Best Sacramento-area restaurant meals I ate in January | Food reporter’s notebook
A bowling alley burger. Sushi hand rolls passed across the bar. Tijuana-style tacos. Veggie dumplings loaded with shiitake mushrooms. Five-pound slices of lasagna at a Sicilian immigrant’s family restaurant.
These were the best meals that I, The Sacramento Bee’s food and drink writer, ate throughout January 2025.
Each review was first published in my free weekly newsletter on Sacramento-area food and drink happenings. To sign up, visit https://www.sacbee.com/newsletters?newsletter=sacramento_food_drink_newsletter.
Cap’s Bar & Grill
“Our freshly made food from local ingredients is not what you expect from a bowling alley!”
Cap’s Bar & Grill’s website makes the promise, and the kitchen inside West Sacramento’s Capitol Bowl largely delivers. The historic bowling alley serves not only chicken strips (four for $11.50) and mozzarella sticks (six for $10.25), but gyros ($15.75 with fries, sweet potato fries or salad) and fish tacos (three for $12.10), along with a full bar of $18 beer pitchers and pin-themed cocktails.
Capitol Bowl was founded in the early 1950s, but was slated for shutdown in 2000 before Ross Amin swooped in and bought the place. In 2015, Amin hired chef Dave Ball, an alumnus of higher-end Blue Prynt Restaurant & Bar and Source Global Tapas, since-closed restaurants in downtown Sacramento and Granite Bay.
Amin died in 2019 but passed Capitol Bowl’s ownership down to his son Ron, and Ball remains at the kitchen’s helm. He buys basil, lettuce, blue cheese and more from West Sacramento farms, Black Urban Farmers Association members around Stockton and a small garden at mixed-income housing complex Mirasol Village in the River District, where he and Cap’s staff also provide culinary training.
Ball lifted Cap’s balsamic chips ($6.50) recipe from Source Global Tapas, along with the detailed preparation that makes them stand out. Potatoes are cut into wafer-thin slices and fried to order, rendering them remarkably crispy before being finished with a balsamic reduction, blue cheese crumbles and fresh-cut basil.
Arcade staples are a step above, too. Cap’s signature burger ($20 with choice of side) is built with layers of bacon, tomato, red pepper aioli, American and pepper jack cheeses, lettuce, pickle chips and white onions around a half-pound patty grilled to perfection, all clasped by a Cap’s-branded bun. I’d also happily re-order the juicy chicken wings (six for $11.50), particularly those rubbed with lemon pepper seasoning, at any sports bar or pizza parlor.
Scratch-made dough and sauces buoy pizzas such as the buffalo garlic chicken ($13.50 for a four-slice personal pie, $25 for 12 slices). A puffy, Parmesan-sprinkled crust supports garlic sauce, melted mozzarella, red and green pepper ribbons, pico de gallo and grilled chicken tossed in a tingly, mild buffalo sauce.
Address: 900 W. Capitol Ave., West Sacramento (inside Capitol Bowl)
Hours: 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-12:30 a.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-12:30 a.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Sunday
Phone: 916-371-4200
Website: capitol-bowl.com/caps-bar-grill
Drinks: Full bar, with a range of beers and cocktails such as the “10th Frame” (Smirnoff blueberry and Absolut Pear vodkas, DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker schnapps, blue curacao and lemon juice)
Vegetarian options: Several, including fried appetizers, salads, pizza and a veggie sandwich
Noise level: Clattering pins are the de facto soundtrack, aside from Prince’s “Purple Rain” after each Kings win.
Outdoor seating: Three-table patio available
Palermo Ristorante Italiano
Palermo Ristorante Italiano is a family affair. Giovanni Toccagino Sr. immigrated from Palermo, Sicily’s capital, and ran his upscale-yet-unpretentious Southern Italian restaurant in Palo Alto from 1993 to 2003 before opening the Elk Grove iteration in 2005.
