Eat, drink and be merry: 8 holiday gift ideas for Sacramento’s food lovers
Multi-family gatherings around the Christmas tree are canceled in 2020. Area hotels aren’t accepting vacationers under California’s new regional stay-at-home order. It’s hard to kiss relatives through a mask.
Gifts, though? In a year where everyone could use a pick-me-up, they’re still very much on the table. And Sacramento’s bounty of local food and drinks has something for all, from 916-based gourmands to far-flung cousins.
Restaurant Gift Cards
You know local restaurants have been hurt by COVID-19. The hit list ranges from onsite dining bans to woefully inadequate government assistance to workers’ heightened risk of exposure. A holiday season without parties figures to be another gut punch.
Gift cards give both buyers and recipients flexibility — a range of prices for the former, anytime use for the latter — while sending restaurants a cash influx just before their weakest point of the year. Several restaurants have figured this out, and it’s worth a call to your favorite to see if they’re selling gift cards. These 10 are: Freeport Bar & Grill, Pasquale’s Italian Pizzeria, Sushi Q, Nixtaco, Magpie, The Morning Fork, Buck & Sadie’s, Taste of Tuscany, S.E.A. Bowl and Hop Gardens.
Recommended reading: Lost Restaurants of Sacramento and Their Recipes by Maryellen Burns and Keith Burns.
Beer With Cheer
Supermarkets have done just fine financially during the pandemic. Craft breweries, less so. Many relied on in-house drinking prior to the age of COVID-19, a business model which has been hampered by shutdowns of bars and indoor and outdoor dining. While homebound drinking has increased during the pandemic, beer sales at grocery stores earn the breweries far less profit than taprooms sales, since distributors take their cut along the way.
So when picking up a four-pack this winter, seek out breweries that sell their own cans like Device (Sacramento), Claimstake (Rancho Cordova), Flatland (Elk Grove), Mraz (El Dorado Hills), Moksa (Rocklin) or Sudwerk (Davis). Stouts and porters are typical winter beers, though the relatively warm weather so far calls for something slightly lighter like an amber ale.
Recommended reading: Sacramento Beer: A Craft History by Justin Chechourka.
Local Wine
The buy-direct advice applies here as well and is easier to follow than some might think, with dozens of wineries within 45 minutes of the Capitol. Lewis Grace’s 2018 Pinot Noir ($31) won “Best in Class” at the 2020 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, and the Placerville winery took home 18 other medals as well.
Great Bear offers same-day delivery on wine, honey, olive oil and lavender products to Davis and Woodland, though those who pick up their orders can greet the Davis winery’s pet pig Frankie. For on-the-go drinkers, Clarksburg-based Heringer Estates sells cans of white or red blends in groups of four ($24) or 24 ($168), with each can equal to about half a bottle.
Cooking Together — Virtually
Cooking classes, like so much else in 2020, have move to Zoom. Shankari Easwaran teaches Indian and Southeast Asian cooking in Sacramento Spice classes, where kids lessons are just $12 per student. Longtime local instructor Paulette Bruce’s Good Eats classes are more geared to European cuisine, particularly her family’s Basque and Italian heritage (Biba’s minestrone with pesto on Jan. 21!), and run $29 for two live and two recorded classes per month.
Homeskool’d is Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine sushi chef Ricky Yap and The Burger Saloon co-owner Chris Lombardi’s first foray into lessons; $55 ingredient bundles for dishes like ramen, chapli kabobs and pancit bihon are picked up the day of at A&P Liquors in midtown Sacramento. Canon alumnus Byron Hughes and producer Ryan Royster founded Last Supper Society to host in-person events earlier this year, only to pivot and launch “The Cook In” as a hybrid cooking class/talk show over YouTube TV when the pandemic hit. Ingredient pick-up for the $60 Dec. 19 coq au vin dinner featuring Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker — Royster played baseball at UC Davis and in the minor leagues — is available in West Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco.
Recommended reading: Biba’s Italy: Recommended Recipes from the Splendid Cities by Biba Caggiano.
Gift Baskets
As with Last Supper Society, SacTown Bites’ pandemic-forced repurposed identity makes for arguably an easier gift than the original product. After social distancing requirements shut down the company’s gastronomic walking tours, founder Heather Fortes introduced four boxes ranging from $40-$185, with free shipping included nationwide on the $85 flagship package (organic Cantagallo coffee beans from Pachamama Coffee Cooperative, shelled walnuts from Premier Walnut Company in Yuba City, Tempranillo chocolate sauce from Turkovich Family Wines in Winters and more).
Corti Bros. gift baskets range from a $50 pasta box to a $100 locally-sourced box to the $150 “Take Me To Italy” box, while the Davis Farmers Market’s $40 bundle comes with an apron, produce sacks and a cookbook to make the most of the vendors’ wares. For a Handle District selection, Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates’ $45 “neighborhood bag” includes a 12-ounce hot chocolate tin and marshmallow baton as well as a bag of Old Soul High Hopes Blend coffee beans and a gift card for two cocktails at Mulvaney’s B&L.
Spirited Away
Local craft distilleries didn’t take off the way breweries did throughout the 2010s, largely because they require building safety requirements like one might find in an oil refinery. They played a valuable role early in the pandemic, though, aside from dulling the shelter-in-place order’s pain.
Dry Diggings Distillery in El Dorado Hills almost exclusively created hand sanitizer and cleaning fluid in March, nearly closing down as a result, but survived to keep selling bottles of whiskey ($19-$70) and brandy ($30-$40). Rancho Cordova’s all-organic J.J. Pfister Distilling Co. produced gallons of sanitizing spray as well, and has since gone back to drakas ($30), rum ($37.50) and bourbon ($39.50).
Gold River Distillery, the first in Sacramento County following Prohibition, is home to rarer spirits like applejack made with Camino fruit and absinthe (both $55). And one-month-old Midtown Distillery sells 24- or 36-shot packs ($50 and $70 respectively) of infused vodka — flavors include horseradish, pecan pie and caramelized pineapple — as well as the Bloody Mary and margarita mixes founders Dave Abrahamsen and Jason Poole developed at Preservation & Co.
Recommended reading: Prohibition in Sacramento: Moralizers and Bootleggers in the Wettest City in the Nation by Annette Kassis.
CSA Boxes
Call it Farm-To-Fridge. Community Supported Agriculture boxes flood customers with fresh fruits, vegetables and occasionally animal products every week or two without requiring a farmers market or grocery store run.
A home cooking surge at the start of the pandemic has many farms pumping out as many boxes as they can handle, but Yolo County-based Three Sisters Gardens and Terra Firma Farm are all currently accepting new subscriptions. Some, like Riverdog Farms, even offer one-month, low-commitment packages starting at $30 per box. Sacramento-based distributor Produce Express has the greatest variety, with six different boxes from $25-$50 and pickup points from Davis to Amador City.
Recommended reading: The CSA Cookbook: No-Waste Recipes for Cooking Your Way Through a Community Supported Agriculture Box, Farmers’ Market, or Backyard Bounty by Linda Ly.
Stocking Stuffers
East Sacramento cafe Tiferet Coffee House sells $5, one-ounce loose leaf tea packages for individual use. … The Allspicery seemingly sells every seasoning under the sun, starting at less than $1. … Roseville-based Vegan Plate’s hot chocolate bombs transform from truffle-like orbs to drinks with milk’s addition ($6 for one or three for $15). … Snooks Candies and Chocolate Factory’s old-timey charm feels right at home in the Folsom Historic District, and the 57-year-old chocolate shop’s Christmas specialties like a 5-ounce Santa or hot fudge-making kit start at $12.