Team behind Mother, Empress Tavern opening new Sacramento restaurant. Here’s when and where

Chef Mike Thiemann and company closed Mother at the end of 2019. Their new restaurant might as well be called Father.

Thiemann, his wife/front-of-house manager Lisa and partner Ryan Donahue plan to open their midtown Sacramento restaurant Jim’s Good Food around the weekend of Feb. 7-9, he told The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday. It’ll serve American staples like sandwiches, salads and milkshakes from Coconut Fish Cafe’s old perch at 1420 16th St. #300.

The restaurant is named for Jim Holifield, an investor, Lisa’s dad and the financial manager for Mother and its sister restaurant Empress Tavern. Mike Thiemann will spend most of his time in Jim’s kitchen, leaving their staff to manage Empress.

The Thiemanns, Donahue and Holified want Jim’s to be approachable. It will have paper napkins, simple stemware and dishes generally familiar to most Sacramento residents, like a Caesar salad close to what was once served at Mother and has since landed on Empress’ menu. Dogs will be welcome on the two outdoor patios and should be especially prevalent during happy hour.

“It’s a Monday night restaurant ... it’s not an occasion, it’s not your birthday. It’s something you can count on to be solid and you can bring your kids,” Thiemann said. “I felt like there was a lack of full-service casual restaurants where you don’t have to order (at) the counter and get a number and sit down.”

At the same time, Thiemann was once executive chef at Ella Dining Room & Bar, and Empress is no culinary slouch. Jim’s menu has yet to be finalized and will likely change in the first couple weeks, but the chef called it “wildly curated” and “excessively thought about.”

Jim’s will have a house burger — a garlic butter burger made with Wagyu beef, the result of two weeks of intense taste-testing. Another blue-plate sandwich such as a patty melt or Juicy Lucy will rotate through on Wednesdays; daily specials will depend in part on what Thiemann can find at local farmer’s markets.

Pasta will be handmade; a linguine-and-clams plate is likely to make it onto the final menu alongside raw oysters and AQ cuts of meat. Dutch baby pancakes, doughnuts and English muffins will all be baked in-house for weekend brunch, tentatively scheduled to start around 9 a.m.

Menu at new Sacramento restaurant

“It’s going to have some Mexican food, it’s going to have some Cal-Italian food. To me, that’s Sacramento cuisine,” Thiemann said. “It all lends itself to seasonal cooking with fresh ingredients. It speaks to California as well, and it’s the way I like to cook ... it’s starting to feel a lot like if Mother had meat.”

A six-tap bar is expected to eventually be supplemented by a full liquor license. Jim’s will be open weekdays from about 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. with a service break in the afternoon, and has 2,600 square feet of indoor space plus about 50 patio seats.

For all the concoctions they stir up on the job, local high-end chefs often opt for casual meals after hours. Michael and Lisa Thiemann’s days of opening restaurants in New Zealand and Hawaii are over. Now back in their home region as parents of a 7-year-old and 2-year-old, they were drawn to the idea of opening a family-friendly restaurant alongside Lisa’s father over, say, gunning for Sacramento’s second Michelin star.

“Watching the father-daughter thing, because I’m a dad with my own daughter, is amazing. There’s something really special and heartwarming about it,” Mike Thiemann said.

The partners signed their lease for Jim’s shortly after Coconut Fish Cafe announced its closure in September, and had planned to close Mother for months despite it always being profitable, Thiemann said.

Mother thrived during the daytime, while Empress stopped serving lunch in August 2018. Moving Mother’s most popular items into Empress allowed the underground restaurant to reopen for lunch and let partner/building owner Robert Emerick collect rent from another tenant — announced Tuesday as Calling All Dreamers winner Nash & Proper — in Mother’s old space.

“In one way it feels like a memorial in Empress, but in another, there was a whole part of the day where it wasn’t being used and that was Mother’s sweet spot,” Thiemann said. “Mother’s soul is still alive. It doesn’t need to be in that property.”

This story was originally published January 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.