What restaurants had hits in 2019 and what lies in store for the Sacramento food scene?
As 2020 churns into action, we’ve left behind an eventful decade in the Sacramento restaurant scene. But you might be forgiven for thinking 2019 was a little quiet. With relatively few ambitious downtown openings, the closure of some longtime stalwarts, and the passing of two towering figures — Biba Caggiano and Lina Fat — the dining scene at best maintained itself, rather than growing or stretching.
There were plenty of good things to eat in the places that did open, and in this piece I’ll list some of the most memorable flavors and dishes I tasted while reviewing restaurants for The Bee. But before we get to the dish, let’s take a look at openings — and those closures, which included such standbys as Esquire Grill, Sandra Dee’s and David English’s highly regarded The Press Bistro. And the beloved Cafe Rolle closed just after the new year. According to our reader poll, the humble Jimboy’s Tacos was the biggest loss, followed by The Graduate in Davis. Since the time the poll was taken, there has been a further rash of closures and retirements, with losses including places as different as Hot Italian and Jim-Denny’s.
A flurry of establishments did open downtown, especially at DOCO — but many were chains or smaller, lunch-focused places. No major white-tablecloth or date-night restaurants opened downtown in 2019. I’ve been writing about restaurants in Sacramento since 2004, and to be frank, I can’t remember a year with so few major debuts — or so few controversies.
One place I reviewed early in 2019, Camden Spit & Larder, opened in late 2018. (The Bee’s policy is to wait two to three months prior to visiting restaurants for reviews.) Another interesting late 2018 opening I reviewed this year, Tiger, quickly backed off its ambitious dim-sum-style service featuring carts. It’s a concept that may have been hard to sustain in the up-and-down business of downtown after dark.
Solomon’s Delicatessen opened in the summer after lengthy delays (shortly after closing its first location in Davis). It offers an evening bar menu and a private room. It’s ambitious in its concept and aesthetics but is distinctly casual. Other notable openings downtown included ultra-casual Pizza Supreme Being and vintage-diner reboot Morning Fork, Bawk Fried Chicken on R Street, and, recently, DOCO’s Polanco Cantina and Billy Ngo’s ramen-focused Kodaiko (neither of which I’ve yet reviewed). We gave you readers the chance to vote on your favorite downtown opening in a recent poll, and your pick was Morning Fork, with Polanco Cantina a respectable second.
It’s not surprising the dining scene has been short on splashy new openings. For starters, rents and labor costs continue to rise, making big ventures prohibitive for many restaurateurs. Business downtown is still spotty after dark on evenings there’s not a big event to draw diners. Moreover, although the economy is strong now, times are uncertain and it seems like every day we hear warnings of a downturn ahead, which makes opening a pricey place a scary prospect.
On a more conceptual level, however, I get the sense that Sacramento, as a dining region, is waiting for the next big thing after Farm to Fork, which dominated the last decade. Nobody seems to know where we’re going next. I thought we might be seeing the stirrings of a new trend with a few places (such as Canon and Beast and Bounty) that were treating plant-based foods seriously, alongside more meat-heavy cuisine, and exploring global flavors, but if it was ever developing, it seems to have stalled, especially with the much-lamented, abrupt closure of acclaimed downtown vegetarian spot Mother — though some of its signature dishes are now on an expanded menu at sister restaurant Empress.
I’d love to see Sacramento’s huge diversity of cuisines show up in the fine dining scene — but only if the chefs and restaurateurs are diversified along with the cuisines. Currently, restaurants are largely divided into upper-echelon places with a new American bent (often with French or Italian influences). But the restaurants that represent such Sacramento communities as Vietnamese, Korean, Mexican, Middle Eastern, and many more with vibrant flavors and distinctive techniques are sidelined into the “cheap eats” category.
It would speak well of Sacramento and make for vibrant, exciting restaurant scene if we could muster the vision, funding and support for chefs from these cuisines to shake up our dining landscape at all price points. Not through appropriation or through existing establishments borrowing a few herbs or techniques, but with a kind of culinary analogue to the literary “Own Voices” movement. Own Flavors, maybe?
A key sector of the restaurant market that has developed unevenly is midpriced neighborhood restaurants, the kind of place residents can rely on for a good weeknight meal. There’s been huge growth in this category over the last decade or so, but that growth has been lopsided, leaving some neighborhoods (cough, cough, East Sacramento) oversaturated and others, such as Land Park, South Land Park, the Pocket, and many more still underserved.
That said, some of the more exciting developments in dining this year came in outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. In our poll of reader faves among restaurants outside downtown, Southpaw Sushi was the runaway winner with more than 50% of the vote. Fair Oaks saw a new project, Shangri-la, that had more aesthetic ambition than most things downtown. Elk Grove, in particular, is blowing up with openings in a diverse array of cuisines, including Malaysian restaurant Melaka (one of my favorite new places of 2019). Closer to the downtown core, Oak Park’s Fixins Soul Kitchen was a hit for its fried chicken and other homey, richly savory dishes, such as the oxtails.
Most memorable dishes of 2019
Both those oxtails and the juicy, crisply golden chicken wings at Fixins make my list of most memorable dishes of my dining-critic year. What else stands out from a year of trying as many new Sacramento restaurants as I could? I’ll pick eight more to make an even 10, in no particular order. It was a good year for soul food; the crunchy, light fried catfish at NKG Soul Food in north Sacramento leaps to mind as well.
Another great fish dish came from the other side of the region and from a different culinary idiom entirely: the char-blistered whole branzino at Shangri-la, with pickled golden raisins and the toasty pop of almonds.
Swerving south to Elk Grove, the roti murtabak, flaky bread stuffed with beef or chicken, at Melaka Kitchen, was like nothing I’d had before. At nearby Green Papaya — a Lao-Thai spot on the edge of Elk Grove that got its start as a food truck — I loved the nam kao, crispy rice salad: spicy, tart with lime, crunchy from the deep-fried rice and a little funky from cured pork. A dumpling roundup I did early in the year uncovered my favorite soup dumplings in town, at I-Shanghai Delight in Old Sacramento, which boasts ultra-tender skins wobblingly full of savory broth.
Earlier I mentioned that Camden Spit & Larder opened in 2018, but I reviewed it in 2019, and thus their excellent, classic steak tartare and puffy, crusty popovers are fair game here. And speaking of baked goods, Faria Bakery, which opened its brick-and-mortar business this year in Oak Park after a run as a farmers market darling, may not be a full-service restaurant, but its refined pastries are fantastic, especially the almond croissant, with its shatter-crisp outer layers and an almost gooey, lavish almond filling.
Those tastes, which come not just from all around the region but also, ultimately, from a lot of different parts of the world, give a nice indication of what the Sacramento dining scene is capable of. We have the raw materials — in both people and our vaunted produce — to push the dining scene into more exciting directions than the broad trends of 2019 revealed. What will 2020 bring? Stay tuned.
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 4:00 AM.