A coffee shop and longtime microbakery team up on R Street. Here’s what to know
A coffee startup and a pop-up baker walk into an artists’ loft building. No joke.
Last month, I reported that Twin Snakes Coffee was taking over operations of the Milka Coffee location in the Warehouse Artist Lofts building on R Street after several months of doing pop-ups to get the business off the ground. It officially opened Dec. 5.
Proprietor Malik Nimmo had long wanted to open a coffee shop, and even had a business plan drafted.
“It just kind of sat on paper for years, and it was always like, next year, next year, next year, I’ll do it,” he said.
When he moved to Sacramento from Virginia and turned 30, the business began to come into focus.
“It’s like, you really need to start evaluating your life and your goals and what you want to do,” Nimmo said.
That’s when he met Alain Toral of Pain Pan Bakery, who had been selling his baked goods via pop-ups for years. Toral encouraged Nimmo to try his hand at doing pop-ups as a proof of concept for his business.
“Coming from the East Coast, I don’t think I’d ever gone to a pop-up ever for anything. I’m not saying they don’t exist there, but it’s just not as heavy as the culture in Sacramento,” Nimmo said.
With Toral’s encouragement the two collaboratively did pop-ups at outlets like Superette and Forma, a conceptual studio in an industrial building in the River District. It wasn’t long before his dream manifested into reality.
Nimmo opened Instagram one day and received a message from Samir Benouar, owner of Milka Coffee Roasters. The roaster had opened its second location in the marketplace in Warehouse Artist Lofts two years previously.
Benouar told Nimmo that he was looking for someone to take over the R Street location so the business could focus on its core operation at 1501 G St. in Mansion Flats.
“They wanted someone who was going to come in and take this over and really make it their own, not someone that’s like, yeah, it’s my second location,” Nimmo said.
With a permanent space lined up, Nimmo tapped Toral to be his partner on the pastry side.
Toral started Pain Pan as a cottage business during the COVID-19 lockdown. A chef at Apple, he’s worked his entire career in food service, but is self-trained as a baker. He started Pain Pan as a way to experiment and have fun.
“I can be super playful and super risky, because I’m not solely dependent on it. That’s been helpful,” he said.
He’s of Mexican descent, and is a Francophile. He unites these influences in his baked goods, combining the soulfulness of Mexican pastry with French precision. The name means bread in French and Spanish.
Between his day job at Apple and some other consulting on the side, he dialed down his efforts with Pain Pan for about a year to recover from burnout.
“I tend to be very 150% all the time, which I’m learning to scale back on,” Toral said.
The kitchen attached to Twin Snakes affords Toral the opportunity to go beyond making just pastries with his cottage license, but it’s still limiting. There’s no hood, so he can’t fry. At Nimmo’s behest though, he started turning out SoCal-style breakfast burritos ($8.50) last week.
“You’ve got russet potatoes, or a hash brown of some sort. You got your eggs, bacon, you can get chorizo, and then avocado and then always salsa verde,” Nimmo said. A vegetarian version features soy chorizo.
The two will continue to evolve their menus together, focusing on seasonality and new inspirations. Twin Snakes is open 7 a.m.-1 p.m. daily.
What I’m Eating
When downtown mainstay Public House closed at the end of June last year, the operators, MAC Hospitality Group, wasted no time reworking it into an entirely new concept.
The new restaurant, Casa Lola, is a raucous celebration of Mexican cuisine. It held its grand opening on Dec. 5.
Gone is the former establishment’s sports bar chic and banks of big-screen TVs. Casa Lola is dressed up as a Disney-styled hacienda, bursting with color, like stepping onto the set of Coco.
Uptempo Latin music pumps through the dining room while servers bustle around. The place is in constant motion.
The menu traipses through many of the greatest hits of pan-Mexican food, but it does have a few things that step outside the obvious.
We tried the camarones a la momia ($16.95) to start, jumbo shrimp stuffed with Jack cheese and jalapeno, and wrapped in bacon. These are distinctly American, Texan to be specific, where they’re called shrimp kisses. I don’t know of another place making them locally.
There’s a terse selection of crudos, including an aguachile rojo tropical ($17.95), gulf shrimp tossed in lime and chile de arbol-mango sauce. The sweetness of the fruit balances the burn of the chiles, though I wouldn’t consider the dish especially spicy.
The highlight was the molcajete mixto ($34.95). A large lava stone mortar comes sizzling full of carne asada, shrimp, chicken, chorizo, panela cheese and cactus paddles draped over the edge. It’s served with tortillas so you can choose your own taco adventure.
While Casa Lola is not the only place to serve molcajetes, they are relatively uncommon.
The restaurant feels like a party just on its own. But should any table be celebrating a special event, the music suddenly goes to 11, and servers come out brandishing sparklers.
Spoiler alert: Lots of people celebrate at Casa Lola.
Note that on the weekends, Casa Lola does not take reservations after 4 p.m., but they do have an online waitlist.
Casa Lola
Address: 1132 16th St., downtown Sacramento
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11:30 a.m.-12 a.m. Friday-Saturday
Phone: 916-446-0888
Website: vivacasalola.com
Vegetarian options: Limited. You may find yourself relegated to a few small plates and the potato tacos.
Noise level: Loud to very loud
Openings & Closings
- Vic’s Ice Cream in Land Park had its much-anticipated grand reopening after nearly a year of renovations. The new owners took pains to retain the parlor’s vintage charm and original in-house ice cream recipes. Customers began lining up nearly an hour before opening, and throughout the day they waited for hours for an opportunity to order their favorite ice cream flavor and the famous hot dog sandwich with red sauce.
- After more than 15 years in business, the owners of East Sacramento Mexican restaurant Cafe Capricho will be retiring and closing the business on Jan. 16, according to their social media. The post expressed “great gratitude and deep appreciation” for their customers., who in turn wished the owners well while stating sadness to lose their favorite dishes, especially the potato tacos. Cafe Capricho is in the block adjacent to Brickland Restaurant & Bar, which is temporarily closed following a vandalism incident on Christmas Day.
- Also on Jan. 16, Crème Coffee (pronounced krem-AY) will make its debut at 1011 7th Street in downtown Sacramento according to their social media. The Sacramento Business Journal reports that the cafe will serve coffee and tea drinks and light bites like avocado toast. The proprietors plan to split the space into areas where influencers can create content utilizing the natural light in the front, a study area in the middle and a quiet section in the back.
