2 patios and lots of tequila: Inside the new Mexican restaurant in Sacramento’s DoCo

At 6,500 square feet with dual outdoor patios and nearly 100 employees, Downtown Common’s newest restaurant is also one of its largest.

Polanco Cantina opened Tuesday night above Pressed Juicery in DoCo, all murals, cornflower blue walls and floor-to-ceiling windows. The menu of “elevated street cuisine,” as general manager Giovanni Joris put it, pulls not just from the trendy Mexico City district Polanco Cantina is named after, but from across the country.

It ranges to Baja California for fish tacos, Oaxaca for roasted chicken in mole and the Yucatan Peninsula for cochinita pibil (pork braised in chile abodo), though executive chef Adam Carpenter sources many ingredients from California producers. Most tacos are around $12 for two, with dinner plates slightly north of $20.

If sourcing a few ingredients from local farms is commonplace in Sacramento restaurants, the next step is to move away from packaged and canned foods, Carpenter said. He and his crew break down whole pigs, grind masa to make tortillas in their 2,000-square foot kitchen — which customers can see through windows behind the tequila-heavy bar — and make pozole from heirloom corn ordered via Napa Valley’s Rancho Gordo.

“I take pride in that we’re not ordering any canned food. Every single item is made in house, in this kitchen by hand, from authentic recipes (with) authentic techniques,” Carpenter said. “I’ve dined around town and I’ve noticed people are buying a lot of stuff. You can tell right away when you eat it: same tortillas, same sauce, same dessert choice.”

Polanco’s parent company is Moana Restaurant Group, whose umbrella includes Piatti in the Pavilions Shopping Center and 29 other restaurants across the country.

The San Rafael-based company brought in Bay Area expats to run Polanco. Carpenter is a Moana veteran who worked at several group restaurants around Marin and Contra Costa counties, while Joris previously held the same position at San Francisco’s a Mano and Lolinda.

Neither are Latino, but Carpenter spent six days eating at 65 Mexico City restaurants and street stands alongside Moana chef Diego Isunza Kahlo as R&D for Polanco. He and the GM both cited family as the main reason behind their move east, though Carpenter also called the Bay Area culinary scene “saturated” and Joris said Sacramento’s changing culture was a plus.

“We’re both extremely excited to bring the food knowledge that comes from the Bay Area and is helping transform this city and elevating, a little bit, the cuisine overall,” Joris said. “Sacramento’s a beautiful city, and I feel like history’s repeating. What happened in San Francisco is happening here now.”

Polanco will initially be open from 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 414 K St., No. 240. Lunch service is expected to begin in December.

This story was originally published October 23, 2019 at 3:58 PM.