Giovanni Sr. and his wife Pina are still dining room fixtures in their early ’80s, but Giovanni Jr. now runs the kitchen off Elk Grove Boulevard. His sister, Oriana, manages the front-of-house, and two grandchildren wait tables in the reflection of the dining room’s angled mirrors and dark wood bar.
Heads turn in Palermo’s dining room as servers deliver heaping towers of lasagna ($38), each five-pound slice gargantuan enough to easily satiate three customers. It’s Palermo’s most popular and time-consuming dish, 18 thick layers of pasta, tomato sauce and ground pork and beef still prepped by Giovanni Sr. each morning.
The city of Palermo abuts the Tyrrhenian Sea, and seafood is huge part of Sicilian cuisine. Palermo Ristorante Italiano’s specials menu regularly features playful dishes such as Sicilian cannelloni ($35), a crab-scallop-shrimp-salmon mixture inside a pasta tube topped with vodka sauce, while risotto frutti di mare ($36) on the main menu is a try-it-all collection of squid, green-lipped mussels, the fish of the day and more.
Pesto linguine spills out of Palermo’s eggplant alla Norma ($21) like Medusa’s writhing snakes, hidden with prosciutto cotto and mascarpone under fried aubergines slices, melted mozzarella and a layer of tomato sauce.
Address: 9632 Emerald Oak Drive, Suite L, Elk Grove
Hours: 4-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday; 4-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; closed Monday
Phone: 916-686-1582
Website: palermo-ristorante.com
Drinks: Full bar
Vegetarian options: A few appetizers, Caesar salad ($11) and linguine alla carrettiera ($16) with garlic and crushed red pepper are all available, and customers can design their own pasta from a range of shapes and sauces.
Noise level: Quiet with a rumbling undercurrent of conversation
Outdoor seating: None
Kinjo Hand Roll Bar
You’ll want to stay a while at Kinjo Hand Roll Bar, which celebrated its two-year anniversary in Richmond Grove this month. Dennis Ng, who also owns Kansai Ramen & Sushi House in Tahoe Park, has admirably filled the shoes of Chinese-Hawaiian breakfast institution Harry’s Cafe with his modern Cali-Japanese concept.
Ng came up in Sacramento’s early 2000s sushi scene, working at Taka’s (now Ju Hachi) under the famous Taka Watanabe. He now employs Watanabe’s son Trevor as a sushi chef at Kinjo, which translates to “neighborhood” in Japanese. It’s a fitting name for the intimate, lively dining room, where regulars belly up to the L-shaped bar for hand rolls are wrapped in cylindrical nori tubes and placed on Kinjo-branded wooden boats.
A full meal at Kinjo feels like a never-ending smorgasbord of delights ferried across the bar: bright yellowtail ($8.50) rolled on top of a shiso leaf, smoky, crunchy salmon skin ($7) with apple slices and teriyaki sauce, lightly iron-y uni ikura ($15) sourced from local seafood favorite Sunh Fish Co.
The ocean spring ($8.50) special, though, was arguably the best hand roll of the bunch. Deep red bluefin tuna cubes were complemented by kimchi-infused ponzu, pickled daikon, carrot strips, mint and jalapeño slices, culminating in a fresh-tasting, all-in-one experience that balanced savory, spicy and acidic flavors beautifully.
Smoked brisket ramen ($16.50) is another standout special, this one also offered at Kansai throughout the winter. A cook at a noteworthy local barbecue restaurant smokes the meat during his time off and sells it to Ng, along with umami-loaded broth packed with its own beefy flavor.
Address: 2026 16th St., Sacramento
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-9 p.m. daily
Phone: 916-594-9011
Website: kinjohandrollbar.com
Drinks: Craft beer bottles, sake, soju, soda and tea
Vegetarian options: Small plates such as spicy garlic edamame, an avocado-cucumber-sweet chili hand roll and ice cream, including Asian flavors such as ube and Thai tea.
