Meet Sean Timberlake, The Bee’s new food and dining reporter
Hello, readers.
My name is Sean Timberlake, and I’ve taken over as the food and dining reporter here at The Sacramento Bee.
I’m super grateful for the hard work Camila Pedrosa has done these past few months, and look forward to working with her as we expand our coverage of the city’s food scene.
I moved to Sacramento from San Francisco in August 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. As things began to open up, I took every opportunity to get out and experience the city. I called it our “year of yes” — which included trying new restaurants at least twice a week.
Five and a half years later, I have quietly built my own mental database of Sacramento’s food scene, and I’m still hungry for more.
I’ve been writing professionally for nearly 30 years, and about food for the last 20. I started in tech, then was a travel editor as part of a now-defunct publication. It was while I was focused on travel that I realized that food was my first lens in understanding a destination.
When the magazine went dark, I began blogging about food, which led to freelance writing. Ultimately, I homed in on food preservation as a topic, and launched a community and content aggregation site called Punk Domestics.
In 2019, I put food writing on hiatus to do marketing and operations for my husband’s real estate business. Of course, food remained in my DNA, and much of our marketing was centered on that.
I also currently serve on the board of the Food Literacy Center, whose mission is to inspire schoolchildren to eat their veggies.
When I say I moved here in 2020, I should say I moved back. I lived here once before, 30 years ago. My first career was doing sets and props, and I worked one season at Sacramento Theater Company.
On either side of that year, I briefly lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I acquired my lifelong addiction to spicy foods.
Although I’ve spent nearly my entire adult life in Northern California, I’m originally from upstate New York, born in Syracuse and raised in Schenectady. Bonus points if you can pronounce that.
Of course, I enjoy dining out, but both my husband and I also love to cook. He’s an excellent pizzaiolo, and I enjoy making fresh pasta and gnocchi, techniques I honed when I took groups on culinary tours in Italy.
I feel like Sacramento’s food scene punches well above its weight. We’re also consistently ranked one of the most diverse cities in the U.S., and I’m excited to celebrate that.
As a reporter, of course I’m interested in what’s new, but also in the tried and true, places that continue to survive despite increasing headwinds. I’m most of all interested in the people behind the food.
What I’m Eating
I enjoy noodle soups all year, but once the temperatures finally dip for good, it becomes an obsession. One crisp afternoon, I felt an insatiable craving for pho. Luckily, we were not far from south Sacramento.
The stretch along Stockton Boulevard, colloquially known as Little Saigon, has no shortage of pho joints. Pho Xe Lua has long been my standby, but I wanted to try a new place. So, we popped into Pho City.
The restaurant is surprisingly large, partitioned into three sections, and impeccably clean. It was an off hour, so the place was far from busy.
On a first visit, I tend to go for the classics. I ordered the [Pho DB] Dac Biet Special ($15), the classic beefy pho bo with rare steak, meatball, brisket, flank, tendon and tripe over rice noodles.
The aromatic broth was deeply soothing, perfumed with a balanced array of spices. All the meats were succulent, but the surprise standout was the tripe, which was tender, snappy and almost feathery in texture.
My husband opted for a noodle bowl, the [Bun T, TN, CG] Grilled Pork, Prawn and Egg Roll with Vermicelli ($17). The pork and prawns were kissed with smoke from the seasoned grill, glazed with a sweet-tangy marinade. Alongside the proteins, the crunch of the egg roll and springiness of the noodles made the bowl texturally playful.
Pho City
Address: 6175 Stockton Blvd., Suite 200, Lemon Hill
Hours: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Monday; closed Tuesdays
Phone: 916-754-2143
Instagram: @phocity_vietnamesecuisine
Vegetarian options: Limited, but present
Drinks: Beer, wine and soft drinks, including a variety of housemade sodas, juices and shakes
Noise level: Moderate
Outdoor seating: None
Openings & Closings
• The Sacramento International Airport opened the first major restaurant in its dining concessions revitalization last week with the debut of West Coast Sourdough in Terminal A. The opening is the first of several restaurants and cafes planned as part of a broader revamp of airport concessions. More than a dozen new restaurants and quick-service concepts are planned for both terminals, including OneSpeed Pizza, Nixtaco, Bawk by Urban Roots, Magpie Cafe and Midtown Spirits.
• Fast-casual customizable salad chain Sweetgreen will open its first Sacramento-area location in midtown on Dec. 2. The eatery, on the ground floor of The Richmond apartment building at 1629 S St., is the first of two planned locations in Sacramento. A second local spot, at The Boulevards shopping center in Campus Common, is set to open on Dec. 16. Plans to open the locations were announced in April.
• Roseville’s The Trax Taproom & Kitchen is expanding into downtown Lincoln, taking over the space of the former Lincoln Gardens in the Lincoln Brand Feeds Shopping Center. Founder Akmal Zedran opened the Roseville restaurant in March 2022, and it’s been a popular spot for its expansive craft-beer list, house cocktails and creative gastropub fare. The new location will open Dec. 15, and will be open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-8 p..m. Sundays; closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
This story was originally published November 27, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
