‘It’s heartbreaking’: Sacramento’s dining scene and officials lament the closure of Biba
Sacramento’s dining scene and officials are paying respects after Sunday’s sudden announcement that Biba Restaurant will be closing for good less than a year after its founder and namesake died.
Biba Caggiano’s eponymous restaurant was established in 1986 and brought Sacramento into the national spotlight. Caggiano, who authored nine books and appeared in countless television cooking programs, died at 82 in August. Biba Restaurant’s last day in business will be Saturday.
In part, her family said, the restaurant lacked strong leadership after Caggiano’s death, despite consistently drawing crowds and filling tables.
But partially, the coronavirus pandemic that has crippled so many local restaurants ushered in the end of Biba. California’s stay-at-home orders have forced many restaurants to shift to take-out-only options, which was not producing feasible profit margins at Biba.
“This forced our hand,” Paola Caggiano, the restaurateur’s daughter, told The Sacramento Bee, but said that the decision to close was “a combination of many issues.”
Biba’s closure will ‘leave a huge void’
At the time of Biba’s death, Patrick Mulvaney, co-proprietor of Mulvaney’s B&L, noted that generations of chefs garnered inspiration from her. And now that her restaurant is closing down, his thoughts turned to those who made it great.
“While I lament the loss for our community, as well as one of my favorite bars to have dinner with my wife, my thoughts today are with the Caggiano family and all the staff who for so long made everyone welcome when they came through the doors at Biba,” Mulvaney said in a text to The Bee. “Today they have lost a place that has been home to them for so long.”
The influence of the restaurant, however, was felt by far more than just fellow proprietors. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said that the whole city will be hurting after Biba shuts down.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Steinberg said. “It’s going to leave a huge void in our growing restaurant culture.”
The restaurant’s role, Steinberg said, was enormous in spurring on that growth.
“Biba was the gold standard for everything that has happened good and great in Sacramento over the past decade,” he said. “Among the great pioneers that started this all was Biba, her family and this wonderful restaurant.”
Randall Selland, the Sacramento chef behind the Michelin-starred restaurant The Kitchen, said Biba shone a light on Sacramento when fine available dining options in the city were somewhat lackluster.
Her restaurant brought more than just excellent food, Selland said, it changed the dining aesthetic altogether and focused on service where so many other top-tier restaurants lacked it.
“It’s all about hospitality,” he said. “She got a lot of people interested in cooking, too, because she was out there talking to people in the dining room.”
She ‘brought the real thing over’
More than 30 years ago, when Biba first opened, the people of Sacramento, miles away from any top-tier Italian restaurants, had a misconstrued idea about what the cuisine could offer, Selland said.
But Biba, herself an immigrant from Italy, “brought the real thing over,” he said.
Renowned food and wine connoisseur Darrell Corti, of East Sacramento’s Corti Bros market, said part of the charm of Biba was in how it perfectly encapsulated a time and place — the Bologna region of Italy, circa 1980.
“They put an end to the stereotype of red sauce and meatballs and spaghetti,” Corti said.
At the time of the restaurant’s opening, Corti said, there weren’t any eateries in Sacramento offering that unique style.
“There’s going to be very few people who are going to make lasagna with 10, 12 sheets of green pasta. Why? Because it’s difficult to do,” Corti said. “She arose in Sacramento as someone doing something in a restaurant that wasn’t done before.”
For example, he said, Biba and her husband would travel to Bologna to observe the local cuisine and acquire ideas for recipes.
Her example set the stage for what is now considered fine dining in the area, Mulvaney said.
“Here we are 30 years later benefiting from what she laid out,” he said.
Selland offered sympathies to the Caggiano family under the pandemic-imposed circumstances that have challenged his restaurants as well.
“It’s a battle right now,” he said.
The closure of the prestigious restaurant may serve as a grim knell for other restaurateurs suffering under the current state of the economy, Mulvaney said.
“Biba is the first, but it will not be the last,” he said, adding that the basic value of a restaurant in providing a sense of community “is a need that is still there and will still be there when the pandemic is over.”
Steinberg acknowledged the increasing pressure on restaurant owners amid the pandemic.
“There’s only one thing to do, and that is to uplift and support as many of our restaurants as possible in Sacramento,” he said.
This story was originally published May 3, 2020 at 4:32 PM.
