter Creek. The new bakery could be open as soon as this fall, though they may hold off on the debut until after the busy year-end baking season. Whenever it's open, we'll be back, looking for poppyseed cake.

The celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County won't be jumping for fame until the third weekend of May, but preparations for the annual jubilee were in full swing with the fair's 27th annual wine competition.

The judging drew 274 wines from throughout the Sierra foothills, and when the final votes were tabulated the best-of-show red wine was the mouth-filling, peppery and warm Latcham Vineyards 2005 El Dorado Zinfandel ($20), while the best-of-show white wine was the sweet, floral and viscous Ironstone Vineyards 2007 California Obsession Symphony ($8).

I'll be writing more of the competition for a future Dunne on Wine column in The Bee.

A couple of notes about what's new on the Sacramento area restaurant scene:

- Earth Day 2008 has come and gone, but Cory Holbrook and Roderick Williams used the occasion to launch what they intend to be a longterm commitment to "sustainable," "organic" and "green" values. In February, Holbrook closed his restaurant Town Lounge in Roseville, redesigned the quarters, redrew the menu, and on Earth Day reopened it as The Greenhouse. He says 95 percent of the produce is organic, all of the seafood is sustainably caught, and all the meats are free of steroids, antibiotics and added hormones. Ideally, the restaurant would like to be 100 percent organic, but occasionally chef Roderick Williams has to use conventionally grown habanero chile peppers, parsnip greens and the like if organically grown can't be found. Coffees and teas are free trade, takeout containers are biodegradable, and the new carpet is made of recycled soda bottles, say Holbrook and Williams. The New American menu includes starters like Five Dot Ranch beef sliders (two for $8) and a salad of panko-crusted ahi and arugula with a wasabi caramel vinaigrette ($11), and entrees such as a small plate of seared sea scallops with agave-glazed baby turnips ($13) and a large plate of rib-eye steak with a leek, potato and morel-mushroom ragout ($29). The Greenhouse, 1595 Eureka Road, Roseville, is open for dinner Monday through Saturday, with lunch to be added Monday.

- Anthony Laub, most recently executive chef at the Folsom branch of Malabar, has moved to The Firehouse in Old Sacramento as chef de cuisine, where he will be working with executive chef Deneb Williams. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Laub also has put in stints with Horseshoe Bend Country Club and Cherokee Town and Country Club, both in Georgia.

Results of the 14th Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition won't be compiled and released until Monday - the judging is spread over three days in three cities - but yesterday's round at the restaurant Sutro's of the Cliff House in San Francisco provided a few surprises:

- The Kumamoto oysters - more consistently firm, fresh, sweet and salty than they have been at the competition in recent years - weren't from the Pacific Northwest or even California, but Mexico. They again were provided by the competition's sponsor, Taylor Shellfish Farms of Shelton, Wash., which has expanded its operations to include a new aquafarm on the Pacific Ocean side of Baja California. Kumamotos, explained Jon Rowley, coordinator of the competition, thrive best in relatively warm water, thus the switch. Why Kumamotos for the judging? They're small, thus easy to slurp, chew and follow with a sip of wine to see how the pairing shapes up. I'm not sure if it was their size or their intensely briny flavor, but I had to eat four dozen to do the wines justice.

- Per usual, 20 white wines were in the finals. We didn't know the varietal or the producer of each until after the judging. For the first time in around six years, none of the 20 was either the Geyser Peak sauvignin blanc or the Dry Creek Vineyard chenin blanc, the latter made with grapes from Clarksburg. Both have finished regularly in the top 10 in recent years. Though I haven't tasted the latest vintage of either wine, I've a hunch that their absence from the finals says more of the intensified competition than any slip in their quality. This year's competition drew a record 200 wines. The final 20 are chosen during a marathon series of tastings in Seattle, then sent to panels in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. Rowley takes pains to assure that both the wines and the oysters are served at nearly identical temperatures in each venue.

- Regardless of producer or appellation, you likely will be on fairly secure ground if you order a sauvignon blanc or a pinot grigio/pinot gris when you're about to dive into a platter of raw oysters. Of the 20 finalists, 14 were sauvignon blanc, three were pinot grigio/pinot gris.

