He opened the doors to Centro 25 years ago, leading the way for our vibrant food scene
When I first moved to Sacramento 30 years ago, there really weren’t any great places for young people to eat dinner, have drinks, meet friends. There were good restaurants for families that closed at sensible hours. Biba was excellent then, as now, but Biba was populated by an older generation than those of us in our late 20s and early 30s.
But then Centro Cocina Mexicana opened 25 years ago and Sacramento’s dining scene changed forever. Randy Paragary, the self-made/locally grown restaurant titan, created a space at the corner of 28 and J streets that added a dimension of excellence and excitement that didn’t exist before.
Paragary opened a Mexican restaurant that offered much more than mom and pop taquerias serving food drowned in cheese and weak salsa. Centro offered fresh ingredients, complexity in flavors and drinks. It was farm-to-fork before farm-to-fork.
Chef extraordinaire Kurt Spataro traveled to different regions of Mexico to perfect authentic recipes for Centro. The first time I bit into the Chile Verde I knew – this was the real deal. Paragary and Spataro had done more than create a Mexican-themed restaurant, they created a place that paid homage to the cuisine of Mexico.
If you ordered a margarita at Centro you didn’t get a drink made essentially from canned margarita mix. You got a real margarita. It sounds crazy now but that was a departure in those days.
Godfather of Sacramento food scene
What Paragary did at Centro would soon be emulated by younger restaurant owners who cut their teeth working for Paragary, the godfather of the Sacramento food scene.
I remember going to Centro in its first week and being dazzled by a professional wait staff that was not only good, but was young, dynamic. When Paragary opened that door, the line stretched out the door.
People of all ages showed up, but it became a place for young people who were ascending in a Sacramento that was rapidly changing and evolving. I was 32 when Centro opened. I had been in Sacramento less than five years and I thought my destiny was Los Angeles or New York or abroad.
I stayed for professional reasons but also for personal ones. Our city kept getting better, kept offering more. Looking back, Centro was a turning point in a city developing a new nightlife.
Centro was an amenity that demonstrated what was possible when excellent ingredients, service, and ambiance were delivered to people hungry for it. With Centro, Paragary was at the forefront of a generation of movers and shakers who have made Sacramento better, more fun, more interesting.
Our city is attracting people from the Bay Area and Southern California and Paragary has been one of those people whose work made this place – our place – more attractive to outsiders and long-time residents.
Now 73, Paragary is as vibrant as ever. He opened his first Sacramento restaurant in 1969 at 30th and O streets. He called it Parapow Palace Saloon. It was a beer bar with live music seven nights a week. The signature restaurant bearing his name opened at 28th and N streets in 1983. He’ll open his first hotel in midtown next year.
Paragary envisioned Centro as a gathering place where Sacramento could eat fine Mexican cuisine in all its glory within an exciting space.
We have many such places in Sacramento today – Mulvaney’s B&L, Ella Dining Room and Bar, South, Mayahuel, Shady Lady Saloon, de Vere’s Irish Pub, La Cosecha, Zocalo, Waterboy, Canon – but it was Paragary’s Centro that lit the way. Today, Sacramento celebrates its great chefs – Randall Selland, Rick Mahan, Patrick Mulvaney, the late Biba Caggiano – but it was Paragary, the consummate ideas guy, who cornered the market on restaurant concepts that drew people by thousands.
Making Mexican food cool
“Randy, like Biba, paved the way for Sacramento to believe in itself as an emerging food scene,” said Henry de Vere, co-propiretor of de Vere’s in downtown Sacramento and Davis, and of the Snug, the wildly successful Midtown bar on R street.
How did de Vere start? By working for Paragary, just like so many people who light up Sacramento’s food scene today.
“Centro did more than just offer Mexican food in a cool urban environment,” de Vere said. “Paragary made it approachable and cool.”
I have so many memories of the early days at Centro. We took out of town friends there, we celebrated milestones. We’ve had more than one Bee newsroom celebration in Centro’s back room. Those days rekindle memories of when I fell in love with a city that was planting the seeds in an evolution that is fully flowering today.
Has it really been 25 years? It seems like just yesterday.
This story was originally published November 17, 2019 at 5:30 AM.
