New Southern barbecue restaurant, cocktail lounge to replace Sandra Dee’s in Sacramento

Sacramentans spent decades seeking out a Mansion Flats soul food restaurant in a 102-year-old building. Its replacement will serve Southern classics, too, but with an updated touch.

Taste Buds Barbeque & Cocktails will open at 601 15th St., the longtime home of Sandra Dee’s Bar-B-Que & Seafood near downtown Sacramento, in early March. It’ll be owned and run by Dimitrious and Jacqueline Foster, who have hosted pop-ups outside the under-construction restaurant for the last three weeks.

Customers might recognize Jacqueline and Dimitrious from Jazzy Jacks Barbecue, their former pop-up and catering operation that’s served at Sacramento events such as Concerts in the Park, Juneteenth celebrations and car shows.

Dimitrious is the pitmaster, while Jacqueline makes sides (potato salad, macaroni and cheese, cornbread) and desserts (sweet potato pie, strawberry cheesecake, peach cobbler). Look for house rubs on meats such as rib tips, hot links and barbecued chicken as well as seafood like grilled salmon and shrimp skewers.

“The building’s historic, but we want to bring in something new,” Jacqueline said. “Taste Buds Barbeque is going to bring something different to barbecue here. Anyone who tastes our food, their mouth will water.”

Jacqueline’s parents are from Arkansas and Mississippi, while Dimitrious grew up in Louisiana. While their Southern-style barbecue takes inspiration from those states, Taste Buds’ ambiance will be closest to lounges in Georgia, where Jacqueline lived before moving to Sacramento in 1992.

The Fosters want people to come in and relax, maybe listen to some live music — they’re planning to host jazz bands once or twice a month. Taste Buds’ bar will specialize in strong cocktails like Long Island ice teas, mango margaritas or the house specialty concoction.

“The vibe we’re trying to implement inside is going to be something new that I’ve never seen in Sacramento,” Jacqueline said. “It looks like a place where you want to chill and have a good time and invite your friends to listen to the music there.”

Grab-and-go mixed drinks will also be available, for customers in more of a rush. Taste Buds employees will run deliveries using specially-designed bags that lock at the restaurant and unlock via a code sent to the customer’s cell phone, preventing tampering en route.

Sandra Dee’s was a hit when it opened in 1998 and held down its 3,900-square-foot restaurant space for 21 years, but traffic faded near the end. Celebrity chef/professional yeller Gordon Ramsay tried to modernize the concept on a Fox show in 2018, only to have owner Sandra Dee Johnson immediately undo his changes and excoriate him in the press.

Sandra Dee’s dining room closed in 2019, though it still caters Southern comfort food for events. A Chinese restaurant called Peony Garden applied for permits to take over the restaurant space but never opened.

Taste Buds will host pop-ups from 4-8 p.m. outside the restaurant Thursday-Saturday until opening. A website at tastebudsbarbeque.com is under construction.

This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 9:56 AM.