- Seven of the finalists are out of the Pacific Northwest, the rest from California, including two local representatives, the Lange Twins 2006 Lodi Sauvignon Blanc ($13) and the Lucchesi Vineyards & Winery 2007 Sierra Foothills Sauvignon Blanc ($16). (Lucchesi is in Grass Valley.)

I'll soon shove off for San Francisco and the 14th annual Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition, one of the more enlightening and entertaining judgings of the year. And filling. That's because the wines will be judged in a natural context, which is with food, a logistical impossibility for most competitions.

For this judging, however, coordinator Jon Rowley limits the wines to one style - cold, dry, crisp and, by my experience, white - and one kind of food, Kumamoto oysters. You eat an oyster, then taste a wine, looking for what Rowley calls the "bliss factor" - a clean finish and a crisp taste that doesn't get in the way of the flavor of the next oyster.

A record 200 wines were entered in this year's competition, but we'll be tasting just the 20 finalists. Earlier, five judges at Rowley's home base in Seattle spent a week tasting all 200 candidates with oysters, gradually narrowing the field to the final 20.

This week, individual panels in Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco will taste the wines with oysters, after which Rowley will tabulate all the scores to determine 10 equal winners of the 2008 "Oyster Award." Fellow panelists in San Francisco are to include KCBS Radio food and wine editor Narsai David, San Francisco Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonne, Wine Spectator editor-at-large Harvey Steiman, veteran wine writers Bob Thompson of Napa Valley and Millie Howie of Sonoma County, and John Finger, president of Hog Island Oyster Co. of Point Reyes Station.

If Rowley follows his usual pattern, he will kick off the competition by reading the passage that inspired the exercise, a poetic tribute to the savoring of oysters and wine, from Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast."

Tassina Nicole Placencia is in Paris right now, but her husband Ruben still is in Sacramento, working to add a coffee and tea salon to their 19th Street fashion and decor shop Le Petit Paris.

"We're trying to bring back community," he says of the project, which he hopes to have finished in time for crowds at the city's next Second Saturday, May 10. "We want a friendly place where people can sit and chat," he adds. "The coffee will get the chattering going."

At least at first, the salon will serve just cofee, tea and pastries. Eventually, the menu could expand to also include sandwiches and salads.

Thirty Champagnes by the glass? What is Ali Mackani thinking? Big, again. Mackani, who in the fall of 2005 opened the electric Restaurant 55 Degrees along Capitol Mall, is close to launching his next ambitious project, Lounge on 20, where the beverage menu is to include 30 Champagnes by the glass.

Lounge on 20, which Mackani hopes to open in early June, and possibly as soon as late May, will occupy the southeast portion of the MARRS building at 20th and K in midtown Sacramento. MARRS - Midtown Art Retail Restaurant Scene - already is home to the Solomon Dubnick Gallery, restaurants Luigi's Slice and Azul, and shops DV8 and Newsbeat.

Lounge on 20 is to be a hybrid restaurant and wine bar where the focus will be on socialization. "If you know the Redroom Room of the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, that's the kind of interaction we want," says Mackani. The conviviality will be fueled by the Champagnes, an equally extensive list of wines by the glass, creative cocktails, community tables, and a New American menu whereby dishes can be ordered in three sizes - "a taste, a small plate or a shared tray for three or four people," says Mackani. "We want to promote socializing over food and drink."

The place will be big, seating up to 170 inside, another 80 on the deck. Mackani is being assisted in putting together Lounge on 20 by two key principals of Restaurant 55 Degrees, executive chef Luc Dendievel and manager Kassidy Harris. Mackani hopes to finalize the hiring of a chef de cuisine for the new place this week. The opening of Lounge on 20 will mean no change for Restaurant 55 Degrees, he adds.

As reported here a week ago, the high-rise boutique-hotel The Citizen going in to the former Cal Western Life building at 10th and J in downtown Sacramento will include a large and stylish restaurant that the hotel's operators, Joie de Vivre Hospitality of San Francisco, hope will appeal to Sacramentans as much as to out-of-town visitors.

