Cookies, ice cream and pizza: 10 pop-up restaurants offer Sacramento a range of cool food
The coronavirus pandemic threw restaurants into a tailspin. But people still had to eat.
Amateur cooks with a little extra time on their hands decided to start making some pocket change by selling their food. Professional chefs with empty dining rooms spun off passion projects concepts to help make ends meet.
For the people behind them, pop-ups can be a way to dip their toes into professional cooking without the money required for a full-blown restaurant. In Sacramento, as in cities across the United States, that’s led to the sale of dishes and cuisines unavailable in more permanent establishments. For customers, pop-ups’ transient nature creates a sort of street-level exclusivity: You can’t eat this food if you’re not plugged in.
These concepts won’t often make chefs a ton of money but they do allow them to be their own bosses, leading to more labors of love where people create food they really want. Think of the 2014 movie “Chef,” in which Jon Favreau’s character leaves a stuffy restaurant and opens a Cuban-inspired food truck.
Pop-ups can take different shapes: homemade bagels available for pick-up once a week, Peruvian rotisserie chicken roasted in a rented commercial kitchen, the temporary takeover of a brick-and-mortar space to sell grain bowls. Most are active on social media, so be sure to check their pages for up-to-date location and hours when planning your visit.
Sactown Hmong BBQ
Sacramento’s Hmong population has one brick-and-mortar restaurant expressly selling the Southeast Asian ethnic group’s culinary creations (Jimmy’s Soul Food & Hmong Cuisine in Del Paso Heights). But you’ll find mouthwatering brisket and ribs served alongside rice and a Hmong pepper dipping sauce at owner Ger Her’s south Sacramento pop-ups and catering events. Her, a former Luigi’s Pizza Parlor cook, is currently offering a $23 Hmong New Years special including kielbasa, grilled pork belly and Hmong sausage. Order in advance for pick-ups near the 24th Street/Florin Road intersection.
Online: https://www.facebook.com/SACTOWNHMONGBBQ/
https://www.instagram.com/sactownhmongbbq/
Goth Creamery
Leave rocky road and rainbow sherbet to Baskin-Robbins: Goth Creamery is your place for ice cream flavors such as chili crunch, coconut pandan and even durian. Yelp users rave about Trang and Hoang Le’s Vietnamese-inspired, Elk Grove-based home creamery, which Trang started in 2019 to raise money for her youth-focused charity Live & Nurture. Rotating flavors are posted to Instagram on Thursdays and deliveries are made the following day, so order quickly or hold out for ice cream sandwiches between Rooftop Macaroons (another Elk Grove-based home business) at irregularly occurring pop-up events.
Online: https://www.facebook.com/GOTH-Creamery-100918628667874/
https://www.instagram.com/goth_creamery/
Better Half Bagel
East Coast natives resettled in Sacramento often gripe about the quality of bagels here, and they’re not wrong. But Massachusetts native and Land Park resident Sam Leonard’s creations are outliers. A former employee of Beauty’s Bagel Shop in Oakland and Marla Bakery (then in San Francisco, now in Windsor), Leonard starts taking orders for his Sunday bagel pick-ups at 7:30 a.m. Thursday and quickly sells out. With a two-day fermentation process and fresh Sunday morning baking before customers arrive, it’s not hard to understand why.
Online: https://betterhalfbagel.minimartapp.com/
Musette
Michael and Cynthia Raub started delivering weeknight heat-and-eat meals in March 2020 under the name Pannier, a nod to Michael’s work hauling sourdough boules around Davis by bike for No Kid Hungry. That eventually led to Musette, which has a temporary home inside the University Mall at 825 Russell Blvd. Grain bowls such as Giro Bowl (achiote pork shoulder, turmeric rice, ras el hanout-spiced squash, pickled cauliflower and tamarind beet yogurt) or the Century Bowl (harissa-tinged jackfruit and mushrooms, quinoa, oranges in sumac, chamoy-roasted carrots and crispy chickpeas) are stocked with nutrients for students between classes or cyclists passing through downtown Davis. Heat-and-eat options remain available, too, for preorder and pickup between 4 and 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.
