Lou Valente had an eponymous midtown sushi spot, then the hottest new restaurant in North Sacramento, then the city’s most popular pop-up during the pandemic.

These days, he has set hours, state benefits and a job making thin-crust pizza for UC Davis undergrads at Tercero Dining Commons.

The former chef and co-owner of Lou’s Sushi in midtown, then Southpaw Sushi on Del Paso Boulevard, Valente has left the limelight and responsibility of the restaurant industry after 23 years of slicing raw fish in Sacramento.

Valente co-founded Lou’s Sushi in 2013 at 28th and P streets, where it quickly became a hit. He had trained under Taka Watanabe at that point and later learned from Shige Tokita of Shige Sushi.

Both of those chefs are widely respected as luminaries by Sacramento’s sushi lovers, but neither had a mural of themselves painted on the outside of their restaurant. Valente did, broadcasting his image to customers and random passersby and telling them just who the head honcho was.

About the Writer

Benjy Egel, a Sacramento native, covers local restaurants and bars for The Bee.

But Lou eventually left Lou’s Sushi. A bitter business divorce caused him to split and open Southpaw Sushi in 2019, while former partner Dan Walsh converted Lou’s Sushi to Midtown Sushi, which closed recently.

Valente struck gold with Lou’s Pizza, a pop-up run out of his own home that specialized in square, deep Detroit-style pies. One could only pick up Valente’s foccacia-like pizzas topped with pepperoni, meatballs or veggies on Sundays, and only with advance planning. In late 2020, Lou’s Pizza was so popular that orders had to be placed a month in advance.

Valente had a falling-out with his Southpaw partners, and quit the restaurant in August. Then, oddly enough, someone started reporting his pizza pop-up to the Sacramento County Health Department, which told him to shut down the unlicensed operation.

Valente and his wife, Kristi no longer had their pizza pop-up, and they were burnt out from restaurant ownership — the long hours, the back-end responsibilities, the lack of steady income. Being a sushi chef, in particular, requires a level of customer interaction that Lou found draining.

“I was kind of over putting a show on every day for 30 years. You have to be on and talking all the time,” he said. “And then running a business in general, it’s never over. You’re never off. Right now (shortly before 2 p.m.), I’m going to work at UC Davis, and at 10 I leave.”

It’s a similar path charted by other top chefs over the past few years. William Rolle shut down Cafe Rolle, his charming French bistro in East Sacramento, to select cheeses and make sandwiches at Corti Brothers and Sprouts Farmers Market. Brock Macdonald sliced meats at Nugget before returning as Beast + Bounty’s chef.

Jodie Chavious was Canon’s chef de cuisine and chef of Shangri-La in Fair Oaks. She can now be found slinging pizzas out of the back of a turquoise 1960 Ford F-150, sometimes with baked goods from Jane Anderson, Selland Family Restaurants’ former executive pastry chef who left the industry in 2021.

The Valentes are considering applying for a cottage license to sell homemade, nonperishable baked goods such as cookies, scones and cinnamon rolls. They might open up a Detroit-style pizzeria at some point as well, but don’t currently have the energy for a full-on restaurant, Lou said.

For now, loyalists can otherwise find Lou doing one hand roll pop-up per month at Holy Spirits. Or on campus, if you’re an Aggie.

What I’m Eating

Fans of niche Mexican food should check out Molcajetes Apatzingán near the intersection of Fruitridge Road and Franklin Boulevard in the Lemon Hill neighborhood. Burritos and tacos are on the menu, sure, but it’s maybe the only place in town you’ll find certain dishes with roots in Apatzingan, a city of about 125,000 people in the state of Michoacan.

Michoacan borders the Pacific Ocean, and Molcajetes Apatzingan’s menu is essentially split into meat and seafood items. Dishes familiar and rare alike carry addenda to establish regional variations: chilaquiles lindo Michoacan, bistek lindo Michoacan, guilotas estilo Apatzingan (fried mourning doves in red or green sauce).

Though Apatzingan is the focus more so than molcajetes, we still ordered one of the loaded stone bowls with shrimp, chicken, beef and tongues of cactus dangling over the edges. The star of our molcajete mixto ($25.60) was the nuanced broth, at once tangy, rich and a little spicy. “It’s everything,” as one of my friends said.

You could pick your molcajete’s proteins, as with cazuelita ($24.60), where caldo de siete mares seemed like the best topping for a layer of cornmeal in an earthenware bowl. Mussels, fish, octopus, imitation crab and more piled into the seven-seafood stew, which was the spiciest dish our table ordered.

Morisqueta ($20.55) was another hit from Michoacán, this time featuring costillas (spare ribs) and queso fresco in a tomato-based salsa over rice. Fluffy, housemade corn tortillas held up well under the dish’s saucy pressure, and I’d put Molcajetes Apatzingán’s refried beans up against any others in Sacramento.

Info

Address: 5701 Franklin Blvd., Suite A

Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday, closed Tuesday.

Phone number: 916-428-7844

Website: None, really. No social media posts since 2018, and the website listed on Google has been overtaken by spammers.

Drinks: Aguas frescas and horchata are the best options.

Animal-free options: Few, though many seafood options for pescatarians.

Noise level: Lively without being obtrusive.

Openings & Closings

▪ The Nook Wine Bar + Bistro will replace Célestin’s Restaurant in East Sacramento. Owner Joe Holmberg plans to serve mostly Spanish and white wines alongside shareable plates such as caviar or charcuterie boards, the Sacramento Business Journal reported.

▪ Pastry Nouveau opened Wednesday morning in Roseville’s Eureka Ridge Plaza. The sister concept to Julian’s Pâtisserie and Cafe in Folsom, this French-inspired bakery replaced The Parlor Ice Cream.

▪ The Line, a ghost kitchen hub near Sacramento State, is adding a sit-down food venue and beer garden, according to project plans filed with the city. Its 11 commercial kitchen spaces opened to clients such as hot chicken hotspot Nash & Proper and Cuban-Mexican concept Gondo Fusion in September.

This story was originally published February 17, 2023 at 5:00 AM.