Best Sacramento-area restaurant meals I ate in March | Food reporter’s notebook

Grab-and-go dim sum in the Pocket. An award-winning burger in Curtis Park. Neapolitan-style pizza in Placer County. Afghan, Mediterranean and American dishes between the same brick walls in East Sacramento.

These were the best restaurant meals that I, The Sacramento Bee’s food and drink writer, ate in March 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.

Pangaea Bier Cafe

Sacramento has few better ways to spend a spring or summer evening than eating at Pangaea Bier Cafe, washing it down with a California craft or Belgian beer, then walking across Third Avenue for a scoop of Gunther’s Ice Cream.

Chef and general manager Scott Macumber joined the Curtis Park beer bar in 2022 following stints at higher-end Grange Restaurant & Bar, Camden Spit & Larder and the since-closed Taylor’s Kitchen, and dusted off COVID-19 cobwebs to reinstate quarterly five-course beer dinners featuring brewers from across California.

Pangaea won the Sacramento Burger Battle three times in the mid-2010s, sweeping the judges’ and people’s choice awards in 2018 despite going up against fancier restaurants from across the capital. The Pangaea burger ($21 with fries or a side salad) is still arguably the best around, separated from other items in a box at the top of the menu.

A litany of complements — melted Tillamook cheddar, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, housemade pickle chips and Thousand Island-sambal “special sauce” — convene in perfectly balanced harmony around a half-pound Harris Ranch patty between a pillowy Bella Bru bun.

Pangaea’s wings ($18/pound, which usually includes eight to 10 wings) are no lesser stellar. Halal chicken wings are coated in corn starch and rice flour, fried once before service, then finished off in a 375-degree fryer upon order.

They’re left surprisingly juicy inside despite being crunchy to the tooth through a coat of honey habanero or buffalo sauce. My advice is to choose the former, which is more sticky than spicy, and save the latter for a buffalo chicken salad ($17). Fried thigh strips pop out against a frilly red and green spring mix, apple and carrot slivers, ever-present blue cheese crumbles and an apple cider vinaigrette thickened with egg yolks, which is also used in Pangaea’s slaw.

Address: 2743 Franklin Blvd., Sacramento

Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday; closed Mondays

Phone: 916-454-4942

Website: pangaeabiercafe.com

Drinks: Beer on more than 20 taps, from local brews to Belgian imports. Wine, cider, seltzer and soda also available.

Vegetarian options: About a quarter of the menu, including a soft pretzel, a falafel sandwich and a golden beet-pomegranate-goat cheese salad.

Noise level: Loud

Outdoor seating: Two patios, one on Franklin Boulevard and another on Third Avenue across from Gunther’s Ice Cream.

Il Pizzaiolo

Few small-town Placer County restaurants feel more lively on a Saturday night than Il Pizzaiolo, Pete and Jackie Lostritto’s Neapolitan-style pizzerias in Loomis and Colfax. Brooklyn native Pete tapped his family roots in Naples and Puglia to deliver an Italian-inspired experience centered around a wood-burning Forno Bravo Vesuvio pizza oven that heats up to 800 degrees.

“No ranch,” staff T-shirts proclaim, fending off an inevitable question before it’s asked. Il Pizzaiolo’s dough is cold-fermented for two to three days hours before being stretched thin with puffed-up, charred rims called corniciones, which are plenty tangy and tasty without additional sauce.

A basic margherita ($14 for a 12-inch pie) lays mozzarella globs, toasted basil, tomato sauce and terrific extra virgin olive oil on top of that crust, and it’s enough to be one of the best regional iterations of this classic. The rosmarino ($16) offers a bit more excitement, with crushed pistachios, mozzarella and slivered red onions backing up a dominant rosemary flavor and olive oil-based white sauce.

Calzones and spaghetti with meatballs are more reminiscent of American pizza parlors, and Il Pizzaiolo hopped on the Detroit-style pizza wave with a trio of raised rectangular pies. Pepperoni cups, Mike’s Hot Honey, chili flakes, crumbled Romano cheese and mouthwatering housemade marinara sauce spooned over the top make the No. 1 ($20) a crowd favorite, with two crispy edges to each of the four fluffy slices.

