Power, sours and gluten-free flour: 10 ways Sacramento’s food scene changed this decade
Sacramento is a much different city than it was 10 years ago, and food is a big reason why.
Customers’ relationship to food has changed, thanks to a raised bar for taste and a heightened interest in local production. And major developments around the region have brought on waves of new restaurants and bars run by people eager to capitalize on the Sacramento area’s population boom.
In no particular order, the Sacramento restaurant scene’s biggest story lines over the last 10 years start with the way ...
1. Farm-to-fork took over
The region’s agricultural bounty finally became cool in the 2010s, with a catchy name to boot. Derided still by some tree lovers as an empty marketing slogan, the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau’s (now Visit Sacramento) decision to dub the city “America’s Farm-To-Fork Capital” in 2012 has changed how residents think about food and how outsiders think about this supposed cow town.
Founded in 2013, the Farm-to Fork-Festival attracted an estimated 155,000 people to Capitol Mall over two days this year. It spawned the Tower Bridge Dinner, which drew California cuisine pioneer Jeremiah Tower out of semi-retirement in 2018. Having that kind of spotlight on the locally-sourced crops and animal products helped convince Golden 1 Center opening chef Michael Tuohy to source 90 percent of the arena’s ingredients from within a 150-mile radius, a standard subsequent chefs have upheld.
If there’s a defining theme to notable Sacramento restaurant openings over the last 10 years, it’s a desire to be seen as active participants in the farm-to-fork movement. Older restaurants who have sourced locally for years have scrambled to stay included in the buzz. It’s worked at times, as seen when ...
2. The Sellands emerge as the restaurant power family
Selland Family Restaurants got its high-end places open early, cutting ribbons outside The Kitchen in 1991 and Ella Dining Room & Bar in 2007, with Selland’s Market-Cafe in East Sacramento sandwiched in between. As Josh Nelson and Tamera Baker began taking over from parents Randall Selland and Nancy Zimmer about 10 years ago, their business model shifted toward more approachable fare.
Additional Selland’s Market-Cafes in the El Dorado Town Center (2012) and on Broadway (2017) have both served as respective anchors for their neighborhoods, not to mention the brand’s stand in Golden 1 Center. OBO’ Italian Table & Bar, named for Nelson’s son Owen, opened near Folsom and Alhambra boulevards in 2016, and Bawk! started serving fried chicken and Southern-inspired cocktails in the R Street Corridor this fall.
With Paragary Restaurant Group consolidating its portfolio to build a midtown hotel and the Wong brothers’ places entertaining but generally not as culinarily ambitious, the Sellands can claim the crown as the region’s restaurant royal family. Not that they’ve led the charge alone: opening Bawk meant partnering with Rob Archie, whose Pangaea Bier Cafe and Urban Roots Brewing & Smokehouse are two reasons why ...
3. Sacramento became a craft beer hub
Of the 58 craft breweries in Yolo, Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado counties, 50 have opened within the last 10 years. Virtually every restaurant with a California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control license makes a point of having locally-produced beers on their menu, not that it’s particularly difficult to do so these days.
Extending out to Lodi and Oroville, the 81 breweries represented by the Sacramento Area Brewers Guild generated a $751 million economic impact in 2018. That’s nearly twice the amount generated by the Sacramento Kings, according to a CSU San Marcos report.
Some brewpubs such as Urban Roots and Alaro Brewing Co. are known as much for their culinary options as the beer they produce. The majority of Sacramento breweries, however, began outsourcing bites from mobile vendors after ...
4. Demand for food trucks changed the law
As food trucks’ popularity rose throughout the U.S. early in the decade, the Sacramento City Council actively avoided getting with the times. The council passed a law banning food truck operators from parking in one spot for more than 30 minutes in 2011, kowtowing to restaurant owners afraid of losing profits.
The restriction remained in effect until June 2015, when newly-elected council members voted to let mobile vendors operate under the same curbside parking regulations as other vehicles and made it easier to sell on private property. All of a sudden, trucks that made most of their sales in the region’s suburbs began setting up around the Capitol and other business hot spots a few times a week.
Some trucks such as Green Papaya, Culinerdy Cruzer and Nash & Proper parlayed their cult followings into brick-and-mortar restaurants. Outside of breweries and street fairs, though, appetite for food trucks around Sacramento seems to have tapered off slightly in recent years, in part because ...
5. DoCo’s opening & a restaurant explosion downtown
It’s hard to believe that the Kings were on the brink of moving to Seattle just seven years ago. Losing the city’s only major league sports team (for now) would have changed the course of downtown Sacramento, which has undergone a rapid transformation in the few years since a ownership group led by Vivek Ranadive bought the team from the Maloof brothers.
Investors have poured $4 billion into downtown, midtown and West Sacramento projects since Golden 1 Center broke ground in 2014, according to an October report from Downtown Sacramento Partnership. That includes the redeveloped block of Seventh and K streets, the Ice Blocks and The Bank food hall, not to mention the 21 restaurants open or planned in Downtown Commons itself.