Online: https://www.grabmusette.com/
Huele A Wela’s
Pronounced “Weh-leh Ahh Weh-lahss,” this home-based dessert shop draws inspiration from owner Lori Diaz’s Puerto Rican-born grandmother and her Brooklyn kitchen. Huele A Wela’s sells cookies with flavors like cranberry white chocolate oatmeal or salted chocolate toffee chip by the dozen for $24-$28. Mine the website for rotating island treats like pecan-crusted rum bundt cake, or banana cayenne jam to go with your spicy hot chocolate chip cookies. Charcuterie plates are also available on occasion.
Online: https://hueleawelas.com/
Lou’s Pizza
Probably the best-known pop-up on this list, Lou’s Pizza started as Southpaw Sushi chef/co-owner Lou Valente’s side hustle during the pandemic. It’s Sacramento’s first concept dedicated exclusively to Detroit-style pizza (the options are cheese, pepperoni and double pepperoni), a square deep-dish variety with crispy edges worth fighting over. Word spread over the 12,500-member “The Capital Eats Local” Facebook group and Valente’s Sunday-night pizza pickups now selling out at least a month in advance.
Online: https://www.louspizzasacramento.com/
Kalani Kakes
Flushed with Hawaiian flavors such as lilikoi and Kona coffee, Kalani’s cupcakes take inspiration from the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler romantic comedy “50 First Dates” (seriously). Dena Lumbang’s Elk Grove-based creations include the Henry Roth (guava cake with hibiscus-shaped vanilla candy) and the Hi I’m Tom (mango cake with mango buttercream and li hing mui dust). Housemade jams and butter mochi are also available on occasion.
Online: https://linktr.ee/kalanikakes
F.A.M. Fusion
“Kumain ka na?” translates from Tagalog to “have you eaten?” but is colloquially used to show care and interest, similar to “how are you?” It’s an appropriate tagline, then, for F.A.M. Fusion, an Elk Grove-based pop-up run by two Filipino American mothers. A rotating menu carries Filipino flavors, already colored by Spanish, Chinese and American influences over the centuries, into approachable Americana dishes: the result being popcorn chicken with adobo or sinigang seasonings, wings marinated in banana ketchup glaze or deconstructed lumpia bowls made with Beyond Meats. Find F.A.M. Fusion at Elk Grove’s NeighborGood Market on the second and fourth Thursday of each month or check their social media for more pop-ups around Sacramento.
Online: https://www.instagram.com/famfusioneats
The Jazzy Bird
Greater Sacramento has just three Peruvian restaurants (Jimmy’s Peruvian & Mexican Restaurant in Arden Arcade, La Huaca and Chicha Peruvian Kitchen & Cafe in Roseville), but a fourth option might soon put down roots. Run by a Plumas Lake family with a commercial kitchen just south of Sacramento’s Woodlake neighborhood, The Jazzy Bird could move into a downtown Sacramento brick-and-mortar building if their Calling All Dreamers competition bid advances out of the semifinals. Wood-fired rotisserie chicken known as pollo a la brasa is the draw, but look for empanadas, steak skewers, loaded fries and whitefish ceviche with sweet potatoes as well. Pick up lunch from the kitchen at 211 Lathrop Way from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Fridays, or pop by one of The Jazzy Bird’s pop-up events Thursday through Sunday afternoons.
Online: https://www.thejazzybird.com/home
Rude Boys
The name comes from Jamaica, but Nate Soto’s pop-up is defined by cultural criss-crossing. Rude Boys typically serves just two or three items per day at breweries such as Track 7, Delta Borne or Jackrabbit. That could be a Mongolian-style noodle stir-fry with a choice of birria/carne asada/pollo, or hot dogs topped with curry ketchup/pico de gallo/bacon jam, or bulgogi meatballs with spicy mayo and kimchi over rice. Soto normally has a vegan option too, such as ramen or black bean burgers.
Online: https://rbpopup.com/
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.