Taste of Sacramento: Midtown restaurants with flavor and style
In 2014, Marvin Maldonado turned his midtown backyard into a pizza joint. He built the restaurant out of shipping containers and named it The Federalist Public House after the Federalist Victorian-style house that sits behind it.
The project had been years in the planning. Maldonado and his wife traveled throughout Europe, taking design cues from beer gardens in Germany and culinary ideas from just about everywhere.
The Federalist specializes in wood-fired pizza, cooked at roughly 900 degrees in the restaurant’s outdoor pizza oven. Maldonado is very particular about his pizza crusts, which resemble an Indian style of bread called naan. The perfect crust has just the right amount of “leopard spotting,” the black blisters on the exterior. The skin is light, airy and crisp, and the inside is soft and pliable like French bread.
Pizzas are 14 inches and range in price from $18 to $20. Toppings include crowd favorites like the margherita, which comes with red sauce, mozzarella and basil, and the “Southside,” made with three cheeses, potatoes, chorizo, cilantro and chili oil (“and people love to put an egg on that,” said Maldonado.)
“The Southside is literally a dish that my grandma used to make for breakfast,” he explained. “We just decided to put it on pizza.”
Maldonado has a background in architecture, and the restaurant was his own design. He bought seven 40-foot-high cube containers and then assembled them on site.
Three containers are used to house the kitchen, bar and restroom and entrance areas. The other four comprise the dining area. For these, Maldonado removed the walls but kept the ceilings with supporting columns, creating an open-air, covered patio area. And next to the dining area, he built a bocce court.
“It’s one of those games that you can hold a beer in one hand and a ball in the other and still have a great time,” Maldonado said.
The Federalist was hit hard by the coronavirus shutdown. The restaurant was designed for mingling. Get in where you fit in. Rub elbows with a stranger. Have a beer, share some pizza, play some bocce. Back before the coronavirus, none of these concepts seemed particularly alarming.
The restaurant has now reopened for dining, but with modifications. The dining area was always open-air, but the long, picnic-style tables have been taken apart and spaced apart. The bocce court is closed. And they’ve had to cut back on staff.
“Right now, because of how little staff we have, I’m literally making every pizza that comes out of the oven,” said Maldonado. “And if we have to deliver pizza, I’m making the pizza and then I’m delivering it.”
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The Morning Fork is another restaurant hit hard by the shutdown. It’s a “mom and pop” diner owned by Jennifer and Keith Swiryn.
The cuisine is classic American diner food with culinary flairs, says Jennifer. They emphasize fresh ingredients, and the menu changes seasonally. Food is cooked from scratch.
Specialties include chicken and waffles, corned beef hash and eggs Benedict. Vegetarian options include the tomatoes and eggs breakfast, made with sautéed heirloom tomatoes, garlic and spinach. The diner is also known for its giant pancakes, just slightly more giant than the 11-inch plate that holds them. And the mimosas are pretty popular. They serve fresh baked bread from Bella Bru and coffee from Naked Coffee.
The restaurant is approaching its one-year anniversary on June 21. “This has been my and my husband’s biggest dream come true,” said Jennifer.
The Morning Fork is at 1111 21st St., a space formerly occupied by the Lucky Cafe. Jennifer spent eight years as a waitress for the Lucky Cafe, and she never made any secret of the fact that some day, she was going to own this place.
“I’ve just always been drawn to this building. I have so many memories here,” she explained. Her mother, uncle and cousin also worked for the Lucky Cafe, and her grandmother, who lived just up the street, used to drop by the diner to visit them.
They signed the lease in 2017 and spent almost two years remodeling, all the while preserving the Lucky Cafe’s diner’s nostalgic, retro vibe.
Pre-COVID, the diner had a staff of 20. But when the stay-at-home order took effect, they could no longer afford to pay labor. “Eighty-five percent of our business just dropped instantaneously,” said Jennifer. Keith and Jennifer ran the takeout business themselves, working seven days a week for four weeks straight.
It was overwhelming, and at one point, Jennifer said she broke down crying, just as a customer was walking through the door. She pulled herself together and apologized. An hour later, the same customer returned with flowers and a $100 Visa gift card. It was just one of many gestures of support from the community.
The Morning Fork is once again open for dining in. But half of the tables have been removed, and customers are limited to a single laminated menu per table. That menu is sanitized after it’s used, along with everything else the customer might come into contact with.
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The Rind is a lunch and dinner restaurant/cheese bar with an emphasis on cheese and cheese pairings.
“This was kind of my dream project,” said owner Sara Arbabian. “I wanted to build a place focused around cheese, at a bar, paired with wine and beer.”
She always had an affinity for dairy, and grilled cheese and Mac and cheese were the first recipes she ever learned.
As an adult, Arbabian loved entertaining, and the idea of pairing cheeses followed naturally.
When she knew she was going to open up her own cheese bar, she started taking classes: cheese biology, cheese chemistry, cheese pairing, cheese making.
She’s certified as a cheese professional by the American Cheese Society, as well as a Level 1 sommelier.
At the Rind, cheeses, wines and beers are sourced both locally and internationally, with the price-per-bottle of wine ranging from $36 to $49.
The food menu includes a number of variations on the concepts of grilled cheese and mac and cheese. Grilled cheeses are between $14 and $15, with options like the “truffles & cream” (fontal, Black Diamond five-year cheddar, white truffle oil, kale and sourdough) and “the original veggie” (Herbs de Provence-inspired cashew spread, bell peppers, red onion, cucumber, pea shoots and sourdough).
The mac and cheese side of the menu includes items like “the asparagus mac” (aged parmigiana-reggiano, gruyere, Black Diamond five-year cheddar, asparagus, asparagus pesto and bread crumbs), and “the green mac” (Laura Chenel chevre, pea purée-bechamel, crispy prosciutto, mixed mushrooms, truffle oil and snow pea sprouts).
Where to find them
Federalist Public House, 2009 Matsui Alley
Morning Fork, 1111 21st St.
The Rind, 1801 L St.
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 8:26 AM.