Thanks to DoCo and its ripple effect, finding new and exciting restaurants is no longer a challenge in downtown Sacramento; if anything, supply outstrips demand at this point. Yet while midtown and downtown garnered attention for the neighborhoods’ sheer number of openings, many of the region’s best-regarded restaurants slowly accumulated in ...
6. East Sacramento, a new dining destination
Old (Español, The Shack) and middle-aged (Cafe Rolle, La Trattoria Bohemia) East Sacramento favorites faced significantly tougher competition this decade from a handful of upstarts.
Juno’s Kitchen & Delicatessen came first in 2011, followed by Mexican hotspot Cielito Lindo in 2013. OBO’ opened to strong crowds in June 2016, just as Alhambra Boulevard neighbor Hawks Public House & Provisions did six months prior. Kru came in next door that October.
The reborn Celestin’s followed Kru’s lead in moving from midtown to east Sacramento, and Localis announced plans to do the same earlier this year. More recent additions Allora and Bacon & Butter rank among Sacramento’s hottest high-end and breakfast restaurants, respectively.
All those new restaurants have something else in common: they’ve received three or more stars from Sacramento Bee dining critics within the last decade. And that murderers’ row doesn’t include Canon, the four-star brainchild of chef/co-owner Brad Cecchi, who joined far-flung talent when a wave of ...
7. “Lady Birds” came home
An El Camino High School alumnus, Cecchi left a job as executive chef of Michelin-starred restaurant Solbar in Calistoga to open Canon with restaurateur Clay Nutting in September 2017. He’s not the only one who came back.
Craig Takehara returned to his hometown after training in Japan and working in Los Angeles to open Binchoyaki with his wife Tokiko Sawada in 2016, and Tom Schnetz helped build a mini restaurant empire in the East Bay before opening La Venadita and the short-lived Oakhaus in Oak Park.
Perhaps most notably, Ella Dining Room & Bar wooed Rancho Cordova native Michael Thiemann, then working as chef de cuisine at Food Network star Tyler Florence’s Wayfare Tavern, with the executive chef gig in 2012. Thiemann went on to open Empress Tavern and Mother, the latter of which marks one way ...
8. Restaurants followed customers’ dietary needs and desires
Dining out with friends on specialty diets got much easier over the decade as gluten-free, vegetarian, and dairy-free restaurants popped up across the region. Omnivorous restaurants have also begun including more diet-agreeable items, such as Paesanos’ celiac-friendly menu or El Papagayo’s extensive slate of vegetarian and vegan options, instead of merely offering substitutes upon request.
Plant-based diets, in particular, became much more popular nationwide throughout the decade, with 6 percent of Americans identifying as vegan in 2017, up from 1 percent in 2014. New local competitions such as the Vegan Chef Challenge and Vegan Burger Battle now prompt dozens of Sacramento-area restaurants to add meatless, dairy-free items to their menus for a month at a time.
The most successful with a year-round restricted menu may be Pushkin’s, which has added a second gluten-free bakery and a full-scale restaurant since first opening in 2013. Plant-based Burger Patch and Conscious Creamery are transitioning from pop-ups to brick-and-mortar storefronts in two of Sacramento’s trendiest corners. And all-vegetarian Mother proved that restaurants didn’t need meat to shine when ...
9. Michelin began reviewing Sacramento
The travel company’s food critics began reviewing Sacramento along with four other cities in 2019, thanks in part to a $600,000 sponsorship from Visit California.
Though The Kitchen garnered Sacramento’s lone Michelin star and the company’s review process has been criticized for being outdated, inspectors’ presence in the city has ambitious chefs thinking about opening the kinds of small, upscale places that typically earn top honors. The sponsorship was only for one year, but Visit California has hinted at future payments and reviews to come.
Ten Sacramento restaurants did walk away with Plates and inclusion in the California Michelin Guide for good, not great cooking. And Bib Gourmands (inspectors’ favorites for a value) were awarded to Mother, Canon and Frank Fat’s, the last of which marked one final honor before ...
10. Two Sacramento restaurant legends passed away
The decade ended on a slightly sad note, as two pioneers of Sacramento’s modern food scene died within months of each other. Biba Caggiano started as a home cook and starred as a TV chef before opening her eponymous Italian restaurant at 28th Street and Capitol Avenue in 1986. She continued to eat at Biba six times a week after retirement until her death at 82 years old on Aug. 29.
Lina Fat spoke at her longtime friend Caggiano’s funeral. The Fat Family Restaurant Group executive corporate chef, widely credited with coordinating the business’ expansion and continued success over the years, died herself three months later at age 81 after months of progressively worsening health.
She lived long enough to see Frank Fat’s collect a James Beard Award for America’s Classics in 2013, and was on hand to celebrate the restaurant’s 80th anniversary party this summer. As the next generation of great Sacramento restaurants begins to form, both women’s restaurants’ – and their legacies – continue to live on.