A Sacramento farmers market paella pop-up finds permanent home
Maria’s Paella, a staple Midtown Farmers Market vendor, opened its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Sacramento’s Boulevard Park neighborhood.
On August 19, Maria Perez posted on her business’s Instagram, saying she was “tired of telling people to come back later, I decided to open today for freshly baked empanadas for lunch.” This was the official launch of the Maria’s Paella restaurant, after four years of slinging paella and empanadas at the weekly Midtown Farmers Market.
Perez was initially hit with entrepreneurial inspiration after a trip to London, where she saw a street vendor animatedly cooking the large rice-based Spanish comfort meal for eager customers around him.
“I told my friend, ‘This is beautiful, and I haven’t seen it in Sacramento. One day, I will be selling paella at a farmers market,’” Perez said.
Perez felt confident enough in her skills to request a vendor booth at the Midtown Farmers Market. However, as her business was freshly nascent, with no online footprint, the farmers market organizers repeatedly turned her down.
Perez didn’t give up — getting through the COVID-19 pandemic, making paella out of her home for family and friends, while raising her children as a single mother and working as a real estate agent. Her brother later died of COVID, which she said was a pivotal moment in her career journey.
“It was sad, but it’s a blessing in some way,” Perez said. “It was motivation for me to be able to see that if you’re not doing what you love, why are you living for it?”
She went all in on the quest to open a paella business, including visiting Spain for paella cooking classes in 2021. Later that year, the Midtown Farmers Market organizers welcomed Perez as a vendor, and she said her business quickly took off.
Her menu started with a basic paella and a set of three simple Spanish and Argentinian-inspired empanadas. Her homemade empanada dough is made with her own recipe and uses just three ingredients: Flour, water and lard. Perez wanted to infuse her Mexican heritage into the meals, so she also developed four new empanada variants, filled with chicharrones and salsa verde, al pastor, chicken mole and chorizo.
“Once I brought (the Mexican-inspired versions), I went from selling 300 empanadas to almost 600 at the market,” she said.
Perez based her cooking operations out of Lulu’s Commercial Kitchen, a communal commercial kitchen in Boulevard Park available for small businesses to rent. In 2024, Perez found out the owner of Lulu’s was retiring and selling the kitchen, presenting her with an opportunity to expand Maria’s Paella.
Now, Perez not only owns her restaurant but the entire Lulu’s Commercial Kitchen operation, supporting more than 50 small businesses and chefs. Maria’s Paella is based out of Lulu’s kitchen, at 701 16th St., with a dedicated storefront attached in one of the building’s small units.
“It took us a year to get familiar with managing the kitchen, because it’s (a different process) from cooking,” she said. “To be honest, I was little scared, because one thing is the market and another is running your store.”
To ease into the permanent restaurant experience, Maria’s Paella is starting slow, exclusively serving breakfast and lunch offerings during weekdays. On top of her bestselling empanadas and paella, Perez is introducing breakfast burritos made with fresh homemade tortillas.
“We are slowly learning, and we’re here,” Perez said. “Every day is an adventure, and I am overwhelmed from the support from neighbors and people in general.”
Maria’s Paella
Address: 701 16th St., Suite 130, Sacramento
Phone: 916-516-0557
Website: mariaspaellasac.com
Hours: 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday
.jpg)