Sacramento Food & Drink: More outdoor dining; restaurant openings; latest in new foods

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Happy fall, y’all,

After a 2020 full of tricks, a little treat for Sacramento restaurants is on its way.

The Sacramento City Council voted last week to earmark $2 million for making restaurants’ outdoor dining parklets permanent as part of a $61.7 million federal COVID-19 relief fund package. Temporary parklets authorized as an emergency pandemic workaround are still good through June 2022; the city is working on a framework to make the structures permanent.

Whatever the new framework is, it will cost. Renovations will need to be made in the name of safety, ADA compliance and drainage, City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela told me. If restaurants are allowed to keep structures built onto streets or sidewalks, expect municipal fees for that as well.

Two million dollars isn’t chump change, particularly with a narrow frame of use like this, but there will be lots of hands grasping at the pie. For Old Sacramento, where restaurants and bars have arguably struggled worse than other neighborhoods, investments in security and solving the homelessness crisis will go further.

The city set aside $5 million for improved lighting and 19 security cameras around Old Sacramento as part of that $61.7 million American Relief Plan bundle. This comes after multiple shootings in the small tourism district, including one in July that killed two and left four injured outside Joe’s Crab Shack.

About two-thirds of that $61.7 million, though, is going toward the city’s homelessness master plan, with the goal of funding “5,000 beds, roofs and solutions,” according to Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s office. As tourists and white-collar workers left downtown and Old Sacramento during the pandemic, more people began living under door frames and along sidewalks in those districts.

Help for the unhoused is help for the businesses in the areas where they gather; the safer customers feel walking from shop to shop, the more money they’ll spend down there. As The Sacramento Bee opinion writer Yousef Baig noted in a column Sunday, Old Sacramento is the barometer for both how badly COVID-19 hurt the city’s economy and how far along we are in recovery.

“I think this really represents a holistic approach to recovery,” Valenzuela said. “The council really learned a lot from the first round of CARES Act money and is really approaching this from a synergistic way ... because it’s more than just the businesses, it’s the workers and also the customers.”

What I’m Eating

As Sunday’s record storm deluged Sacramento, my mind turned to souuuuup. Binge-watching the new season of “You” from under a fuzzy blanket will do that to a brain, but so will a place like Fukumi Ramen at 5410 Sunrise Blvd., Suite 2 in Citrus Heights and 10271 Fairway Drive, Suite 120 in Roseville (a third restaurant emphasizing small plates, Fukumi Chaya, will open in Folsom’s Palladio shopping center this winter). Note: this meal took place Monday night, because I’m not going out driving in that kind of rain and asking a delivery person to do so would be messed up!

Fukumi (Japanese for “atmosphere”) boils Kurabuta pork bones for 72 hours to get the creamy broth for its flagship hakata tonkatsu ramen, a style native to the city of Fukuoka. A soup simply titled “Fukumi Ramen” ($15) with three chasu slices, seaweed and a jammy egg seemed like the thing to order. It was salty, savory and just a little smoky from a healthy ladle-full of black garlic oil, with slippery thin noodles that were easy to slurp down.

The Midori Ramen ($15) was less traditional but even better. A housemade miso pesto dyed the broth green and gave the soup a lighter feel alongside chasu, bean sprouts, green onion slices and thick noodles. Fukumi offers a couple of brothless ramen; if one wants that summery taste but still wants soup, the Midori is my recommendation.

Unfortunately, the non-soup appetizer we started with didn’t hold up as well. The agedashi tofu ($7) was generously portioned like the ramen, and the tofu itself had a pleasant creamy texture. But a soggy fry shell left much to be desired, and there wasn’t quite enough sauce to flavor four large blocks of unseasoned tofu. It’s worth noting that the Citrus Heights restaurant, where we ate, is still just 7 months old, while the Roseville location opened in February 2020.

Business Openings

▪ Downtown Commons’ newest tenant, Vine + Grain, is hosting its grand opening Friday at 414 K St., Suite 125. The wine bar’s second location after Anthony and Alyssa Roost’s Brentwood flagship, it’ll have seasonal small plates and a retractable garage-style door.

▪ Tampa-based fast food chain Rally’s opened its second area location last week, this one at 7911 Auburn Blvd. in Citrus Heights, after debuting inside a south Sacramento Walmart last year. Burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries and more are available exclusively from a drive-thru window.

This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.