Best restaurant meals I ate around Sacramento last month | Food reporter’s notebook
The Sacramento Bee’s 2022 Top 50 Restaurants guide is out, but I’m not done tasting restaurants across the region.
My favorite meals in November took me to a hot new Caribbean spot in Greenhaven, a downtown Roseville sports bar with some Portuguese influence, an Arden Arcade oasis for West African natives and a traditional Persian restaurant in Orangevale.
All of these reviews were first published in my free food and drink newsletter, which hits email inboxes around noon each Wednesday. Click here to sign up!
Bodega Kitchen & Cocktails
Rafael Jimenez Rivera’s grandfather owned a restaurant in Puerto Rico and his father ran a Puerto Rican restaurant in New York City. Jimenez Rivera, who has a couple of decades of food and beverage industry experience of his own, took the plunge himself in August.
Jimenez Rivera partnered with Good Bottle Shop owners Chris Sinclair and Emily Neuhauser as well as chef Matt Brown (formerly of The Golden Bear) to open Bodega Kitchen & Cocktails about three months ago. Sinclair’s A+ bar program helps form a beachy, friendly Greenhaven oasis at 6401 Riverside Blvd., and Bodega’s dynamic dishes pluck inspiration from across the Caribbean.
Take the coco bread Cubano ($17), a sandwich with no direct peer in Sacramento. Pernil, ham, pickles, and mustard are pretty typical, but then Brown subs Gruyere for Swiss cheese and stuffs the whole thing in one puffy, folded piece of Jamaican bread made with coconut milk.
Bodega was initially envisioned as more Puerto Rican than Cali-Caribbean, and Jimenez Rivera’s roots still shine in dishes such as the tripleta sandwich ($18). Taking its name from the three types of meat (grilled chicken, peppered bacon and pernil), it’s also overflowing with nacho cheese, fries, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and mayo-ketchup, creating a processed indulgence that’s as messy as it is delicious.
Doubles ($14), a Trinidadian street food that bears some resemblance to tacos, are one of the few vegetarian options. Mildly spiced curried chickpeas, ginger oil and pickled mango sit atop a trio of small turmeric flatbreads, waiting to be finished with pickled red onions and a few dabs of pique, an acidic Puerto Rican hot sauce made from chilis Brown grows in his home garden.
Address: 6401 Riverside Blvd., Sacramento. Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. Phone Number: (916) 898-2231. Website: https://www.bodegasac.com/ Drinks: full liquor license, a terrific cocktail bar and an in-house bottle shop. Animal-free options: fried appetizers, a quinoa fruit salad and the doubles mentioned above. Accessibility: Bar seating is snug and high-up, but good spacing in dining room. Noise level: medium-high.
Kolbeh Kabob
Cutting-edge Maydoon brought Persian food to the spotlight of Sacramento’s grid in 2020, but a handful of restaurants have been serving that cuisine’s tried-and-true dishes for years in suburban Sacramento County. That includes Kolbeh Kabob, Ali Liaghat’s 17-year-old concept at 8700 Greenback Lane, Suite B in Orangevale.
The dining room has a quiet, grown-up air at Kolbeh, which translates to “little house” in Farsi, decorates its dining room with bottles of California wines and uses glass-covered Persian rugs as tablecloths. Belly dancing has been a weekend fixture in the past and may return; all I know is that everyone’s midriff remained covered on my Friday night visit.
Kebabs are in the name, and our server recommended the sultani ($33). Twin skewers of koobideh (ground beef) and barg (a thin slice of filet mignon) came out with rice, onions and scorched half-tomatoes. I liked the koobideh’s gaminess, but the barg’s quality of meat was clearly superior and justified the price point.
Fesenjān ($20), a deep brown chicken-pomegranate-walnut dish from the hills of Northern Iran, was a highlight. It was so tangy, so vibrant that we scooped the bowl clean with pita given as a complimentary appetizer.
Vegetarian dishes take up a page of Kolbeh’s menu, including a cinnamon rice dish called addas polo ($19) loaded with lentils and raisins alongside charred onions, peppers and squash. It made for a flavorful, somewhat lighter counterbalance to meatier dishes.