And as we also reported, we couldn't say much else about the restaurant because the folks of Joie de Vivre said they wouldn't release the name of the restaurant and its operator until later. What they should have said was that they wouldn't release the name of the restaurant to The Bee until later. They were quick to tell the Sacramento Business Journal that the name would be Grange, meant to suggest rural grange halls and to evoke images of local farmers and ranchers, which Joie de Vivre intends to use for its take on California Cuisine. (The Citizen's restaurant, says Joie de Vivre publicist Dawn Shalhoup, was almost named Tavern, but cooler corporate heads apparently concluded that that spoke more of old cowtown Sacramento than the fashionable new city.)

If anyone at Joie de Vivre was aware that Grange also is the name of the restaurant at the Hilton Hotel in Adelaide, they apparently didn't give it much heed, indicates Shalhoup. In all likelihood, the Australian Grange is named after Penfolds Grange, Australia's most noble and revered wine, not the homey symbol of the American West.

Either way, Joie de Vivre could have a problem on its hands. Given how quick so many corporations are to prevent what they see as trademark infringement, I have to wonder whether the Hilton honchos will simply look the other way while a competing hotel chain appropriates for one of its own restaurants a name they proudly adopted long ago. Nothing like a little citizen vs. citizen litigation to stir up publicity.

Monica Deconinck, who with her husband Marc runs the fine French restaurant Le Bilig in Auburn, has weighed in on a Washington Port article for which a link was posted here earlier this week.

The story tells how restaurateurs are coping with rising operating costs just as diners are cutting back on their own expenses during these tremulous economic times. A common maneuver among restaurateurs, the article notes, is to reduce portion sizes.

The Deconincks will have none of that. "We have never measured or weighed ingredients, and although it may be a poor business practice, it is not in our mentality to 'calculate' how much of something will go into a dish to make it financially rewarding. Cooking is and always will be about generosity for us," says Monica Deconinck in an email.

In acknowledging that restaurateurs are facing more challenges in trying to stay afloat financially, the Deconincks are taking approaches other than reducing portion sizes, raising prices and the like. They've expanded their hours, started to open on Tuesdays, introduced a fixed price ($22) dinner Tuesday through Thursday, more aggressively marketed their catering and takeout, and stepped up their slate of cooking classes and entertainment. Monica Deconinck long has taught Saturday morning cooking classes for children, while Marc Deconinck now is teaching "men only" and "bistro classics" cooking classes a few times each month. Their entertainment schedule includes a Spanish flamenco night May 16, with guitar music, student dancers, tapas and wine.

"No change in quality or quantity. We're just working more hours and being more available for our customers. (And never stopping to calculate our hourly wage!)," she concludes.

Let's end the week with a couple of hopefully helpful notes for fellow wine enthusiasts:

- If you still have a bottle of the Shafer Vineyards 1986 Napa Valley Hillside Select in your cellar, this might be the weekend to pull it out and polish it off. To judge by one we tasted Wednesday night, it's showing well and isn't likely to improve. The fruit is more austere than concentrated, but it has wonderful aromatics and has hung on to its fine form. When the wine was released 20 years ago, critic Robert Parker Jr. predicted that "it should age nicely for up to a decade." It's lasted longer than that, and isn't showing signs of falling apart imminently, but in the future probably won't provide any more impact than it is right now. Decant and serve with lighter cuisine. The tasting included several other Shafer cabernet sauvignons, though no other Hillside Selects. The favorite in the rest of the field looked to be the 2002 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, largely for its fleshier blackberry and cherry fruit and softer tannins, though a current release, the 2005 Napa Valley Stags Leap District One Point Five, also had its partisans for the youthfulness and juiciness of its fruit, its complexity and its finish, the freshest and longest of the night. Though the alcohol levels of the wines rose over the years, from 13.5 percent for the 1986 Hillside Select to 14.9 for the 2005 One Point Five, Shafer remains a Napa Valley brand that still can be counted on for grasping with balance and style a sense of place and personality, which is the sunshine of Stags Leap and the focus and commitment of the Shafer family.

