Four weeks have passed since my list of Sacramento’s Top 50 Restaurants came out, and readers sure let me know which ones I snubbed.

SacBee.com readers think I missed 70 restaurants. That’s how many different nominations we received for our readers’ choice selections.

I love the enthusiasm, and these restaurants. These five will be added to the Top 50 list as readers’ choice selections.

Aioli Bodega Española (1800 L St., Sacramento): Aziz Bellarbi-Salah’s 28-year-old, Spanish-inspired midtown spot is known as much for its gorgeous patio as its tapas selection and two-person paella platters.

Mikuni (multiple locations): Taro Arai’s local sushi chain remains a crowd favorite; it was voted onto the 2021 Top 50 Restaurants list as well.

Q1227 (1465 Eureka Road, Suite 100, Roseville): Quentin Bennett (known to most as Chef Q) took Placer County by storm with his high-end, Southern-inspired concept, which opened in December 2019.

Southpaw Sushi (1616 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento): Longtime Sacramento sushi chef Lou Valente gave Del Paso Boulevard a destination restaurant when he opened Southpaw in August 2019.

Tres Hermanas (multiple locations): Norma, Dora and Sonya Saenz are the three sisters behind Tres Hermanas, a beloved Mexican restaurant that first opened in midtown Sacramento in 1996 before adding East Sacramento and Davis locations.

Congratulations to all restaurants that made this year’s Top 50 this year’s crowd favorites, and to all the restaurants that made the original list.

What I’m Eating

“If you have to tell someone what you are, you aren’t.” So goes Anonimo Pizza’s slogan, a layer of mystery driven home by question marks around the 10-month-old restaurant at 400 12th St. in Sacramento’s Alkali Flat neighborhood.

Anonimo is part of a little pizza boom across Sacramento’s grid over the last couple of years along with Pizzasaurus Rex, the adorable Majka Pizzeria & Bakery and Buffalo Pizza & Ice Cream, which moved into its new Southside Park home in August.

Owned by Broderick Roadhouse (midtown, West Sacramento) and Bones Craft Kitchen (Davis) proprietor Chris Jarosz, Anonimo is maybe the hippest of these new options, a sleek combination of graffiti art, copper-colored tables and throwback hip-hop music.

Anonimo’s pies — they don’t do individual slices — are somewhere between New York and Neapolitan styles, thin and cheese-covered beauties with a good amount of flop. By taking inspiration but not adhering directly to traditional styles, Anonimo frees itself up to create inventive variations such as a duck carnitas pizza ($21 for a 13-inch pie/$35 for a 17-inch) that recently jumped from the specials board to the regular menu.

Pizza chef Ruben Trejo cooked a duck leg whole, shredded the meat, then landed it on the pizza with some good mouthfeel and color in the shape of dried figs, sweet potatoes, honey and green onions. A potato pesto pizza ($19/$32) was a little less flavorful but just as pretty, a swirl of pesto circling strips of roasted garlic, sliced red potatoes and a range of mushrooms.

The chef’s chop salad ($13) feels like your classic approachable pizza parlor salad, spruced up with more premium ingredients but still reasonably-priced for its impressive size. Finocchiona (Tuscan salami), Kalamata olives, pickled onions, halved grape tomatoes, prosciutto, bacon, brick cheese cubes and more pile high atop Romaine and mixed greens, all covered in an assertive Champagne vinaigrette.

Address: 400 12th St., Sacramento

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Phone Number: (916) 382-4248

Website: https://www.anonimopizzamenu.com

Drinks: Local beers on tap and in cans, and bottles of local wine.

Animal-free options: Many vegetarian pizzas and a couple of salads, and a vegan meatball sub

Accessibility: Wheelchair-friendly restroom, parking can be slightly challenging.

Noise level: Generally middle-of-the-road, but with a small dining room, could become louder when busy.

Openings & Closings

• A new halal restaurant called Mr. Falafel opened Dec. 10 at 5539 H St., Suite 50 in East Sacramento, where Subway had been. Look for wraps, burgers and kebab platters at the Middle Eastern spot.
• Xulo Coffee-Bar opened Thursday at 8698 Elk Grove Blvd., Suite 5 in the Elk Grove Crossing shopping center, serving brews made from Rocklin-based Vaneli’s Handcrafted Coffee beans. Owners Alfredo Peña and Jorge Rodriguez-Cruz whip up Mexican-inspired drinks and offer food such as pan dulce, breakfast sandwiches and weekend brunch.
  
  
• Sit Lo Saigon (a sister restaurant of Saigon Alley Kitchen & Bar in midtown Sacramento) is expanding from Elk Grove to Davis. The Vietnamese restaurant known for serving both northern and southern styles of phở will fill Thai Nakorn’s old spot at 414 G St., the Davis Enterprise reported.
• Pure Soul Plant-Based Eats is moving, and shrinking its footprint. The all-vegan East Sacramento fast food restaurant, which had been open at 715 56th St. since March 2020 (oof), is shutting down brick-and-mortar operations to serve to-go customers out of The Line, a new ghost kitchen hub at 6415 Elvas Ave.

This story was originally published December 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.