Restaurants face the cold truth of January and omicron, with a dash of cheer and caution

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January sucks for restaurants.

It’s cold, large-order holiday parties have come and gone, it’s cold, seasonal produce is at a low point, it’s cold, people are saving and trying to eat healthier in the new year, and also it’s cold. Add in some people not wanting to dine indoors due to the rapid growth in COVID-19 because of the omicron variant and it’s projected to be a down month across the board.

Dine Downtown aims to soften the blow. The Downtown Sacramento Partnership’s annual celebration, which begins Friday and runs through Jan. 17, will draw people to 30 downtown and midtown restaurants with the promise of affordable prix-fixe meals, something new to break up the winter doldrums.

Restaurants prepare three-course menus and price them at $25, $35 or $45. Some have brunch, some have lunch, all have dinner. A handful will do these meals as takeout bundles, but for dining in, it’s best to make reservations.

As of Tuesday, participating restaurants include: The Red Rabbit Kitchen & Bar, Hawks Public House, Mayahuel, La Cosecha, Foundation Restaurant & Bar, Station 16 Seafood Restaurant & Bar, Dawson’s Steakhouse, the Firehouse Restaurant, Hoppy’s Railyard Kitchen & Hopgarden, Capitol Garage, Tapa the World, the Porch Restaurant & Bar, Maydoon, the Pilothouse Restaurant at the Delta King, Hook and Ladder Manufacturing Co., Nash & Proper, Frank Fat’s, Kasbah, Echo & Rig, Kodaiko Ramen & Bar, Camden Spit & Larder, Rio City Cafe, Solomon’s, Aioli Bodega Espanola, Brasserie du Monde, Midtown Sushi, Prelude Kitchen & Bar, Revolution Winery & Kitchen, Public House Downtown and Cafeteria 15L.

More details, including peeks at those menus, can be found on the Downtown Sacramento Partnership’s event website.

Local restaurants always need love, but downtown’s have been particularly hard hit since state employees began working from home in March 2020. High rents, minimal parking (for cars or to convert into outdoor dining) and a worsening homelessness crisis have already forced the closure of favorites such as La Bonne Soupe, Ambrosia and de Vere’s Irish Pub.

There’s hope for the future, as seen by The Seventh Street Standard’s opening in the new Hyatt Centric and a slew of new housing developments, but sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. This isn’t the restaurants’ fault, though, and a spot in the city’s urban core does draw some of the region’s best chefs. Take a look at the menus, and think about dining downtown in the next couple of weeks.

COVID changes

Omicron might affect some of that celebration – Station 16, for example, is voluntarily reducing its indoor dining capacity to 25% of usual.

Some well-known restaurants around Sacramento are temporarily closing, eliminating indoor dining and taking other drastic steps amid the COVID-19 variant’s rapid spread.

Patrick Mulvaney spoke at a March 2021 press conference to ring in restaurant employees’ vaccine eligibility, encouraging his peers to get theirs. Everyone at Mulvaney and his wife Bobbin’s midtown restaurant, Mulvaney’s B&L, tested negative for the virus last Friday.

By Tuesday morning, enough staff had tested positive that Mulvaney’s B&L shut down for the rest of the week.

Ever-popular Tahoe Park brunch destination Bacon & Butter similarly closed Sunday, giving up one of its two lucrative weekend mornings, out of an abundance of caution, co-owners Billy Zoellin and Amber Michel said in a social media post.

After regularly scheduled closures Monday and Tuesday, the sibling owners extended their emergency shutdown through Wednesday and Thursday, with plans to reopen with exclusively to-go service on Friday.

Beast + Bounty constructed one of the Sacramento region’s best pandemic-induced outdoor patios during 2020, taking over a midtown street with unfinished wood tables, compostable silverware and a snack shack-esque outdoor bar.

Former chef Brock MacDonald left Beast + Bounty during the pandemic to work at Nugget Markets and launch a burger pop-up, but recently returned to the New American restaurant at 1701 R St. Owner Michael Hargis had planned to stay closed from New Year’s Day through Jan. 6 to bring staff up to speed on MacDonald’s new menu.

Now that shutdown is being extended. Beast + Bounty won’t open for indoor or outdoor dining for the time being due to the rise in COVID-19 cases, according to posts on its Instagram and Facebook pages on Tuesday.

Canon is doing away with indoor dining as well, but still seating people on its heated and covered outdoor patio.

Old Tavern Bar & Grill is closing from Tuesday until Friday to let staff get tested and deep-clean the bar’s interior. Journey to the Dumpling in Elk Grove also announced it was shutting down indoor dining.

What I’m Eating

My dining companion was craving Korean food after finishing Michelle Zauner’s excellent memoir “Crying in H Mart,” so off we went to Jiu Jiu Korean BBQ, a relatively recent addition to the La Riviera area’s robust scene. With a Sacramento address (9729 Folsom Blvd.) but in sight of the Rancho Cordova welcome sign, Jiu Jiu has flown a bit under the radar since opening in August 2019.

That’s a shame, because Dong Hu Qian and Chun Bernal’s restaurant is turning out some of the region’s best Korean food. Barbecue is part of Jiu Jiu’s identity, including all-you-can-eat menus for $30 or $39, and tabletop grills fired up pork belly and kebabs around us. But most barbecue orders had a two-dish minimum, and I don’t always find that giant hunks of meat best reflect the range of flavors Korean cooking can hold, so we passed on them in favor of more nuanced options.

The galbi-tang ($20) was our favorite, a cloudy, savory stew served still-bubbling in its mini-cauldron as is customary. Stuffed with short ribs, strips of fried egg whites, daikon and japchae, it was an intense, complex umami bomb. The short ribs slid easily off the bone without falling apart, and cute little pots of rice added some body.

Want funky? Try the kimchi jjigae ($14), where intentionally over-fermented sour kimchi is the dominant flavor. Stir-fried with scant pork slices and abetted by soft tofu, onions and rice, it was fun to share, but I’m not sure I’d want this tangy stew to be my lone entree.

The temperature changed with bibim-naengmyeon ($15), a cold pile of sweetened gochujang, thin beef strips, daikon, cucumber and an egg boiled somewhere between hard and soft. I recommend coughing up an extra $3 for long, extraordinarily chewy soba noodles — the buckwheat’s earthy taste helped balance.

Banchan was straightforward but delicious — think pickled daikon, broccoli cooked in sesame oil and bean sprouts. Jiu Jiu’s housemade kimchi is also available to-go at $3 for five ounces or $10 for 32 ounces.