Rio City Cafe closes tonight. Sacramento is the landlord short of money and integrity | Opinion
Hoang Bui made a big mistake in ordering crab at the Rio City Cafe back in 2001 before his high school prom. “I cracked the crab. It squirted all over my date.”
The prom trauma long since faded, the 41-year-old staffer at the state Department of Justice and long-time restaurant fan came back to Rio City one last time Friday for a lunch of southwest seafood pasta. The restaurant ends its 30-year run on the Sacramento River tonight, unable to make ends meet because the landlord, the city, won’t fix the scenic deck.
“I love this place,” Bui said. He’s not alone. The restaurant’s faithful have filled the Rio City in recent days. The bar on Thursday ran out of rum, with no time to order reinforcements. Come Sunday, it will have run out of customers.
It’s a dark day in Sacramento when a famed spot on the river in the old historic district goes dark itself. Something, some day, will surely replace the old Rio City. It was a decision by the City of Sacramento, which controls this property, to fail to maintain this restaurant in good condition as required by its lease. Now Old Sacramento, with a vacant building at its heart, will suffer the consequences.
“Honestly, this is one of the main attractions of Old Sacramento,” Bui said.
Things began going downhill in April, when the city closed the river deck for safety reasons. Seating 100 patrons, the deck generated 70 percent of the restaurant’s income. To no surprise, the restaurant’s long-time owners, the Miller family, announced the closure last month.
This predictable decision nonetheless surprised Mayor Darrell Steinberg. He made some optical motions to try to save the restaurant. “My goal,” Steinberg said in a statement, “was to help this well-loved institution remain in business while providing time for both the restaurant and the city to evaluate the best long-term uses for the waterfront site.”
Owner Stephanie Miller said she told the mayor that the restaurant would “limp along” if the city would commit to fixing it at the next available opportunity given environmental and flood control considerations, which would be next spring.
Steinberg “basically told me they’re not fixing the deck,” Miller said. “A day late and a dollar short.” So the restaurant closes.
The city, through three decades of neglect, has run this asset into the ground. The deck needs an estimated $5 million in shoring up. The original roof, the wood shakes parched and pealing after 30 Sacramento summers, needs replacement. One deep pocket is going to have to rescue this place. “Our staff is confident this space will be in high demand,” Steinberg said.
For a city with a $1.6 billion overall budget, this mess shows how a few million dollars is now a lot of money. The city has pension obligations and deferred maintenance in the $3 billion range. The city is increasingly acting as if it is functionally broke. It is acting as if it had no choice but to break the Rio City Cafe.
If some corporate landlord made a heartless strategy to chase out a tenant by letting a property go to hell, the result could be a lawsuit or the recognition that market forces can be cruel. In this case, we’re talking about a lack of transparency within a city government that represents us.
In August of 2022, it seemed the city was going to find a contractor to fix the deck, based on a City Council decision at the time. Now Rio City is closing. In hindsight, maintaining the restaurant simply never rose to be a city priority. Otherwise today wouldn’t be happening.
Meanwhile, at the bar on Friday, Bui ordered one last hamburger, to go, “to relive those memories one last time.”
Thirty years is a great run for a restaurant. Change is truly a constant. But the death of the Rio City Cafe really isn’t about this restaurant. It is about Sacramento city government, running short of integrity as it runs short of money.
This story was originally published August 3, 2024 at 6:00 AM.