One of Sacramento’s native daughters just released one of the hottest cookbooks on the market. Her feelings about the city, though, seem conflicted.

Illyanna Maisonet’s “Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook” stands out by refusing to adhere to rigid definitions of Puerto Rican food and recipes. Instead, it’s a celebration of the dishes Maisonet and the other the 5.5 million “Diasporicans” grew up on and made their own, such as Hawaiian-influenced pastele stew or bread pudding known as “budin” with California walnuts.

“Diasporican” has earned glowing reviews from NPR, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Eater, among others, since being published by Ten Speed Press on Oct. 18. It’s a cookbook not for Puerto Ricans, but for “the tribe of Ni De Aquí, Ni De Allá (‘not from here, not from there’).”

Maisonet, who previously wrote a column on Puerto Rican food for the San Francisco Chronicle, doesn’t mince words about much, and that includes her thoughts on Sacramento.

It’s a “cultural wasteland. A dust-bucket town that may give birth to creative types but doesn’t nurture them. And it’s only a matter of time before they must flee or fail,” she wrote in the book’s introduction.

Promoted as one of the nation’s most diverse cities, Sacramento is “incredibly segregated” in truth, wrote Maisonet, who declined to be interviewed for this column. Midtown and the Fab 40s have little in common with south Sacramento’s systemically neglected Avondale neighborhood in which Maisonet grew up during the 1980s, she wrote.

That neighborhood was home to a diverse community of immigrants whose food influenced Maisonet’s contemporary “Cali-Rican” cooking style, though, including her mother and grandmother. So too did the culinary traditions of Taino, Spanish and African people who made their way to Puerto Rico throughout the years, along with U.S. colonial rule during the 20th century.

Maisonet, who now resides in the Bay Area, clearly has love for the slice of Sacramento in which she was raised, if not the city as a whole. And like any good Cali-anything cookbook, it focuses plenty on area farmers.

Glossy pictures of Rancho Llano Seco piglets in Butte County and Koda Farms rice from Merced County are interspersed among shots of arroz con gandules and Puerto Rican laab, a Maisonet creation derived from her time living with a Laotian family as a teenager.

No Sacramento-area producer gets highlighted like Camelia Enriquez Miller’s Twin Peaks Orchards in Newcastle, whose stone fruits are a summertime favorite of Maisonet’s as well as high-end restaurants such as Mulvaney’s B&L and Restaurant Josephine.

In Maisonet’s recipe for pasetillos de yellow peaches (nectarines work fine too, she said), the author grieves the 100-year-old farm’s fragility — how long will it continue operating when a booming nearby wine country’s development demands make real estate the financially wiser choice?

You can buy “Diasporican” for about $33 from local bookstores such as The Avid Reader in Davis, Underground Books in Oak Park or Capital Books in downtown Sacramento, or from a variety of online retailers.

What I’m Eating

Rafael Jimenez Rivera’s grandfather owned a restaurant in Puerto Rico and his father ran a Puerto Rican restaurant in New York City. Jimenez Rivera, who has a couple decades of food and beverage industry experience of his own, took the plunge in August.

Jimenez Rivera partnered with Good Bottle Shop owners Chris Sinclair and Emily Neuhauser as well as chef Matt Brown (formerly of The Golden Bear) to open Bodega Kitchen & Cocktails about three months ago. Sinclair’s A+ bar program helps form a beachy, friendly Greenhaven oasis at 6401 Riverside Blvd., and Bodega’s dynamic dishes pluck inspiration from across the Caribbean.

Take the coco bread Cubano ($17), a sandwich with no direct peer in Sacramento. Pernil, ham, pickles, and mustard are pretty typical, but then Brown subs Gruyere for Swiss cheese and stuffs the whole thing in one puffy, folded piece of Jamaican bread made with coconut milk.

Bodega was initially envisioned as more Puerto Rican than Cali-Caribbean, and Jimenez Rivera’s roots still shine in dishes such as the tripleta sandwich ($18). Taking its name from the three types of meat (grilled chicken, peppered bacon and pernil), it’s also overflowing with nacho cheese, fries, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and mayo-ketchup, creating a processed indulgence that’s as messy as it is delicious.

Doubles ($14), a Trinidadian street food that bears some resemblance to tacos, are one of the few vegetarian options. Mildly spiced curried chickpeas, ginger oil and pickled mango sit atop a trio of small turmeric flatbreads, waiting to be finished with pickled red onions and a few dabs of pique, an acidic Puerto Rican hot sauce made from chilis Brown grows in his home garden.

Bottom line: Bodega is really, really good. So good, in fact, that I’ve named it one of Sacramento’s Top 50 Restaurants of 2022, the full list of which comes out on Nov. 20. Check out last year’s list here, and mark your calendars!

Address: 6401 Riverside Blvd., Sacramento. Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. Phone Number: (916) 898-2231. Drinks: full liquor license, a terrific cocktail bar and an in-house bottle shop. Animal-free options: fried appetizers, a quinoa fruit salad and the doubles mentioned above. Accessibility: Bar seating is snug and high-up, but good spacing in dining room. Noise level: medium-high.

Openings & Closings

• GK Mongolian BBQ opened Tuesday at 1335 Florin Road, Suite A103 in South Land Park. Customers can compile all-you-can-eat bowls of noodles, veggies and meat for around $15, as with GK’s 10 other locations (including ones in Roseville and Rocklin).

• Seasons Coffee Roasters’ first cafe opened in midtown Sacramento’s CLARA building at 2420 N St., Suite 105 on Oct. 30. Previously a subscription-only roastery known for its “Bold Crew” cold brew, Seasons’ brick-and-mortar spot features breakfast tacos, panini and various toasts as food options.

• Chando’s Cantina closed Sunday in the El Dorado Hills Town Center, ending a three-year run at 2023 Vine St. Lisandro “Chando” Madrigal’s Mexican restaurant and bar remains open near downtown Sacramento, along with eight more casual Chando’s Tacos locations throughout the region.