Hawaiian restaurant and bar opens in East Sacramento, and it has a new twist on brunch
Yellowfin tuna poke and seaweed salad from Sunh Fish. Macadamia nut waffles topped with chicken katsu and sriracha mango syrup. Housemade linguica, noodles and “Spam,” the last of which is also available in vegan form.
Hawaii’s homey foods and flavors will get an elevated treatment at Kau Kau, Amanda Bridger and Chris Tocchini’s new East Sacramento restaurant. It opened May 11, replacing Evan’s Kitchen & Catering at 855 57th St., Suite C in the 57th Street Antique Mall.
A pop-up that took residency inside midtown Sacramento’s Cider House during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kau Kau now has more than 2,000 square feet and a full kitchen, allowing for an expanded menu with more frying and grilling.
Bridger will share the kitchen with Rocco Holding, a veteran Philadelphia chef who cooked at The Waterboy and Brasserie Du Monde after moving to Sacramento in 2018. Tocchini will manage the restaurant’s front-of-house.
Bridger concocted Kau Kau’s flagship dishes such as poke and plate lunches. Holding will lead on specials, housemade spice mixes and butchering whole animals, making Kalua pork from a pig’s meat and saimin stock from its bones.
“We had to cut corners before out of necessity and use stuff that came out of a packet, maybe. This is all going to be (with) homemade touches,” Bridger said. “It’s taking what we kind of incubated over the pandemic and then just growing it a little bit.”
That means items like furikake-covered baked tofu ($14), topped with a miso-ginger sauce and served with macaroni salad or pineapple slaw. Huli-huli chicken ($16), the islands’ take on barbecued chicken with a distinctive sweet glaze, is another brick-and-mortar addition.
A Sacramento brunch spot
Kau Kau hopes to absorb Evan’s brunch traffic with items like the taro cake benedict ($16) topped with poached eggs and sesame-miso “hollandaise.” A noodle soup called chicken long rice ($13) is geared as a hangover cure for nearby Sacramento State students, though those with a sweet tooth might prefer Punalu’u Bake Shop taro French toast with pineapple-ginger compote and rum whipped cream ($14).
“The ultimate goal of mine is to keep committed to the soul of classic Hawaiian comfort food, while we also have a lot of fun in the kitchen interpreting these flavors in creative ways,” Bridger wrote in an email.
Kau Kau’s decor similarly straddles comfort and modernity. Two-bladed fans lazily slice air above a mostly-white dining room colored up by potted plants, hanging nautical ropes and Bridger’s old family photos in Hawaii. An eight-seat round table sits in the center of the dining room, surrounded by booths and a small bar.
Laid off from her job as a San Francisco cocktail waitress in March 2020, Bridger began cooking for neighbors and reevaluating her career during the pandemic. She found herself gravitating toward the comfort foods of Hawaii, where her great-grandfather immigrated from Scotland and many relatives still live.
Expanding bar menu
She and Tocchini, a San Francisco bartender and manager for 25 years, came to Sacramento to host a pop-up at The Golden Bear and eventually moved to the city to launch Kau Kau inside Cider House.
As the menu has expanded with the East Sacramento launch, so too has the beverage list.
Local beers from breweries such as King Cong, Bike Dog and across-the-street neighbor Porchlight will flow from most of the bar’s taps, though Kau Kau will also carry Kona Brewing Co.’s Longboard Island Lager. Wine will be $8-$15 per glass and $25-$76 per bottle, with a few 300-milliliter bottles of chilled sake for $20 or less.
Kau Kau will be open 1-9 p.m. on its first day, then 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 6:00 AM.