- I'm about convinced that the "Sideways" effect - a boost in the popularity of pinot noir at the expense of merlot, so lacerated in the movie - actually has been benefical for merlot. The film's dismissal of the varietal, coupled with other subsequent criticism and a slump in the wine's popularity, apparently has rattled vintners into paying more attention to merlot. At least, I've been more impressed by younger merlots I've been tasting this year. The latest evidence arrived last night during a dinner touting the wines of the Napa Valley's Beringer Vineyards at the Sutter Club. Not that Beringer ever has taken merlot lightly. Its Howell Mountain merlot long has been one of the valley's truly iconic wines. It, however, wasn't poured last night. But the Beringer Vineyards 2004 Knight's Valley Alluvium Red was. A blend of 74 percent merlot, 23 percent cabernet sauvignon and dashes of malbec and cabernet franc, the Alluvium was alluring in smell and captivating in flavor - fat with suggestions of plums, sprightly with refreshing acidity, and round and supple in feel. It had the structure and fruit to go with the challenging dish with which it was poured - spears of asparagus wrapped with strips of smoked duck prosciutto - but it also had the assertiveness and depth to stand up to rack of lamb crusted with black sea salt and pepper and accompanied with dried apricots and cherries. Indeed, the Alluvium went better with the lamb, I felt, than the wine chosen specifically to accompany the meat, the Beringer 2004 Napa Valley Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. That's no slam on the bright cabernet, generous with oak, just that the Alluvium was a more compelling companion for the busy huskiness of the lamb. The Alluvium, incidentally, generally is selling for between $18 and $22 in the Sacramento area.

Disquieting news out of Sutter Creek today: The convivial and homey Chatterbox Cafe again is quiet. "The cook quit abruptly yesterday, there's no replacement on the horizon, and I have other work commitments. It would be a great little business for an owner operator," said co-owner Joe Rohde in a brief email.

The Chatterbox has gone through rough patches in the past, though for the most part it's been a community landmark for more than 60 years, celebrated for its cinnamon rolls, burgers and pies, among other draws.

This closure also looks like it will be brief. I just got another email from Rohde, who says he's making progress in lining up a replacement cook and could have the place reopened as soon as tomorrow. Nonetheless, he and his partners are ready to give up the cafe's demanding hours and hope they can find an owner/operator to continue the Chatterbox tradition. That willingness and about $85,000 should get the job done. For more information, contact Rohde at jrohde@thinksmartinc.com.

With The Bee's cafe closed for the day, I headed out to weigh in on the latest raging battle in the burger wars. I only had to go as far as Broadway, home to both a Jack in the Box and a Carl's Jr.

The folks of Carl's Jr. are accusing Jack of ripping off their enduring Western Bacon Cheeseburger by introducing an almost identical BBQ Bacon Sirloin Burger. Naturally, I had to try them both.

Basically, each is a burger sandwiched with orange cheese, bacon strips, onion rings and barbecue sauce. And frankly, my palate had difficulty deciding which is the best. Jack's clearly has the superior patty, a thick cut of rich ground sirloin seasoned with just the right doses of salt and pepper. The onion rings were big, hot and sweet, the bacon thin but almost crisp. The Carl's Jr. by far tasted smokier and saltier, with a sturdier and more flavorful bun. The bacon also was thin, and limp. In both cases, the cheese was forgettable.

I began to ponder other factors to help me decide. The Jack in the Box has more parking. Carl's Jr. has a napkin dispenser on each table. The Jack in the Box burger costs $5.09 before taxes, $5.48 after. The Carl's Jr. costs $2.99 before taxes, $3.22 after.

Nutritionally, they're virtually in a dead heat. The Jack in the Box has 1,120 calories, 24 grams of saturated fat, 190 milligrams of cholesterol, and 2,520 milligrams of sodium. The Carl's Jr. has 1,130 calories, 28 grams of saturated fat, 150 milligrams of cholesterol, and 2,540 milligrams of sodium. No, I didn't run into anyone from the Center for Science in the Public Interest at either venue.

Carl's Jr., however, gets the nod for environmental consciousness. Its Western Bacon Cheeseburger comes wrapped in paper, and that's it. At Jack in the Box, the BBQ Bacon Sirloin Burger not only was wrapped in paper, it was in a box in a bag. (At both places I said I'd be eating on the premises.)

I'm not convinced that these occasional dustups between competing burger chains are anything more than a publicity stunt orchestrated by their advertising agencies, especially during economically shaky times like these. Still, the folks at Carl's Jr. sound not only unflattered by Jack's imitation but downright bitter. "Jack must have decided to turn their new $150-million 'Innovation Center' into an employee lounge," snorts Brad Haley, the executive vice president of marketing for Carl's Jr.

