A Tale of Two Sacramento Restaurants

I wanted to blog about two restaurants I have visited lately. We have been trying to eat at home lately, so going out feels like a genuine treat and we choose our destinations carefully. The first stop was the new location of Bacon & Butter, which moved from midtown to Tahoe Park.

 We really liked the modern industrial look to the interior of the restaurant. 

 

I'm currently on a break from sugar, which prevented me from ordering the baked goods listed on the whiteboard pictured below. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway- they were already sold out by the time we showed up for lunch! They have been doing a brisk business since re-opening and were already sold out of several menu items as well.

 

 

It being lunch, I went for the burger, which was amazing, topped with greens, crispy onions, jack cheese and quality bacon. It also came with a thoughtful, fall-inspired salad featuring local produce.

 

Our friends went a more traditional route with Pear-Pecan French Toast (made with gorgeous, fluffy bread) and a fall-produce stuffed omelette served with one gorgeous autumny fruit salad.  

 

Conclusion: If you haven't been to the new location yet, check it out. Come early if you want the baked goods and full menu selection, but be prepared for lines if you come during peak hours.

Moving on, our next stop was The Cultured & The Cured, a real fromagerie and charcuterie. In other words, all they sell here is cheese, cured meats, and other bits that go well with them! We came here for lunch to try their menu of cheese-oriented offerings.

 

 

First, the cheese! They have an impressive selection for such a small shop.

 

Next, the cured meats and extras:

 

They also have some baked goods that were calling to me...

 

And some really fun, unique finds to compliment your cheese boards:

 

We deliberated over the menu and finally choose two sandwiches and a cheese board. The cheese boards are ordered by category (cow milk, sheep milk, goat milk, washed rind, blue) and come with a few tasteful additions besides toast crisps. Our selection was the Monger's Choice and included cow milk and goat milk cheddars, and both a mild and a strong blue.It was a lovely selection, and I would love to return and try them all!

 

I didn't remember to take a picture of my sandwich until my side salad was gone and I was halfway done, but it was a toasted panini filled with turkey, cheese, and Hungarian peppers for a little heat. So, so good.

 

Conclusion: Run, don't walk, here if you consider yourself a cheese connoisseur. 

Megan's Bake Shop

Today I investigated West Sacramento's first cupcake bakery, Megan's Bake Shop. Located in the shopping complex right off of 50 and Jefferson (across from Chevron), you can't beat the location for convenience.

 

Daily flavors are posted on the Bake Shop's Facebook page, as well as on the board outside the shop.

 

 

Today, the cupcake flavors included Maple Bacon, Almond Raspberry, Churro, Reese's, Banana Chocolate Chip, and several more. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only cupcakes are sold here, but a wide variety of cake- and candy-making supplies. Classes on a variety of cake-making skills are offered as well. The beginner's class is 4 weeks long and $45, and sounded like a good deal to me.

Recent college graduate Megan told me that originally her plan was just to teach the classes and sell supplies only, but her grandmother (the famous Carol of Carol's Restaurant on West Capitol) convinced her to do the bakery as well. 

 

So... how about those cupcakes? 

 

I tried three cupcakes today: Churro (cinnamon cupcake and frosting), Reese's (chocolate cake with chocolate and peanut-butter frosting), and Maple Bacon (chunks of bacon in the cupcake, topped with maple frosting and crumbled bacon mixed with maple syrup).

I thought the flavors were creative and liked that the cupcakes were moist and freshly-made from scratch that day. (Yes, I asked.) With the cupcakes plus the versatility of the store with the supplies and classes, I'm very happy to welcome this new addition to the neighborhood.

Finally, I am a sucker for filled cupcakes (think lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling), and I hope that soon some of the offerings will be filled with delicious goodness. I will be back to try more flavors as they change regularly!

Dine Downtown Week: Dinner at Mulvaney's

I'm slowly working my way towards all of the Sacramento restaurants that have received the Slow Food "Snail of Approval". Last week, I noticed that one of the restaurants I've wanted to try for years, Mulvaney's B&L, had a great-sounding prix fixe menu posted for Dine Downtown week. Three courses for $30 sounded like an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

Chef Patrick Mulvaney is heavily involved in the Slow Food scene and is famous for turning whatever comes through the door from local farms that day into dinner that night. Because of the nature of his farm-to-table practices, diners normally don't find out what they will be eating that night until they are handed a dinner menu (although for this week, the same prix fixe menu was offered every night).

The restaurant is housed in a historic firehouse downtown, and the signage is so subtle I could have walked right by it if I wasn't paying attention.

Sometimes the little things make a big difference as far as dining ambiance go. You know it's a nice restaurant when the water and salt/pepper look like this:

The bread and butter sure were pretty to look at. I believe this is pink Himalayan salt sprinkled over butter with a crusty bread on the side.

The amuse bouche was a lamb and pork sausage topped with a spicy sofrito. These flavors were so good, I rather wished to take a whole sausage and the sofrito topping on a nice roll and call it lunch one day.

My salad was an ever-so-slightly bitter frisee salad dressed in a nice vinaigrette, served along side a Wood Ear Mushroom Scaccia. This is a warm Italian tomato and cheese pie, although here it seemed more like a roll with the mushroom in the center. The sauce had a surprising kick to it and I loved the combination of slightly bitter greens with spicy and savory scaccia.

This was NOT my dish - it was my husband's. He opted for a 28-day aged ribeye steak topped with bacon butter (yes, bacon and butter, together) and served with broccoli raabe and carrots. He said it topped the steak at Ruth's Chris and that this will be his new standard for steaks. Clearly, he was a big fan.

