After Mother’s closure, what’s next for vegan dining in Sacramento?
The closure of vegetarian restaurant Mother left a significant gap in the local veg-friendly dining scene. The restaurant stood apart from other vegetarian and vegan places in that chef-owner Robb Venditti only used whole ingredients, no alt foods.
While not fine dining in the truest sense, Mother was a colorful and convivial space to enjoy Venditti’s elevated vegetarian and vegan plates. Does its closure forebode a decline in plant-driven dining in the area — or at large?
It’s true that meat consumption is on the rise. In part this is due to updated guidance from the FDA about how much protein we should be consuming, with increases of 50% to 100% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA). It even gives meat and dairy about one-third of the total real estate in its new inverted food pyramid.
Perhaps no greater indication of this pendulum swing is that the former owners of the once expansive California chain of vegan restaurants, Cafe Gratitude, have given up veganism for ranching cattle in Texas.
It’s not that vegetarians and vegans are completely denied access to fine dining. Here in Sacramento, Allora offers a fully articulated vegetarian and vegan prix fixe menu, with multiple options for each course. Upscale Mexican concept Mayahuel on the K Street Corridor also has a full vegan menu. And while neither of our Michelin-starred restaurants, Localis and The Kitchen, explicitly offer a vegetarian or vegan option, if forewarned they will likely accommodate.
However, the number of plant-forward places opening seems out of pace with the dining scene at large. The last nicer such place to open in Sacramento was Village of Om Plant Kitchen, Andy Nguyen’s fully vegan sushi place at in midtown, which opened in December 2025.
If fine dining is not your only objective, our region has plenty of options for meat-free dining, from taquerias to soul food.
The picture is different in coastal communities, however. Plant-driven upscale dining still holds pride of place in communities like the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Millennium Restaurant has been catering to vegans for more than 30 years, first in San Francisco and then Oakland, where it recently reopened after a brief closure. Vegan izakaya Cha-ya serves Japanese fare in San Francisco and Berkeley, and Wildseed offers breezy California dishes in San Francisco and Palo Alto.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s no shortage of plant-based eats in health-conscious Southern California — so much so that Michelin’s own guide to vegetable-focused restaurants in SoCal solely names ones from the Los Angeles area.
Visit California has its own guide to vegan gastronomy, a handy thing to have if you’re on the road in the Golden State.
