This East Sacramento restaurant is getting a new owner: ‘It’s like our family here’

Nopalitos Southwestern Cafe in East Sacramento is small, but its owners Rose and Dave Hanke, who are set to retire at the end of the month, have placed a large stamp on their community. The Hankes told The Bee Tuesday the restaurant will change ownership at the end of the month.

The 30-year-old restaurant shares a parking lot with East Sac Bike Shop. Once inside, the yellow and teal-colored establishment has about 20 seats, decorated with artificial tabletop cacti.

The walk from the door to the front counter is a short one. There, Rose Hanke is juggling the restaurant’s phone calls and placing orders alongside a batch of baked goods she made the day before.

“She just makes you feel like you’re going to visit a good friend every time,” said longtime customer Kym Parisi.

So when Sacramento resident Parisi, who’s eaten at Nopalitos for more than a decade, learned the Hankes were leaving the cafe at the end of the month, she was devastated.

“It feels like you’re losing a friend,” she said over the phone as she settled back home from treating her daughter to breakfast at the cafe. “I mean they’re just the most gracious people.”

Dave Hanke said he is unsure if the new owner, who was not immediately available to comment, might close down the restaurant temporarily during the transition.

The future of the Southwestern cafe

The Hankes opened Nopalitos Southwestern Cafe in April 1992 after running the then Bunn Stop on Stockton Boulevard and the original Spinners Cinnamon Rolls now at 1400 Sutterville Rd. The restaurant, although closed during the weekend, opens early — 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

“It’s like our family here,” Rose Hanke said on a phone call with The Bee during a break from the cafe’s morning rush. “It’s a lot of people that come in all the time that we’ve made friendships with, that’s a hard thing to leave.”

Rose runs the front counter and Dave works the kitchen in the back.

“We’re getting older, 30 years is enough I think,” said Dave Hanke as he cooked chicken alongside longtime sous chef and anticipated owner Roberto Timoteo in a noisy morning kitchen. “We’ve been in food service longer than that and you know, it’s a demanding job so we’re getting tired.”

Timoteo, who will take over the cafe at the end of the month with his family, has worked alongside Dave for 27 years. So while there’s a possibility that Timoteo may change a few things about the cafe, Dave Hanke said he is the “most appropriate” person to carry on the legacy of the cafe.

“That’s always a good thing if the new owner doesn’t just change everything,” Dave Hanke said. “Some people it doesn’t matter, they’ll just find another place to go to, but other people are greatly affected by it...hopefully people will still feel like they know the place and that they can continue coming here.”

Although no plans after retirement are solidified, Dave Hanke laughed and said he’s looking forward to traveling and that he and Rose won’t be strangers to Nopalitos.

“We’ll be back. I don’t know how much we’ll be here but we’ll be back for sure,” Dave said.

Nopalitos Cafe’s community impact

The first time longtime Sacramento resident Parisi tried Nopalitos, she was unaware it was cash-only establishment. She apologetically took her ATM card back from Rose at the front counter and said she’d come back another time.

The moments after made Parisi a regular customer for the last 15 years.

“(Rose) said ‘no no just come back and pay me some other time’ and I was like what, you just don’t get that type of trust anymore,” Parisi said. “So of course I went back and paid her and have been going ever since.”

Parisi makes the 10-minute drive from her home to the cafe a couple of times a month and orders the same thing: little cactus special.

The breakfast dish is made up of tortilla chips, eggs, cactus, corn and cheese scrambled together. The dish is topped with cheese, mild salsa, sour cream and a choice of rachero sauce or green chili sauce.

Parisi orders both sauces.

“I try to veer from that and eat something else like once but I just go back to that a million times,” she said. “It’s so good, first of all and I tried to recreate it myself and I just never get it right.”

For customers like Parisi, who keep coming back not only for the good food but the warm hospitality — the Hankes will be missed.

“We’ll welcome the new restaurant but it sure won’t be the same,” she said.

Rose and Dave Hanke will pass Nopalitos Southwestern Cafe’s ownership to Roberto Timoteo and his family on Friday, April 29, they confirmed in a phone call with The Bee.

This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 12:54 PM.