Placer County’s Top 5 restaurants of 2024: Where to eat in Roseville, Rocklin and Auburn

The Sacramento Bee’s 2024 Top 50 Restaurants list includes a handful of Placer County favorites: three in Roseville, one in Rocklin and one in Auburn.

Each restaurant had different strengths, from a new xiaolongbao (soup dumpling) haven to a farm-forward fine dining concept that leans on the owners’ classical skills and heritage. All were listed in alphabetical order on the Top 50 list, which is unranked.

Fear not if you don’t see your favorite Placer County restaurant listed below. The Bee is collecting write-in responses for “Readers Choice” selections until Nov. 27, with the five most popular answers to be added to the Top 50 list in December.

Chicha Peruvian Kitchen & Cafe

$ — South American

Chicha’s September expansion brought Giancarlo Zapata and Marleny Chávez’s Peruvian restaurant to Sacramento’s city center, though Placer County diners have feasted on its creations since 2021. The new midtown location has a few more American tinges than the Roseville original — pizza drizzled with ají amarillo aioli or bottomless mimosas with your chicharrónes and tamales at Sunday brunch — but both carry the lip-smacking ceviches that serve as barometers for any Peruvian restaurant. The Pimentel ceviche, in particular, folds sheets of cod and bulbous choclo corn together with an orange leche de tigre so tasty you’ll want to spoon out every last drop. Pan-fried salmon andino is an unassuming knockout as well, a relatively healthy entree bathed in anticucho sauce atop creamy quinoa reminiscent of Zapata and Chávez’s past cooking in upscale Lima hotels. Passionfruit or lime pisco sours are tempting cocktails, yet sober sippers don’t lose an ounce of flavor by ordering chicha morada, a sweet purple corn drink devoid of alcohol.

1079 Sunrise Ave., Suite O, Roseville, CA 95661 | 916-666-7998

Restaurant Josephine

$$ — French/Eastern European

Eric Alexander and Courtney McDonald met at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and built their life together on a five-acre farm outside McDonald’s hometown of Auburn. Their charming restaurant in town, named for Eric’s Lithuania-born great-grandmother as well as the couple’s daughter, Josie, specializes in classic French cuisine with Eastern European inflections and Placer County produce. Restaurant Josephine’s melt-in-your-mouth duck liver mousse with chewy Siberian pine cones, pine cone caramel and pickled turnip curls is the house’s most famous dish and embodies the concept as clear as anything, right down to the crustless toast triangles from Auburn-based the Baker and the Cakemaker. Creamy buckwheat, Tokyo turnips and cognac-glazed peaches surround the browned edges of a hefty grilled Duroc pork chop, which is topped with candied walnuts, prunes and bits of diced bacon for an extra dash of pig. The weekly-rotating menu usually includes some sort of vareniki, Ukrainian dumplings stuffed with housemade tvorog (a Slavic farmers cheese) that were served with halved cherry tomatoes, corn puree and squash blossoms on an early September visit. McDonald skimmed the whey off the tvorog and reduced it with sugar until caramelized, then made that into the custard base for caramel ice cream that complements chocolate-shelled hazelnut profiteroles. Delicious and industrious: sounds like farmer’s work, indeed.

1226 Lincoln Way, Auburn, CA 95603 | 530-820-3523

Rose Park Bistro

$$ — Californian

There’s a comfortable elegance to Rose Park Bistro, designed in part by proprietor Bulent Ozel’s sister-in-law Zuzana. Faux ivy trickling down the walls matches the green velvet chairs, illuminated by table lamps, oblong overhead orbs and no shortage of natural light coming through the windows. It’s a dining experience that feels separate from the rest of the Fountains at Roseville shopping center, particularly as one digs into butternut squash gnocchi in Gorgonzola cream sauce and carrot-and-basil-infused olive oil. The dish’s heavier properties are well offset, as with the luxuriously light lobster bucatini topped with lemon breadcrumbs and garlic-roasted tomatoes, which will have you loudly scraping the coarse bowl for every last drop. Chef Brian Woods’ teriyaki skirt steak is a standout with a simple enough success plan: a mouthwatering marinade, quality beef and heat hot enough to leave clear grill marks, cut into slices with onion crisps tossed over the top. There are plenty of relatively fancy New American restaurants around the region; few will please your eyes and taste buds like Rose Park Bistro.

1017 Galleria Blvd., Suite 160, Roseville, CA 95678 | 916-474-5658

Uncle Dumpling

$ — Chinese

It’s the aunties who really make Uncle Dumpling. They’re on display behind plexiglas at Linfei Zhuang and Ho Ming Chung’s restaurant, diligently packing mountains of pork into dough and pinching them off to twisted tops. Originally founded in Shanghai in 1997 and revived in the Stone Point Retail Center in September 2023, Uncle Dumpling is unmatched locally for its sheer volume of xiaolongbao, soft-bottomed soup dumplings filled with crab or shrimp or Berkshire pork with truffle oil. Each is as nourishing as you’d hope, along with pork buns pan-fried hard on the bottom and vegetarian dumplings teeming with mushrooms, eggs and glass noodles. Lip-tingling jajang noodles with ground pork and tofu rise above the rest of the non-dumpling field, as does a complex noodle soup with bok choy, sliced beef shank and peanuts. Dessert is (what else?) more soup dumplings, bite-sized morsels of chocolate and strawberry syrups that nod to legendary Taiwanese chain Din Tai Fung and come with a semi-sweet cheese foam dipping sauce.

1485 Eureka Road, Suite 150, Roseville, CA 95661 | 916-886-8132

Wally’s Cafe

$ — Middle Eastern

To know Wally’s in Rocklin is to love it. While an outpost on Granite Drive closed earlier this year, Walid Matar’s smiling face can still be seen welcoming customers to the cozy Sunset Boulevard location (and occasionally the original in Emeryville, which may or may not have inspired the Pixar film “Wall-E”). Meals begin with a cup of complimentary lentil-rice soup and end with gratis housemade baklava; in the middle, the chicken shawarma in pomegranate molasses is an absolute must-try, a sweet-and-tart marvel accompanied by rice pilaf and extra-garlicky toum. Salads are a strength at this Lebanese restaurant as well, and the fattoush is the house pride, dusted with sumac and finished with crunchy pita chips. Even on-the-go options such as the gamey kefta kebab panini or smashed falafel wrap are dynamite, though jetting out the door deprives one of Wally’s hallmark hospitality.

2110 Sunset Blvd., Suite 600, Rocklin | 916-580-0850

This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 5:00 AM.