Sacramento’s Bodega Kitchen & Cocktails to close after three years in Greenhaven
Tucked in a corner of a strip mall at Riverside Boulevard and Florin Road, Bodega Kitchen & Cocktails has been a Greenhaven and Pocket fixture since it opened in 2022. On Saturday, Nov. 15, the Sacramento restaurant will serve its final plate of arroz con gandules.
Co-owner Rafael Jimenez Rivera blamed rising costs and decreasing sales as the cause for the closure. “The past six months we’ve seen a significant increase in cost of goods as well as a drop in sales. Fluctuating prices due to tariffs and labor getting expensive, it was getting too much for us and we just saw no light at the end of the tunnel.”
Jimenez Rivera, along with original co-owners Chris Sinclair and Emily Neuhauser, initially planned to launch the restaurant as a Puerto Rican concept. But when diners with roots in Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados kept showing up to their pre-launch pop-ups, they broadened the concept .
They brought in chef Matt Brown, formerly of the Golden Bear, who crafted a California-pan-Caribbean theme for the menu. They gave the former sports bar a facelift, introducing a beach club motif with bold colors and vintage posters.
The restaurant opened in August 2022 and landed on The Sacramento Bee’s inaugural Top 50 Restaurants list that same year, where it had remained. Sinclair is also the owner of the Good Bottle Shop on J Street in midtown.
Neuhauser departed about six months after launch. Brown left in March 2024 and now runs Husick’s by Forester in Clarksburg. Pastry chef Sofia Smith briefly stepped in but exited a few months later. Jimenez Rivera then took over the kitchen, refocusing on top sellers like doubles — a Trinidadian turmeric flatbread filled with curried chickpeas and pickled mangoes.
“We wanted it to be Caribbean but neighborhood friendly, things like that made it a little bit more affordable,” he said.
The partners leaned on family for support. Sinclair’s wife, Jennifer, has been helping in recent months, and Jimenez Rivera’s parents even worked in the kitchen. Many of the dishes are family recipes, leaning into their Puerto Rican heritage.
“The arroz con gandules, the mojo pork, the lechon asado, the empanadas: Those are all family recipes, and then like things that we always eat were like the maduros, tostones, yucas fritas, all those things were household constants,” Jimenez Rivera said.
Staying true to the beach club vibe, the owners plan to use the final days as a send-off.
“We’ll be having drink specials and food specials, just kind of running out of inventory, selling some bottles,” he said. “We’re gonna do a big party, a big blowout on Saturday So we’re gonna just have a celebration every night at Bodega.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2025 at 5:00 PM.
