Need a break from turkey already? Check out these dishes, for better or worse

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Had enough turkey? Want to try something else? Check out our dining guide, bit.ly/3FE5ecT. And. here are some highlights from what’ I’ve been eating.

Chipotle

For the second time in a year, Chipotle Mexican Grill tested a new meat option in the chain’s Sacramento and Cincinnati restaurants. As with the last new meat, the quality is relative.

After introducing brisket in November 2020 (I thought it was fine but unremarkable), Chipotle launched pollo asado in those two markets for a limited time. It’s still on the menu.

A friend and I trekked down to our neighborhood Chipotle to try the new protein in a burrito and a salad (for anyone who’s never ordered a Chipotle salad, it’s essentially a burrito bowl with a base layer of spinach).

Chipotle’s pollo asado is rubbed with cumin, guajillo peppers and coriander before being grilled and finished with garlic, chili peppers, lime and cilantro, according to a company news release. It has more kick than the standard chicken option, which I learned in the course of this review is supposed to be chicken adobo, as well as 30 more calories per serving and a 65-cent surcharge ($7.75 vs $8.40 at the location I visited).

Yet, a critical component of pollo asado is marination in orange juice, which adds citrus flavor and acidity. Chipotle doesn’t list OJ as one of the marinade ingredients and employees working the counter didn’t know if it was being used, but I spied a cook pour out maybe a cup for an industrial-sized batch of something he was mixing.

If that orange juice went into the pollo asado, it wasn’t enough. The cumin, coriander, garlic and peppers don’t quite have the same dyeing effect as commonly-used achiote paste, either. The heat from the peppers is there, and my friend picked up a taste of lime, but pieces of chicken isolated from the rest of the burrito or salad were weirdly bland.

Thai Basil

Suleika Sun-Lindley’s Thai Basil at 2431 J St. (and her sister Wannipa Raff’s restaurant by the same name at 1613 Douglas Blvd. in Roseville) is one of the few places around Sacramento to serve a soup called gang jeard ($7.50 for a cup, $12 for a bowl). The salty mushroom-soy broth packed with ground chicken, glass noodles and chopped carrots, zucchini and kale soothed my scratchy throat and made me appreciate my sense of taste still being intact.

Sun-Lindley also owns plant-based Veg Cafe upstairs, and Thai Basil is similarly veggie-friendly. There’s a robust all-vegan menu, no curries on the main menu use animal products, and Impossible meat or JUST Eggs are listed as protein options alongside tofu, shrimp, chicken, beef and pork. That makes it easy to go for items like the slippery lad nha ($16), flat, wide rice noodles wok-fried with broccoli and served in a thick soy gravy.

A steak dish called nuah-yang ($23) spun in the opposite direction but relied again on a soy-based sauce, an assertive one stocked with chilis, ginger and garlic. It was delicious, and needed to cover up regrettably tough strips of medium-rare sirloin served alongside zucchini, broccoli, onions and carrots.

CT European Cafe & Grill

There’s not much Eastern European food around Sacramento, save for the Russian grocery aisles of Rancho Cordova; the January 2020 closure of Cafe Marika in midtown after 30 years left a chicken paprikash-shaped hole in my heart, as it did for many others. A meal on CT European Cafe & Grill’s lovely vine-surrounded patio while driving through Shingle Springs, then, was heartwarming, buoyed by scarcely-seen country cooking and a hostess who called everyone “babe,” “sweetie” or a similarly affectionate name.

Where else is one going to find ćevapi ($14 for five sausages, $18 for 10)? The national dish of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it consisted of gamey lamb sausages stuffed in soft lepinja bread (sort of like a cross between a pita pocket and a sausage roll) with sour cream, chopped onions and a red pepper spread available as condiments. Accompanying fries were disappointing, though: crispy on the outside, but nearly empty husks covering more air than potato.

A stuffed cabbage dish called sarma ($18) was the lunch special when I went. Two hulking cabbage balls filled with rice and ground beef sat atop stringy spätzle, egg-based German noodles, with a tomato-based sauce below and dollop of sour cream to the side. A nice balance of acid and umami, with enough carbs to soak up all the flavors.

“CT” stands not for the cafe’s checkered tablecloths but for Crêpe Town, and I felt obligated to try one. The Burgundy crêpe ($17) was a great choice. Tender Angus beef braised in a wine sauce poured out from the crepe’s insides, where it happily married with pungent melted asiago and earthy mushrooms.

Alma and Edi Zildzo immigrated from what’s now Croatia (then Yugoslavia) in the mid-90s and opened their restaurant first in Cameron Park in 2011 before moving to a shopping center at 4064 Mother Lode Drive two years later. The menu is a little Balkan, a little German, a little Hungarian, a little French and a lot scrumptious. In short, it’s well worth a stop on the way to or from South Lake Tahoe, and maybe even a special trip.

Openings and closings

• I’m so bummed to see the end of dining service at A Part Cafe, the coolest local restaurant to come out Roseville during the pandemic. Areej Khan and Michael Spencer’s Middle Eastern fusion restaurant at 217 Vernon St., whose shawarma/taco hybrids and delectable smoked lemonade I wrote up in an August newsletter, will remain open for catering, ticketed prix-fixe meals and occasional pop-ups.
  
  
• Boulevard 41 called it quits Saturday after four years in the El Dorado Hills Town Center. The wood-fired pizzeria also had a pay-per-ounce beer and wine bar with 41 taps.
• On a brighter note El Dorado County note, The Ring of Fire BBQ opened Nov. 14 at 3590 Carson Rd. in Camino after doing catering for several years.