Address: 3640 Taylor Road, Loomis; 230 S. Auburn St., Colfax

Hours: 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday (Loomis); 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; closed Sundays and Mondays

Phone: 916-672-6556 (Loomis); 530-388-8412 (Colfax)

Website: ilpizzaiololoomis.com and pizzacolfax.com

Drinks: Local beer on tap as well as wine, sodas, canned Italian lemonades and Sacramento-based Resilience Coffee

Vegetarian options: Several pizzas and a couple of pastas and salads

Noise level: Loud

Outdoor seating: None

Brickland

In the capital region’s vast restaurant scene, I can think of only one Afghan-Mediterranean-American restaurant with Central European touches. There’s a lot going on at Brickland between those cuisines, weekend brunch and a semi-separate bar. But the upscale East Sacramento concept finds its groove in somewhat unexpected places and is eager for new customers. Kids eat free on Tuesdays, a free bottle of wine accompanies two entrees on Wednesdays and two drinks, two mains and a dessert run customers $85 on date night Thursdays.

Rahim Amiri immigrated from Afghanistan in 1980 and landed in Connecticut, where his family opened a restaurant that his sister continues to run. Amiri and his wife, Sheila, eventually relocated to Sacramento and opened Brickland in August 2022 where 33rd Street Bistro had been for the past 25 years, a move they claim prompted an initial boycott from the previous restaurant’s loyalists, though that’s waned over time.

The Amiris made a bit of a splash by hiring Karel Mulac, a Czech-born chef who helmed Mattone Ristorante in East Sacramento and the legendary Biba in midtown. Mulac’s Italian expertise shines in the spaghetti amatriciana ($25), infused throughout with flavor from its smoked pancetta and backlit by a hint of spice.

Brickland’s chalkboard specials are homey and traditional, including potato leek soup ($8/cup, $12/bowl), a grilled veal chop with tomato risotto ($35), and a pan-fried halibut ($35) that stood out on my visit. Thoughtfully plated with a spiced carrot purée base, steamed romanesco and a balsamic glaze ring surrounding the dish, the fish was nicely cooked and complemented by a lemon butter sauce.

Other sections of the menu highlight Afghan dishes, including the delicious dessert saffron phirni ($8). Crushed pistachios, slivered almonds and two blackberries spread over a silky custard awash with sweet, nutty flavor.

Address: 3301 Folsom Blvd., Sacramento

Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 3:30-9:30 p.m. Saturdays, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 3:30-8 p.m. Sundays; closed Mondays.

Phone: 916-603-8883

Website: bricklandbistro.com

Drinks: A full, separate bar through cave-like archways, plus a station for coffee drinks, teas and sodas with typical as well as Middle Eastern-inspired flavors. Customers 21 and over get a free bottle of house wine with the purchase of any two entrees on Wednesdays.

Vegetarian options: Lots of starters, a trio of salads, a couple of flatbreads and one or two entrees depending on the day’s specials.

Noise level: Quiet

Outdoor seating: Patio along Folsom Boulevard

Dim Dim Food

There are only four tables at Dim Dim Food, Stella Pan’s Chinese restaurant in the Pocket’s Promenade Shopping Center. Carts? Forget about it. What the 2-year-old business does have is a bevy of fresh and frozen dim sum favorites, perfect for quick pickup and on-the-go Cantonese bites that are as inexpensive as any food around.

There are plucky steamed chive dumplings with translucent skin, meatball-like shumai teeming with pork, chicken or shrimp, green tea sesame balls (each $1.50 apiece) with Wicked-green dough surrounding sweet black paste.

My favorite, though, was the crispy baked BBQ pork buns ($2.20). Deep-red char siu is surrounded by an interior crumb as beautiful as any sourdough, and the bun was finished with a crystallized sugar skirt, creating a savory-sweet heaven delight.

Bulbous egg custard buns ($2 or three for $5.70) were nearly as stellar and eye-catching, dyed a soft yellow, cross-hatched to look like chicken skin and holding a luscious, creamy river inside. They were my favorite desserts aside from Dim Dim Food’s wife cakes ($1.60 or three for $4.40) a flaky Guangdong specialty also known as sweetheart cakes filled with a thick swath of winter melon and almond paste.

Address: 7485 Rush River Drive, Suite 680, Sacramento

Hours: 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Tuesdays

Phone: 916-942-9302

Website: dimdimfood.com

Drinks: Canned and bottled teas and sodas

Vegetarian options: Many items. Most have ingredient lists on their display case, but be sure to ask if it’s unclear — some surprising ones may have pork and fish

Noise level: Quiet aside from refrigerators’ hum

Outdoor seating: None

This story was originally published April 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.