In addition, Carl's Jr. tomorrow will give customers a free Western Bacon Cheeseburger when they purchse any version of the burger, but you will have to get to Eureka, Redding, Chico or Reno to take advantage of the offer in this area; Sacramento branches of Carl's Jr. aren't participating in the promotion.

On a brighter note, Carl's Jr. has pulled from retirement its iconic mechanical-bull TV commercial from 2004, featuring the beat of Foghat's "Slow Ride."

That alone gives Carl's Jr. the edge in the burger sweepstakes this time around, but before I cast my final vote I'd like to hear what others think is the superior burger.

If you're a restaurateur squeezed between rising food expenses and guests looking to cut costs as fears of recession intensify, what you going to do?

Well, you can rewrite your menu so prices don't stand out so much. Or you could increase the price of a $7.95 dish to $7.99; who's going to notice that? Or you could start to use smaller plates so a smaller serving really doesn't look smaller.

These are a few of the tactics that restaurateurs are learning as they try to survive these challenging economic times. To learn more about penny-pinching changes that could be under way at your favorite bistro, take a look at this David Segal feature from The Washington Post.

It wouldn't be the choice of wine, would it? Pope Benedict XVI is skipping his scheduled 81st birthday party with President Bush at the White House tomorrow night.

Word of the unexplained change in schedule materialized as principals of Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery in Sonoma County were crowing that their 2005 Dutton Ranch Chardonnay would be poured for the bash in the East Room.

The wine has been described variously as a typical California chardonnay - rich, ripe and oaky. Maybe the pope's palate runs more to white wines lighter and more refreshling, like gruner veltliner, pinot grigio or riesling. Clearly, he isn't a teetotaler, according to a New York Times article early in his papacy. Quoting friends, cardinals, biographers and the like, the article says that while the pope is especially fond of lemonade and orange juice he also savors wines from Italy's Piedmont region and the German beer Franziskaner Weissbier. Quick, alert the White House cellar keeper, maybe this party can be saved, after all.

Sacramento's first high-rise luxury boutique hotel isn't to open until mid-November, but a couple of rooms already are basically finished, we found on a tour through the structure the other day. From one, you can look down on the Capitol as you shower. From virtually every room, in fact, the view of the Sacramento skyline is spectacular. Almost makes you want to move away so you can return to book a room.

The hotel is The Citizen, taking over the historic 14-story former Cal Western Life building at 10th and J streets. It will have 197 rooms, five penthouses and nearly 15,000 square feet of event space, including a seventh-floor terrace bound to become the hottest party-venue in town, and not just because it's on the southwest side of the 1926 building.

I joined the tour in hopes of finding out about the hotel's restaurant, but didn't learn much more than it will include a two-story glass-enclosed wine vault stocked with 2,000 bottles, a principal dining room with 22-foot-high ceilings, an industrial look but sophisticated feel, an adjoining lounge and mezzanine with a law-library ambience, and a towering "jewel-box" loggia along the 10th Street side of the building.

The principals of Joie de Vivre Hospitality of San Francisco, the hotelier pulling together the project, say they have an operator and a name for the restaurant, but for now they aren't revealing anything more. Joie de Vivre operates some 30 other boutique hotels, most of them with restaurants that are casual in attitude and contemporary in cuisine, including American Restaurant & Bar at Hotel Vitale, Cafe Andree at Hotel Rex, and Saha Restaurant at Hotel Carlton, all in San Francisco. Whatever the restaurant is to be called at The Citizen, it's to open with the hotel this fall.

Maybe it's going through a funky stage, I thought. "Is it a merlot?" asked my wife, who prefers to taste wines blind, then speculate on varietal and the like, almost invariably being spot on. We were off to an uncertain start with a wine that shouldn't be at all ambiguous, being a new zinfandel out of Amador County.

What's more, it was made by some of the more inventive characters in the wine trade, the guys of Rebel Wine Co. in Napa Valley, responsible for the Three Thieves and Bandit lines of value varietals. I'm a fan of their generally environmentally sensitive packaging, their bargain-oriented marketing, their unpretentious attitude, and their direct winemaking.