Address: 8700 Greenback Lane, Suite B, Orangevale. Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. seven days a week. Phone Number: (916) 990-0233. Website: http://kolbehkabobrestaurant.com Drinks: beer and wine, with an emphasis on the latter. Animal-free options: a page of vegetarian options. Accessibility: Two reserved parking spots, thinly carpeted floors, relatively snug dining room, low lighting in certain areas. Noise level: quiet.
Palace Food Services
Palace Food Services has been something of a culinary and cultural refuge for West African immigrants since opening in August 2021 in an Arden Arcade shopping center.
There are few other restaurants and bars where one can to sip a Gulder beer while gazing at Nigerian mansions in Burna Boy music videos, or chow down on specials such as the Ghanaian rice-and-beans dish waakye. Run by Henrietta Donkor at 2645 El Camino Ave., Suite A, it’s proudly West African aside from a few Black American dishes such as lemon pepper wings.
That niche introduces flavors Sacramentans might not be used to, as in the palm nut soup known as banga ($19-$30 depending on meat). The ground oily nuts made the auburn soup incredibly rich, a taste offset just a bit by its lingering heat. Add your choice of meat (chicken, beef, goat, tilapia or red snapper) and dig in with fingerfuls of fufu, pounded yam similar to thick mashed potatoes.
A Ghanaian black-eyed pea stew called red red ($19) was browner than one might think, aside from an ivory hard-boiled egg sitting atop the flavorful base layer. It came with a steaming-hot side of sweetened, fried plantains so succulent and crispy around the edges that we couldn’t help but order a heaping appetizer portion ($10) as well.
I’ll have more recommendations for you on Friday, when The Sacramento Bee’s Top 50 Restaurants of 2022 story comes out. Loyal newsletter readers will recognize a few favorites from this section among that list of the region’s best restaurants.
Address: 2645 El Camino Ave., Suite A, Sacramento. Hours: 1:30-8 p.m. Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday, 1:30-10 p.m. Friday, 1:30-9 p.m. Saturday. Phone Number: (916) 339-6693. Website: http://palacefs.com Drinks: full bar with a few West African specialties, such as palm wine or the Nigerian beer Gulder. Animal-free options: a few, including spiced plantains called kelewele and cassava leaf stew. Accessibility: Tight entry between gates, no dedicated parking spots in front of restaurant but others in large adjoined lot, concrete floors. Noise level: fairly loud due to music and aforementioned floors.
Goose Port Public House
During Al Santos’ first week of Little League, a coach asked him what kind of name “Santos” was. Portuguese, he replied. That started a nickname he still hasn’t shaken: “Portugoose,” or simply “Goose.”
Thus goes the story behind Goose Port Public House, Santos’ sports bar that opened in 2019 at 316 Vernon St. in downtown Roseville.
A few heritage dishes such as torresmos de vinha d’alhos (wine-marinated crackling pork) or sausage sandwiches from Tracy-based butcher shop Fernandes Sao Jorge Linguiça are marked with a Portuguese flag on the paper menus. But most options are familiar sports bar fare, so plan your visit around a bimonthly Portuguese Heritage Night if that’s what you’re after.
On normal days, consider sharing the enormous spicy poke nacho platter ($15) with your group. This fusion-friendly dish has become something of a refined sports bar staple, but few other places seem to include tuna sashimi, pineapple and serrano chilis over their beds of wonton chips, and with such eye-grabbing presentation.
The Vernon Street chicken sandwich ($15 with a side of fries) is a slightly more mature succession to the fried chicken craze, which seems to have cooled a bit recently. A grilled chicken breast, half-melted havarti and arugula packed were into a bolillo roll, and got a nice amount of contrast from pickled red onions and sweet bacon jam.
Address: 316 Vernon St., Roseville. Hours: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday. Phone Number: (916) 886-5080. Website: https://gooseport.com/ Drinks: full bar, including 22 taps and some Portuguese wines. Animal-free options: Not many, but they include a vegan cheeseburger, a falafel wrap and a house salad. Accessibility: Two parking spots have ADA exemptions, and all outdoor tables have heat lamps for the COVID-conscious. Noise level: loud inside, quieter outside.