Noise level: Somewhat loud — noise can bounce around a bit in the tight space
Outdoor seating: Two streetside tables
Tacos 65
Tacos 65 has become Tahoe Park’s hottest taqueria since opening in September 2023, a pocket-sized spot owned by Vietnamese American couple Calvin and Linh Le Dao at the corner of 65th Street and Broadway. A few stools face the windows and walls of the white dining with red trim, but most people grab their food to go and peel out of the crammed parking lot.
Tacos 65’s specialty is Tijuana-style tacos ($3.50, or three for $14.50 with rice and beans), a style trademarked by flour tortillas and healthy dollop of guacamole on top. It’s a bit of a unheralded regionality in the Sacramento area — aside from Chando’s Tacos — and Tacos 65 takes pains to set forward a good representation.
The tortillas are hand-pressed and fried to order, and guac is made in-house every morning from smashed avocados and nothing more. Customers choose from carne asada, pollo asado, mushrooms, chorizo or adobada with pineapple shavings, all grilled over a combination of mesquite charcoal and white oak wood for a distinctly smoky flavor.
Those meats and fungi are also available in gooey queso tacos ($4.50), mulitas ($5), quesadillas ($11.50) and neatly-wrapped burritos ($12) with pinto beans, cheese, sour cream and tomato-dyed rice in addition to the ubiquitous cilantro and onions. A quartet of salsas crescendos with a creamy, slow-burning orange sauce similar to that at San Jose’s famous La Victoria Taqueria.
Address: 6498 Broadway, Sacramento
Hours: 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday; closed Sunday
Phone: 916-739-1671
Instagram: @tacos65_
Drinks: A range of Mexican and American soft drinks. Our host recommended Sidral Mundet, a bittersweet apple soda that cut through some of the spicier salsas nicely.
Vegetarian options: Mushrooms available in lieu of meat for all dishes.
Noise level: Relatively loud
Outdoor seating: None, and not much indoor either
Tasty Dumpling
A printed mural of pot stickers, Taiwanese beef rolls and xiaolongbao eating instructions covers one side of Tasty Dumpling’s narrow dining room in Curtis Park’s Crocker Village development. On the other, plexiglas windows show employees in orange hats fastidiously molding dough and fillings.
Helen Zhang’s quick-and-easy Chinese restaurant debuted in June 2021, and a second, larger location opened Jan. 27 in Campus Commons’ Boulevard Center at the intersection of Howe Avenue and Fair Oaks Boulevard. The original is one of Crocker Village’s few locally-owned restaurants, a family-friendly place for comfortable lunches and dinners with a few items that stand above the rest.
Xiaolongbao can steal a show, but Tasty Dumpling’s real star is the vegetable-steamed dumplings (eight for $13). Veggie options are often afterthoughts at Sacramento dumpling houses; shiitake mushrooms’ earthy flavor bursts out of these ones’ green spinach dough, escorted by cabbage, glass noodles and carrots.
Few other local restaurants serve Xi’an cold noodles ($10), also known as biangbiang noodles and originally from the northwest province of Shaanxi. These thick, housemade noodles are best ordered spicy, punched up by a red chili-paprika-cayenne oil that washes over the mouth but stops short of discomfort.
Braised beef brisket noodle ($15) soup stands out for its umami-heavy broth interrupted by broccoli, bok choy, tomato slices and small offal cones. Fried golden buns with condensed milk (six for $9), pillow-like mantou accompanied by a cup of sticky-sweet dairy, end the meal on a fluffy note.
Address: 3700 Crocker Drive, Suite 150, Sacramento
Hours: 10:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. daily
Phone: 916-758-5621
Website: tastydumplingmenu.com
Drinks: Bottled sodas, teas and juices
Vegetarian options: Veggie dumplings and Xi’an cold noodles are standouts, and other dishes such as scallion pancakes, green beans and red bean bao round out the menu.
Noise level: Medium to medium-loud
Outdoor seating: A couple of tables next to the front door