But their latest project, the Wingnut 2005 Amador County Zinfandel ($13), was leaving me baffled. It was coming off as if growers in Amador County had sent their grapes to a finishing school in Napa Valley. There, the usually swashbuckling attitude of Amador County zinfandel got wrung out of the fruit and replaced with a kind of politeness that while appropriate in some circles isn't customarily expected at a table where Amador County zinfandel is poured. With its typical brashness, Amador County zinfandel can be counted on to stimulate the really interesting dinner topics of religion, politics and sex, but this interpretation is too well-mannered for that. It's cleanly made, all right, with modulated fresh fruit flavors and a readily accessible texture, but it isn't going to interrupt any conversations with its authority.

Nonetheless, I look forward to trying another bottle. Maybe with a little time it will bloom with more color and drama. I do like the pricing, and even more I like the back story. The principals of Rebel Wine Co. recruited student designers at the Portfolio Center, a communication-arts school in Atlanta, to create the packaging. The striking label, by Dave Whitling, who won a scholarship for his efforts, captures the "loopy, weird, oddball" way the Rebels see themselves and the attitude they want to represent in a wine called Wingnut. Another Portfolio Center designer, Rachel Strubinger, came up with the notion of stamping the cork in each bottle with a bit of unconventional wisdom. Ours said: "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. I like the sentiment, but I think the Rebels may have missed another novel marketing twist by not putting the wine in bottles with wingnut screwcaps.

A reader wants to know why we don't write more about beer in The Bee's Taste section. While I try to think of a response I'll tip him off to some beer news:

- On Monday, Peter Hoey of Sacramento Brewing Company will tap a keg of a truly unusual beer, Saucerfull of Merkins, made by the Paso Robles brewery Firestone Walker. According to Rick Sellers of Pacific Brew News, only 80 kegs of the beer were made. It's a blended winter ale, mostly oatmeal stout with a portion of Belgian-inspired strong dark ale. It's been variously described as "a dark winter stout with light spicy notes, full silky body and bourbon accents" and "dessert in a glass." You can read more about it at Seller's blog. Hoey says the keg will be tapped when the Oasis branch of Sacramento Brewing Company - 7811 Madison Ave. - opens at 11:30 a.m. Monday. Plans to tap a second keg at the brewery's Town and Country Village site are uncertain. The beer will sell for $5 a pint.

- The new "lounge menu" at the restaurant Hawks in Granite Bay - housemade charcuterie with grilled bread ($12), macaroni and Gruyere ($8), onion beignets ($5) and the like - is complimented by an enticing beer menu. In addition to the predictable Bud ($4) and Stella Artois ($5), there's several brews not often seen hereabouts, like the Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar ($14), the Leyerth Urthel Vlaemse Bock from Belgium ($22) and the North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stourt ($6). Hawks is at 5530 Douglas Blvd., Granite Bay.

Rick Mahan is about to combine his twin interests in slow food and slow transportation, but to do it his life will pick up speed. Mahan, chef/owner of The Waterboy restaurant in midtown Sacramento, is preparing a second restaurant. He's signed a lease to open One Speed in Folsom Boulevard quarters occupied most recently by Cafe Milazzo, just east of East Lawn Memorial Cemetery.

The name One Speed was inspired by his long affection for old-fashioned Schwinn bicycles. Mahan also is keen on the principles and goals of the Slow Food movement, which favors the preservation of culinary traditions over fast food and fast living.

One Speed, which he hopes to open as soon as July, will be more casual and less expensive than The Waterboy. The menu will emphasize pizzas, pastas and antipasti, with just a few daily entrees. The restaurant will be open only for dinner and for weekend breakfast.

He anticipates no changes for The Waterboy, which will continue to emphasize the foods of northern Italy and southern France in an environment more upscale than what he sees for One Speed.

Is Gov. Schwarzenegger eating out less in Sacramento and more in San Francisco? As reported in today's Bee, the governor is urging state lawmakers to find imaginative new ways to draw in revenue without calling the sources taxes.

"Coperto," anyone? In Italy, you run into this term on dining bills; basically, it means cover or service charge. Since earlier this year the Italian restaurant Delfina in San Francisco has been appropriating "coperto" for a new surcharge levied on diners to help restaurateurs pay for a city-mandated health-care program. At Delfina, the coperto is a flat $1.25 per guest.

