After nearly 100 years, a Sacramento classic is closing. Here’s the back story on Espanol
This story was originally published as part of a longer story in 2019. Espanol’s ownership announced on Facebook the restaurant will soon close. Here is our original story from 2019.
Perry Luigi starts prepping lunch and dinner in the Espanol kitchen at 3 a.m., making meatballs, tasting sauces, layering lasagna.
When customers ask him for a recipe, he’s glad to oblige and even offers to demonstrate how it’s done – if they join him at 3 a.m. to help. “Nobody’s taken me up on it yet,” he said.
The Espanol opened in 1923 as a Basque eatery specifically for the Spanish sheepherders who lived in the boardinghouse rooms above it, at 11th and J streets.
It went through several ownerships and relocations, moving in 1965 to its present site on Folsom Boulevard. Frank “Babe” Luigi bought it in 1959, changed the cuisine to Italian and then sold it in 1988 to his son, Perry, who co-owns it with his sister, Paula Serrano.
“I came in to help out my dad in the early 1980s (after graduating from Sac State) and I’ve been here ever since,” said Luigi, 61, who once worked 100-hour weeks but is now “so low-key most people don’t know who I am.”
Last October, the Espanol was honored with a Burnett Award from the Sacramento History Alliance in recognition of its longevity. Other recipients included Biba, Frank Fat’s and Corti Bros. Market.
“We’re not a restaurant that changes much,” Luigi said. “We stick with what we do.”
That would include pasta and eggplant parmesan, chicken cacciatore and corned beef and cabbage. Shades of boardinghouse grub.
The minestrone soup is a standing hit. “I’ll go through 30 gallons each day,” Luigi said.
Espanol is best known for its family-style, multi-course lunches and dinners at reasonable prices. Served, of course, on red-checked tablecloths.
“When we bought it from my father 31 years ago, I morphed the recipes to what I liked and kept them the same after that,” Luigi said. “They aren’t written down, most of them are in my head. I love the cooking part, but 10 years ago I thought. ‘It’s kind of sad that I know exactly what I’ll be doing at 3:45 Tuesday morning. I’ll be putting turkeys in the oven.’ But it’s OK, I’m still doing it.”
Being in a city with a vital restaurant scene, is there any pressure to modernize?
“Sometimes I think I want to compete, but we’re in our own niche and I’d rather stay there,” he said. “If we changed, we’d be just another place in the mix and not the Espanol anymore.”