‘Undercover Boss’ comes to Elk Grove, and interesting Thai food arrives in East Sacramento

Want more food news? Sign up for the Food & Drink newsletter at sacbee.com/foodnews to get your weekly fill.

About a year into my tenure at The Bee, I spotted our then-new executive editor out with her family at the Sunday Farmers Market. Dressed in my Sunday best of Crocs, socks and American flag pants à la Rex Kwon Do of Napoleon Dynamite, I ducked behind cheese stands and piles of zucchini in an effort to hide.

Didn’t work. She caught me on the way out. We had an exceedingly awkward conversation and I made sure to wear a tie to the office the next morning. Had I the disguises of a certain ex-Round Table Pizza employee in Elk Grove, I might have successfully gone undercover from my boss.

The CBS show “Undercover Boss” visited the Round Table at 5110 Laguna Blvd. for an episode scheduled to air at 8 p.m. on Friday. In most episodes of the 11-season show, a top executive turns up incognito to work a menial job — Frontier Airlines’ CEO cleaning the plane’s toilet, for example — and learns some lessons along the way.

Round Table’s corporate office told Elk Grove general manager Steve Trillas it had hired someone who lost his job during the pandemic, Trillas said. When then-CEO Paul Damico arrived in a disguise including a ponytailed wig and faux beard, Trillas was none the wiser.

To hear his manager tell it, though, Damico wasn’t exactly a model worker over his week of employment last June.

“I don’t want to give too much away, but we had our ups and downs, I’ll put it like that,” Trillas said. “I felt like he would be very trainable in the future, but like I said, we had some good times and some bad times.”

I see Round Table locations all the time in Sacramento-area shopping centers, but never really put together just how big of a market this is for the chain with dual headquarters in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Of Round Table’s roughly 400 restaurants nationwide, 45 are in Yolo, Sacramento, Placer or El Dorado counties.

It’s a company that Trillas knows well. He was a Sacramento high school dropout abusing drugs and alcohol before his father took him in for one last shot. A new Round Table was opening down the street from his dad’s house in Elk Grove, so Trillas walked in one day and filled out an application. He was hired on the spot.

Trillas started as a dough roller and soon brought in his girlfriend Valerie as a prepper. Seventeen years later, they’re a local Round Table power couple — Valerie manages a pizzeria location in Galt — with a house in Elk Grove and two kids.

They’ll host a small viewing party with friends and family at their home, but not at the restaurant due to COVID concerns.

What I’m Eating

Americans tend to regard different kinds of cuisine as deserving of different price points. The same person who will drop $18 on a burger often bristles at a similar cost for Mexican, Chinese and Indian dishes, a phenomenon explored in The Atlantic’s 2016 piece “The Future is Expensive Chinese Food” and NYU associate professor of food studies Krishnendu Ray’s book “The Ethnic Restaurateur.”

The House of Authentic Ingredients (THAI) pushes back on that idea by presenting Thai dishes in a sophisticated, date night atmosphere on sleek dishware. Opened in late 2018 at 4701 H St., THAI is also one of the few East Sacramento restaurants currently offering a daily happy hour — $5 to $7 for small plates like basil beef sausage or curry puffs, and drinks discounted to about that range.

Our meal started with uranium-orange fish cakes called tod mun pla ($12), pan-fried and served with a pickled cucumber side salad. Punched up with a heavy dose of dried basil, the cakes were spicy and complex.

The yum salmon ($16) salad had well-prepared fish too, this time seared and tossed with tomatoes, cilantro, onions and mixed greens. Unfortunately, everything was swimming in a veritable sea of fish sauce-based dressing, which wasn’t bad but needed to be ordered on the side.

Chef Wongworraman Jankhuen did better with the kao see krong moo obb ($25) special, pork ribs stacked next to Chinese broccoli and a fried egg-topped tower of rice. Tender but still somewhat sticking to the bone, the ribs were stewed in a flavorful herbal gravy and well-complemented by a Thai chili sauce.

Drinks are a focus, too, with an expansive bar, sangria punch bowls and a handful of mocktails. The most fun cocktails incorporate Southeast Asian ingredients, like the Thaibucks ($12), a creamy riff on an espresso martini with Thai coffee, creme de cacao, Stolichnaya vanilla vodka and evaporated milk.

Openings & Closings

• David English, the former chef and owner of now-closed The Press Bistro in midtown, is opening a new cocktail bar and restaurant at the base of the Residence Inn Sacramento Downtown at Capitol Park. Called Juju’s Kitchen & Cocktails, it’s projected to open at 1501 L St. this May, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.
  
  
• Konditorei Austrian Bakery & Cafe owners Albert and Gloria Kutternig will close their cafe and retire after service Friday, according to a Facebook post. The Kutternigs opened Konditorei 32 years ago at 2710 5th St. after immigrating from Austria and the Philippines, respectively.
• Arlington Brothers food truck is also calling it quits after 10 years serving the greater Sacramento area, the operators announced on Facebook. They’ll see customers off with specialty sausages and housemade toppings at Track 7’s Curtis Park taproom on Saturday, then the Natomas brewery on Sunday.

This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 3:00 AM.