Other San Francisco restaurants are adopting similar tactics. A Sacramentan just back from dinner at the new Epic Roasthouse along The Embarcadero sent me a photocopy of his party's bill, which included a 4 percent "health care" charge of $14.42 on a total that without the levy would have been $392.37. "To provide the best health care for our employees a 4% health charge is included," noted the bill.

He dined with a San Franciscan who said similar additional fees are becoming common in the city's restaurants, with patrons often responding by deducting the cost of the health-care levy from the tip they otherwise would leave. If that's the case, don't expect such "copertos" to last for long. Inevitably, restaurateurs will respond to their additional costs as they always have, by raising across-the-board the price of their menu items, thereby not so obviously alarming guests.

Or, giving the governor any new ideas.

After an absence of about 10 years, legendary Sacramento restaurateur Eppie Johnson is returning to food service. Johnson, who during his 35-year career in hospitality owned 27 restaurants as well as hotels and tennis clubs, has leased Horseshoe Bar Grill in Loomis and hopes to have it reopened by mid-May.

"I kind of miss the business," said Johnson this afternoon. He's bringing in as the restaurant's manager his nephew, Richard A. Bruce, who he first hired as a 13-year-old to police the parking lot and tend sprinklers at his Eppie's Restaurant at 30th and N streets in midtown Sacramento. After that, Bruce became a fry cook, went off to study at the Culinary Institute of America (he graduated in 1972, the last year the school was at Yale University before moving to Hyde Park, N.Y.), and launched his own restaurateuring career, which has included startup roles and high managerial positions with such chains at Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Elephant Bar, Hilton Hotels and Muriel Hemingway's group of Sam's restaurants.

For the past nine years, Bruce has been involved in restaurateuring in Las Vegas, but now is relocating to Roseville. Horseshoe Bar Grill will be rechristened New Horseshoe Bar Grill, with a "California bistro" atmosphere and a menu that features "recognizable, sustainable, seasonal and organic" ingredients. "It will be good, basic, hearty food," said Bruce. His executive chef will be Robert Facciani, who has been working in Minnesota and Colorado, but more recently at Sacramento hotels.

Over nine years, Horseshoe Bar Grill evolved from casual bistro to destination dinner house, but two years ago, the owners, Dave Rosenaur and Karen Fox, who still own the building, closed the restaurant after they found themselves spending more time in San Diego County. "Running restaurants long distance is not a smart thing to do. It's difficult enough even when you are there," Fox said at the time.

This will be a busy spring for Johnson, who also is gearing up for the 35th running of Eppie's Great Race, "the world's oldest triathlon," to be staged July 19 on and along the American River.

By eating out one day later this month, Sacramentans can help raise awareness and funds in the fight against HIV and AIDS. On April 24, more than a dozen Sacramento-area restaurants will donate proceeds from their sales to the midtown agency CARES, the Center for AIDS Research, Education and Services.

In the past, Dine Out for Life - this is its 17th year - has raised between $10,000 and $15,000 for CARES, said Julie Kennedy, who is in charge of fund development for the agency. On or about April 24, restaurants in 47 cities will join the drive. They customarily donate 25 percent of their food sales for the day to a local agency involved in HIV and AIDS work, but some restaurants also donate a portion of their wine, beer and spirits sales, said Kennedy.

CARES will dispatch representatives to each participating restaurant to hand out information and to be available to answer questions about HIV and AIDS.

The participating restaurants in and about Sacramento include Mulvaney's Building & Loan, Paesanos, Dragonfly and Lucca. A complete list can be found here.

What with the grass getting taller, barns jutting up like Sierra peaks, and vines budding with new life, spring in the Sierra foothills provided the perfect backdrop for this weekend's 17th annual Passport Weekend sponsored by the El Dorado Winery Association.

I'll be reporting on some new wineries in the area in a forthcoming Dunne on Wine column in The Bee, but first a couple of quick impressions:

- The food was never better, with the most impressive fare of the day dished out at Busby Cellars along Grizzly Flat Road of Somerset, home to this grand old barn. Off the Vine Catering Co