Gone, not forgotten: Remembering the landmark restaurants Sacramento lost in 2020

Pencil in restaurant operators atop the long list of people eager for 2020 to end.

The year began with a rash of closures partially spurred by annual rent hikes and rising costs of business such as minimum wage. The dreary winter was just starting to wrap up when the COVID-19 pandemic struck California and shelter-in-place orders shut down table service.

Dozens more restaurants closed over the summer. As drive-thru lines remained steady, places that thrived on sit-down meals like diners or dinner houses struggled to stay afloat. Downtown Sacramento restaurants were particularly hard-hit as state employees began working remotely, Golden 1 Center events were canceled and the homelessness crisis worsened.

The financial bleeding doesn’t figure to stop anytime soon. Record-high COVID-19 rates have shut down indoor and outdoor dining across California, and the recently proposed federal stimulus package contained little for small restaurants. Holiday parties have switched to Zoom this year, and catering revenue has plummeted accordingly.

Of all the Sacramento restaurants that threw in the towel in 2020, these five may be missed the most.

Bud’s Buffet

Bud’s was food for the working stiff. As downtown Sacramento gained and lost sparkly headline-grabbers, the sandwich shop at 1016 10th St. was an oasis of consistency for Capitol staff and state workers in need of a filling, simple lunch.

Elected officials came and went, the governor’s seat switched from Democrat to Republican and back again, but customers chowed down on Bud’s affordable yet towering hot and cold sandwiches filled with house-cured meats for 32 years.

Cruelly, ironically, bittersweetly, Sacramento’s affection for Bud’s only became fully clear after the Ziyadeh family announced the impending closure in mid-September. Bud’s last few days were marked by hours-long lines as current and former downtown employees, including Mayor Darrell Steinberg, waited for one last French dip or meatball sub.

That swarm had previously evened out into steady traffic when all those customers worked around the Capitol. Orders stopped coming when the shelter-in-place order sent those people home, and bills began accumulating. The Ziyadehs hope to eventually reopen at another location, though, and the $3,305 donated to Bud’s GoFundMe should help pay down its debt.

Español Italian Restaurant

The family-style place with the confusing name made it 97 years, longer than any other active restaurant, before closing for good on Aug. 3. “The Español” opened at 114 J St. in 1923 as a boarding house for Basque sheepherders, who enjoyed hearty meals like oxtail stew, pig knuckles and lamb chops after long days at nearby ranches, according to the restaurant’s website.

Former Sacramento County supervisor and heavyweight champion boxing manager Ancil Hoffman bought the building in the early 1930s, and Español began attracting outside customers. It moved into the Commercial Hotel at Third and I streets in 1952, and new ownership later that decade introduced Italian food to the menu.

But most people today knew of Español at 5723 Folsom Blvd., where it relocated in 1965 amid Old Sacramento renovations. Entrees such as fried chicken with garlic or eggplant Parmesan came accompanied by tureens of minestrone soup, salad, pasta (if not ordered as the main) and choice of ice cream or cannoli.

Dining at Español was a slow-paced trip into Sacramento’s yesteryears, and unlike many other restaurants, revenue normally surged in winter as groups huddled indoors over bowls of soup and spaghetti. It wasn’t built for the takeout-only economy mandated by shelter-in-place orders, as second-generation owner Perry Luigi noted in a July interview with The Sacramento Bee.

Mother

Mother only last five years at 1023 K St., proof that time isn’t all one needs to make an impact.

The concept of an all-vegetarian restaurant was still somewhat remarkable when former Ella Dining Room & Bar executive chef Michael Thiemann and his wife Lisa, a local front-of-house industry veteran whose long list of past stops includes Frank Fat’s and 58 Degrees & Holding Co., opened Mother in 2014 alongside rising star chef Matt Masera.

This wasn’t your mother telling you to eat your vegetables, though. Mother was fun, and not always particularly healthy. Dishes like the fried mushroom po’boy, the nut burger and the bean-based chili verde showed skeptics the region’s bounty of fresh produce was enough for a meal to stand on its own. Mother paved the way for future all-vegan concepts like Burger Patch and Babes Ice Cream & Donuts.

Then at the beginning of the year, just eight months removed from receiving a Bib Gourmand in California’s first statewide Michelin Guide, Mother shut down. Some menu items moved two doors over to sister restaurant Empress Tavern, but that’s been closed as well since August. Will it ever reopen? Time will tell, though building owner Bob Emerick’s stake in Empress is a slight reassurance.

Biba

Biba Caggiano had no experience as a chef when she moved from New York to Sacramento in 1978. Eight years later, she opened what was likely the city’s most influential restaurant of the late 20th century.

The Bologna-born matriarch’s dinner parties and pasta-making classes with ingredients from San Francisco or Corti Brothers led to TV appearances, which led to cookbooks, which led to her namesake restaurant opening in October 1986. Her star rose through the “Biba’s Italian Kitchen” cooking show on TLC and the Discovery Channel, and, combined with the restaurant at 2801 Capitol Ave., elevated Sacramento’s culinary scene to a national audience.

Local culinary luminaries like Rick Mahan, Randy Paragary and Patrick Mulvaney drew inspiration from Biba, which emphasized fresh, locally-sourced high-end food decades before the farm-to-fork movement gained steam. The restaurant’s 10-layer lasagna, sold out nearly every time the two days per week it was available, felt a million times lighter than the potluck staple.

Caggiano’s last few years were sadly shrouded in a battle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, though she and her husband Vincent still ate at the restaurant most days. She died in her East Sacramento home at age 82 in August 2019.

Many wondered how long Biba the restaurant would last without Biba the person. The answer came in early May, when Caggiano’s daughter told The Sacramento Bee she and her siblings were closing due to rising business costs, a dearth of hands-on ownership and a sharp sales decline without indoor dining.

Jim-Denny’s

Forget farm-to-fork: Jim-Denny’s never even fully embraced the 1950s-ish concept that simple burgers and fries were supposed to be fast food. It was the kind of greasy spoon that still made milkshakes with ice cream, somewhere people needed to sit and soak in to properly experience.

“Enter as strangers, leave as friends,” the sign behind the counter read. And for 85 years — 75 of them in the wood-paneled, red-and-white hut at 816 12th St. once founder Jim Van Nort got back from World War II service — that’s what people did.

Privacy was deliberately hard to come by at the 10-seat counter, particularly once a neighbor saw the four-patty Mega Home Run cheeseburger or Hubcap Pancake (five times the size of a regular flapjack) passed across the bar. Internal expansion was out of the question, given Jim-Denny’s status as a historical landmark, though a small outdoor patio was added in 2018.

As with Bud’s Buffet, long waits marked Jim-Denny’s final days before it closed for good in early February. The Naygrow family owns the building and said prior to the pandemic Jim-Denny’s may come back in some evolved form, likely with alcohol and quick service if it does.

This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 5:00 AM.