Food reporter’s notebook: The best restaurant dishes I ate around Sacramento in August

To get to the Sacramento area’s best food, you often need to leave the city.

Of the four best restaurant meals I had in August, three came from suburbs outside of Sacramento. The one exception was in a Mexican market in south Natomas, but the food was rooted across the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa.

From shawarma-taco hybrids to tender Sichuan chicken, these were the best meals I ate out around the Sacramento area in August. All were first announced in The Bee’s free weekly food and drink newsletter as I found them. You can sign up here for those recommendations each week, plus relevant articles and my thoughts on the Sacramento restaurant and bar scene.

A Part Cafe owners Areej Khan and Michael Spencer run a progressive, queer-friendly restaurant in downtown Roseville, and they have taken a courageous approach in the kitchen. The couple’s gratuity-free halal restaurant at 217 Vernon St. churns out some of Placer County’s most interesting food, all under the generous umbrella of Middle Eastern fusion.

A Part Cafe’s flagship invention is the shwaco, a shawarma-taco crossbreed with fillings like lamb or sliced portobellos. I went for the qulaba shwaco ($6), a tangy tomato-and-fava bean stew topped with house-pickled red onions and a cumin yogurt sauce in a thick “pitilla” (that’s pita/tortilla).

Tahini acts as a smoothener in several A Part Cafe dishes, such as the lahmia manouchia ($5), a small flatbread with soft minced beef, onion and house-made barbecue sauce with a name stemming from “minutia” and the Lebanese dish manoushe. Desserts aren’t forgotten either: tahini is a key ingredient in the half-melted, sea salt-topped chocolate chip cookies ($4) as well.

I washed all this and a shakshuka hand pie ($5) down with one of the best nonalcoholic drinks I’ve had all year: A Part Cafe’s smoked lemonade ($5). Made with house-smoked lemons, it was campfirey like a boozeless mezcal or Scotch but with enough sugar and acidity to have some semblance of balance. It’s easy enough to make and would pair great with grilled meats, if any home cooks need summer barbecue inspiration.

A longtime friend asked if Sacramento had any West African restaurants that his wife, a Benin native, might enjoy. To the best of my knowledge, there’s only one: Naija Cuisine, a cash-only, takeout-only Nigerian hideaway inside a Mexican market at 2682 Northgate Blvd. in south Natomas.

As Comstock’s Magazine wrote earlier this year, Naija has become mildly TikTok-famous as the only place around here to find fufu, fluffy pounded cassava with a consistency slightly thicker than mashed potatoes. It starred in a dish simply called pounded yam with chicken ($19.75) alongside two drumsticks and egusi, a rich, nutty stew made from ground squash seeds.

The jollof rice with goat ($20), dyed red by a tomato/pepper paste and topped with fried plantain slices, was vigorously seasoned as well. I didn’t pick up one of the African beers Najia sold, but knew from the first bite at home that a lager would crisply cut through the spice. Next time I’ll try one of those, and another stew like ewedu (green, made from jute leaves) or ogbono (orange, made from ground African mango seeds).

Between Panda Express and IHOP, facing away from Stockton Boulevard toward a construction site, lies the appropriately named Hidden Sichuan. Even the menu’s front page identifies the Elk Grove restaurant at 9160 E. Stockton Blvd., Suite 150 as “inside In-N-Out Burger shopping center,” along with a more telling detail: It’s the sister restaurant of Crouching Tiger, owner Tonia Yeh’s Redwood City eatery that earned several Michelin Bib Gourmand awards throughout the 2010s.

Sichuan food is normally associated with spiciness, and Hidden Sichuan can pack a punch, but there’s a lot more going on here than just trying to reach the top of the Scoville Scale. For example, I really enjoyed the layers of flavor in the Sichuan salty pickle fish stew’s ($12 for a small, $14 for a medium, $17 for a large) cloudy green, umami-rich broth.

Chicken tenders will have to wait until Raising Cane’s finishes construction across the parking lot from Hidden Sichuan. But if it’s tender chicken you seek, try the spicy boiled juicy chicken ($16) poached in hot chili oil with napa cabbage, prickly ash and lots of garlic.

Yet nothing quite compared to the hulking Dongpo pork ($23), a large pig knuckle braised in a house ginger sauce. Native to the Chinese city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, it’s normally prepared with pork belly, but knuckle has enough fat to create the necessary lardy blanket around wine-red meat that falls right off the bone.

A sister bistro in midtown Sacramento closed in 2016, but Anatolian Table fans can still find some of the region’s best Turkish food by heading out to 6504 Lonetree Blvd. in Rocklin. The menu at Ertugrul Hazar’s 14-year-old restaurant is approachable, yet slightly different from the shawarma/falafel staples at more ambiguous Middle Eastern restaurants.

See the hot oven hummus ($7.50) appetizer, baked with a thin layer of gooey mozzarella and topped with pine nuts and sumac. The Sultan’s Delight ($18 with chicken or lamb, $16 with mixed vegetables) drowned diced meat or veggies in a smoked eggplant sauce, which our server compared to baba ganoush, but was so creamy it just reminded me of gravy.

You’ve probably had kebabs before. Ever had a lamb kebab slathered in spicy hummus, wrapped in flatbread and placed atop a yogurt-herb sauce to offset the heat? That’s the yogurtlu beyti kebab ($18), pictured above and served with a side salad like the rest of the entrees.

This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 11:32 AM.