From dinosaurs to Donkey Kong, Sacramento bar reinvents itself monthly
Sacramento has no shortage of themed dining experiences and bars, with tiki bars like the Jungle Bird in midtown and the Roaring ’20s-inspired Shady Lady Saloon downtown.
But these experiences tend to not change, save for some specialty drinks and maybe some decor change every now and again. It can get repetitive, losing its whimsy and charm after receiving your 50th faux flower lei.
Jet’s American Grill & Bar in midtown will certainly have no such problem.
The small bar on 20th Street between Capitol Avenue and L Street is currently decked out with decorations depicting characters and motifs from the Super Mario Bros. video game series though, just a few weeks ago, it looked like a prehistoric paradise in honor of the new film “Jurassic World Rebirth.” The month before, Lilo & Stitch decor spanned the interior.
Since December 2023, Sacramento native Jet Bonanno has regularly transformed his bar into a variety of themed wonderlands, becoming unrecognizable from one month to the next.
“(The Super Mario Bros. theme) was originally my sister’s idea,” Bonanno said. “We just kind of started thinking back to our childhood, the games that we all played ... we just went with it.”
While this month’s neon lights, checkered flag banners and Donkey Kong wallpaper seem most apt for an 11-year-old’s birthday party, adults from across the region are flocking to Jet’s, at 1226 20th St., relishing in childhood nostalgia while sipping on a fruity beverage out of a game controller-shaped cup.
The patrons’ support has extended far beyond Mario and Luigi, according to Bonanno. This year, he’s projecting to have 120,000 customers visit Jet’s across a range of holiday and pop culture themes.
Bonanno opened his bar and restaurant in 2021, after spending part of the pandemic selling home-cooked meals on DoorDash out of his parents’ Arden Arcade house, later moving into a food trailer. He cooked well into the night — at one point, it was a 24-hour operation — after realizing how few late-night eateries served quality dishes.
“I wanted to make better food (than fast food establishments),” Bonanno said.
Some of his top dishes included rib-eye cheesesteaks, which made it to the bar’s food menu on Day 1, according to Bonanno. It now includes sandwiches, salads, loaded fries, chicken strips, bar snacks and more. The menu prominently features vegan options for cheesesteaks, burgers and fries, using Impossible meat products and vegan cheese and sauces.
The then-22-year-old purchased the midtown bar in the wake of pandemic restrictions across California lifting, and he said it was “instantly” busy, with the bar’s kitchen slinging dishes all the way until closing time: 2 a.m. seven days a week. However, online and local fame didn’t hit until about two years later.
“December of 2023 ... I decided to go all-out on a Christmas pop-up,” Bonanno said. “We just saw sales almost triple that month ... So we tried (another theme) in January just to see what would happen, and sales just kept increasing so we stuck with it.”
Jet said his mother, Christine, is the main person in charge of planning, purchasing and decorating the interior, with items coming from online stores like Amazon and Etsy. Everything, save for a year-round Christmas tree, goes into a storage unit after they are taken down, and reused where possible.
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Holiday season at Jet’s starts in September and lasts through March, but Bonanno said decorations evolve each year to not remain stagnant.
September and October have spooky features in the lead-up to Halloween, quickly switching over to Christmas come November. In January, the bar cools into an icy-blue arctic landscape before heating up to celebrate Valentine’s Day in February.
March is the “Lucky Lane” month in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, with green and rainbow specialty drinks. The bar goes intergalactic in May, turning into the Star Wars Cantina.
Other themes have included the Sacramento Kings, Rodeo Ranch, Alice in Wonderland and Y2K. Jet’s has live jazz music every Thursday, with bands playing in a Technicolor CD-plastered nook.
On Instagram, where Jet’s primarily advertises its monthly pop-ups, the bar has more than 29,000 followers and regularly receives hundreds of likes on colorful posts teasing upcoming themes and drinks.
Bonanno said ideas come from personal interests, upcoming movies and sometimes even Instagram polls — but the final decision rests in the hands of Bonanno and his team, including his mother; his sister, Lexi; and his brother, Trent.
Despite becoming a first-time bar owner just a year after being able to legally drink, Bonanno has not been deterred by having little experience or facing a lack of trust from much older colleagues.
“Starting out, I knew nothing about restaurants,” he said. “I learned a little bit about cooking food over those first few years, but learning to have the atmosphere right and the vibe right was hard for me to figure out at first.”
“Once we started figuring out the pop-up stuff, that made it a lot easier ... I always look back, even I’ll look back last month and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ It’s just always improving.”
What I’m Eating
It’s become something of a Thursday night tradition for some of my Sacramento Bee colleagues and I to head to Bike Dog Brewing in East Sacramento for weekly bar trivia.
The trivia game is designed to be interactive, covering a wide range of topics with audio-visual elements. Regulars at Bike Dog Trivia follow playful call-and-response traditions, such as shouting “answers!” when the host reminds the crowd not to.
Rounding out the full experience requires ordering a couple of pizzas from Jodie Chavious’ bright blue vintage Ford F-100 truck to share. Chavious slings pies at Bike Dog’s 66th Street location most Thursdays, fueling the minds of eager trivia nerds packing the taproom.
The former Shangri-La Fair Oaks, Canon and Paragary’s chef left the high-stakes fine dining world, launching her pizza pop-up business in January 2021, according to past Bee reporting. Her pop-ups include a set of six fixed and rotating 14-inch pizzas for $18 each with locally sourced, seasonal ingredients and toppings.
At the Aug. 7 trivia event, Chavious brought three classics: quattro formaggio, “sauce on top” Tatum with pesto and ricotta, and pepperoni —which includes “love” as a main ingredient. Her rotating pies included BATS — bacon, arugula, tomatoes and squash, “bats not included” — and Summer Trish with mushrooms, baby kale, pesto and red pepper flakes.
Chavious also served a late-summer version of her signature fruit and pig pie, spotlighting sweet fig slices alongside applewood smoked bacon, goat cheese and wildflower honey from Sacramento-based The Bee Box. Though I am personally partial to the pizza’s peach variant, a ripe fig pie is a nice reminder that cooler weather is just a few weeks away (hopefully).
Chavious
Website: chavious.com
Address and hours: Check online for pop-up locations and dates
Vegetarian options: Some pizzas come without meat, non-vegetarian pizzas can be made vegetarian.
Bike Dog Brewing East Sac
Address: 1210 66th St., Sacramento
Hours: 3 p.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 12 p.m.-9 p.m. Saturday; 12 p.m.-8 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday
Website: bikedogbrewing.com
Phone: 916-254-0888
Drinks: Beer, seltzer, cider and wine on tap and bottled; soda, kombucha and non-alcoholic beer available
Noise level: Loud
Openings & Closings
• Japanese restaurant Kiku Japanese Cuisine opened at 5550 Douglas Blvd., Suite 200, in Granite Bay on August 7, serving loaded sushi rolls and nigiri plates alongside bowls of sukiyaki hot pot. According to an Instagram post, the restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner services seven days per week.
• Sacramento-based fried chicken chain Kiki’s Chicken Place announced Tuesday it was severing ties with 10 of its restaurants in the region, planning to transition the locations into independently owned establishments. In a social media statement, the eatery cited too-quick growth and differing views with the brand’s partners as reasons for separating from the locations.
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