Food reporter’s notebook: The best Sacramento-area restaurant meals I ate in December

A bright beet salad at a much-loved Italian restaurant, complex orange mole at a Oaxacan destination in Rocklin and ketchup-infused arroz con pollo (seriously) made up some of the most noteworthy meals The Sacramento Bee food and beverage reporter Benjy Egel ate in December.

All of these reviews first appeared in Egel’s free weekly food and drink newsletter, along with other stories from the Sacramento-area dining scene, recommended articles and opening/closing news. Visit sacbee.com/foodnewsletter to sign up.

Mezcalito Oaxacan Cuisine

I can’t overstate how refreshing it is to see “tacos and burritos available upon request” tacked on at the bottom of a Mexican restaurant’s menu. I love ‘em as much as any other native Californian, but there’s so much more to the nation’s cuisine than those two items, as Mezcalito Oaxacan Cuisine illustrates.

Ruben Regalado and Blanca Garcia’s 4-year-old restaurant at 5065 Pacific St. in Rocklin (a sister location in Folsom closed earlier this year) instead specializes in dishes like “Oaxaca’s favorite” ($17). Petaluma Poultry’s Rocky free-range chicken is smothered in mole rojo, mole verde or (my choice) estofado, a creamy orange mole I found to be simultaneously tangy and earthy. It was complex, like any good mole, and left me wanting more. Beans, rice and a carrot flower were included, as with all entrees.

Another regional specialty, the tlayuda ($13), was more simple but still tasty — no wonder, given its American nickname “Oaxacan pizza.” A large, crispy fried tortilla served as the base for black bean spread, stringy queso blanco, spinach, tomato slices, cabbage and avocado, plus a choice of meat for $3 more. I went for cecina, a thin cut of pork loin marinated in a house adobo seasoning.

One of the few on-menu taco options, tacos de rajas ($15 for two), was generously filled with poblano peppers and avocado, and made for a decent vegetarian option. Still, I’ll come back more for dishes like the first two or to try Mezcalito’s Californized take on tasajo ($18), a traditional Oaxacan thin-cut beef dish done here with tri-tip.

Chopan Kabob

Business at Chopan Kabob isn’t what it once was: The Afghan restaurant at 9105 Bruceville Rd., Suite 5A in Elk Grove’s Laguna Crossroads shopping center is takeout-only for now, and owners Mahbooba and Sadiq Qadri were the only ones working when I visited during lunch.

It wasn’t a particularly large menu even in pre-COVID times, leaving few options. A yogurt/cucumber/mint dip called must-e-khair ($6) was nice but unremarkable — essentially tzatziki, just a little thinner and served with a thick slice of Afghan bread.

Much better was the house specialty chopan kabob ($15), grilled bone-in on long skewers under aluminum foil. Served over long-grain rice with a side salad, the lamb was expertly cooked and marinated in a delicious house spice mix the owners wouldn’t disclose to me, though I’d bet sumac is part of the equation.

Bolani ($14), chopped into squares and thrown in a pizza box, was another hit. Stuffed with potatoes, chili flakes and chives (Chopan Kabob uses an Afghan chive variation called gandana when seasonal over the summer), this pan-fried flatbread was tasty on its own, if a little carb-heavy, but reached a new dimension with a tangy-spicy-sour green chutney sauce.

El Sabor de Mi Tierra Colombian & Mexican Food

My neighbor and I were the only people stupid enough to brave a mid-month Monday night storm and drive over to El Sabor de Mi Tierra Colombian & Mexican Food. Splashing through puddle after puddle took us to 2248 W Capitol Ave. in West Sacramento, where Gustavo Gutierrez’s staff rewarded our journey in an otherwise-empty dining room.

El Sabor de Mi Tierra carries two menus, one for each cuisine; the Mexican one was more extensive, the Colombian one more interesting. Take the tamales tolimenses ($17), for example, a dish native to the Colombian state Tolima which barely resembles the corn-husk-wrapped version sold by street vendors across Mexico (and California). Enclosed in a banana leaf, tied like a pouch and served alongside an arepa, it was filled with bone-in chicken thighs, halved hard-boiled eggs, greens and a grainy masa similar to polenta.

Delicious, different and entirely different from El Sabor de Mi Tierra’s take on arroz con pollo ($16). Shredded chicken, golden rice, peas and carrots were molded into a dome and topped with a dollop of ketchup, the not-so-secret ingredient that gave the rice an unmistakable flavor. This is a distinctly Colombian addition that somehow really works; given the shape, contents and ketchup, my neighbor likened it to “forbidden meatloaf.”

Barbacoa de res ($14), the one dish we ordered off the Mexican menu, was offered as either a stew or plate. We chose the former and enjoyed the tender shredded brisket in a savory broth, soothing straight from the bowl or in flour tortillas.

Cacio

Jonathan Kerksieck and Katie Kinner-Kerksieck’s charming Greenhaven ristorante, Cacio, has drawn a devoted following to Riverlake Village Shopping Center since opening in 2018. Reservations are pretty much necessary for the snug interior and petite patio, where heat lamps and complimentary blankets make mid-40s dining comfortable, and it earned a crowd vote spot on The Sacramento Bee’s 50 Best Restaurants list earlier this year.

Cacio’s seasonal baby chiogga beet salad ($12) felt very winter-appropriate, with the roasted Italian beets countered by tart mandarins, creamy whipped burrata, arugula and pickled onions. Each part was surprisingly bright, a welcome bounce in contrast to heavier cold-weather foods.

The restaurant’s name comes from cacio e pepe ($18), a simple cheese-and-black-pepper pasta that was the first dish Jonathan made Katie early in their courtship at Grange Restaurant & Bar. A sweet story, but more than a decade later, it made for an imbalanced flagship where excessive pepper overwhelmed the pecorino and housemade bucatini.

Sautéed prawns ($25) with fregola, preserved tomatoes and arugula were decent, though the pearly pasta was a bit oily for my taste. Kinner-Kerksieck’s suggestions of two Italian wines, Paolo Scavino’s lightly acidic 2019 nebbiolo ($16/$48) and Terre di Chieti’s 2020 pecorino IGT ($10/$32), both paired excellently with the two above pastas.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and blood,” reads the beginning of a framed Theodore Roosevelt quote hung in Cacio’s restroom. It’s surrounded by articles full of praise from various area publications, including this one. I loved Cacio’s setting, service and wine, and wanted to like the food just as much, but some fine-tuning is still needed. Hopefully they’ll see that as constructive criticism.

This story was originally published December 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.