Here was my entree - fettuccine with arugula rapini,  fennel sausage, roasted Hatch chile, and Pecorino Romano. The homemade noodles, silky and cooked perfectly, were dressed in a light cream sauce, and all of the flavors of this dish came together beautifully. It was one gorgeous winter pasta dish.

My meal included dessert, a Mexican chocolate bread pudding topped with salted caramel sauce. I can honestly say that I came close to licking every plate clean this evening, this one included.

As we finished our meal, the bill came in a vintage book that we were invited to sign. The comments left by other diners were charming remnants of pleasant dinner conversation, good company, and excellent meals. Ours: "Thanks for a memorable meal, Mulvaney's! Can't wait to come back."

Dickens Fair and Russian Food

I haven't posted in some time for a variety of reasons. Reason #1: the first trimester of my first pregnancy hit me hard and I slept during most of my free time for October-December.

Reason #2: I was so thrilled to post on my trip to the Dicken's Fair in late December, only to find out that the Blogger Ap was less than efficient at importing the numerous pictures I took from my cell phone. I spent about an hour trying to make it work and then became so discouraged that I had to take a break from blogging in order to re-group.

Now it is early January, and I wanted to share just one picture from the amazing Dicken's Fair. This San Francisco Bay-area event is held every year during the holidays and constitutes a sort of Disneyland for book lovers. My husband smiled as I wandered around in awe, saying things like, "Look, there's Ebenezer Scrooge and a shackled Jacob Marley!... A Christmas ball with waltzing lessons!...Ooh, roasted chestnuts and Cornish pasties!... Look, an antique bookseller, and there's a shop selling real corsets!" (At over $200, I don't think I'll be lacing one up anytime soon, not to mention they aren't too maternity-friendly.)

In this picture, actors depict Christmastime at the Dickens' family's home, complete with roast goose dinner on the table and a cozy gathering in the parlor:

We loved the Fair so much, we can't wait to return next year. Mark that one off my list of activities to accomplish this year!

Another item that I checked off my "30 before 30" list relates to the goal of trying 3 new kinds of food. I'm a fairly adventurous diner, so I had to think hard on this one. One of my ideas involving a venture into Russian/Ukrainian food as found at the local restaurant Firebird. They serve a plentiful lunch buffet, where I started with a chunky, hot bowl of borscht topped with cream sour cream, then moved on to an overwhelming array of hot foods and cold salads. I walked away from Buffet Round One with the following heaping plate:

Apple Picking and Finally a Decent Lunch

I have blogged before about our annual fall sojourns to Apple Hill, but this year we wanted to do things a little differently. Going earlier in the season to avoid crowds and finding a decent place for lunch were at the top of our priority list. See, Apple Hill does anything apple-related extremely well.

Case in point: Apple Cider Donut-

Or the perfect Apple Fritter with chunks of fresh apple, laced with cinnamon:

Apple pie is always a winner-

Along with Apple Dumplings, Apple Crisp, Apple Strudel, Caramel Apples, Apple Cider and...  you get the picture.

But while the desserts are superb, over the years we have been subjected to one horrible lunch after another at Apple Hill. Grisly hamburgers, cold and tough tri-tip sandwiches on squishy white buns, and puny pulled pork sandwiches (all overpriced) had slowly drained us of any hope of finding a meal that was equal to the apple desserts.

But Crystal Basin Bistro finally has us excited about lunch again.

Located next to a winery of the same name, the sunny and open space of the bistro is inviting, modern and offers a dog-friendly patio. (We didn't take our chihuahua this time, but would love to in the future.)

Lunch plates are affordable ($8 per plate with meat, $6 for a vegetarian plate) and more sophisticated than anything else in the Apple Hill area. We opted for an antipasti plate, a beef brisket and gorgonzola sandwich, and...

The ridiculously gooey and probably very fattening cheesy artichoke dip. What can I say? We lost our heads for the day.

All fueled up after lunch, we headed to Denver Dan's for some apple pickin'.

I find apple orchards to be incredibly picturesque.

Last year we were disappointed when the U-Pick option here was cancelled after a bad apple season. This year obviously the trees were making up for lost time and were heavy laden with fruit.

Customers are encouraged to taste as they go to ensure ripe apples. Besides allowing us to buy the freshest apples possible, we get access to interesting varieties not often seen in grocery stores. We stocked up on King David and Northern Spy apples in particular.

Before leaving, we found this amazing deal - $2.99 for a basket of figs. In our area, figs almost never sell for less than $5 or more a basket, so I was in fig heaven when I saw this.

Weekends like this, you wish Monday would never come.

Chez Panisse: At Last

This weekend we traveled to the Bay Area in an attempt to enjoy at least one real day of summer. We started our trip at Berkeley Bowl, the most amazing grocery store I have ever seen in my life. By the end of our exploration, we were joking about driving 1.5 hours every week just to do our grocery shopping at this place! I mean, look how many kinds of cucumbers alone the produce section carries:

Need squash or eggplant? Talk about having a variety to choose from:

When it came to yogurt, I haven't seen this kind of a selection since I was in France. I discovered the most amazing small-batch, French-style yogurt called St. Benoit. Produced in Sonoma, it tastes like a cross between yogurt, custard, and manna. I even found out that they carry this product at the Sacramento Natural Food Co-Op, so I can find it locally. Hooray!

For lunch, we fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine by eating at Chez Panisse Cafe. As I walked under the wooden sign into the wonderfully atmostpheric restaurant, I blissfully sighed, "I'm here, Alice!" (Waters, that is.)

The menu changes every day here, according to what is in season and at its best.

Our meal began with a crusty, hearty wedge of artisan bread and yellow, creamy butter.

Here is what my husband ordered Devil's Gulch Fried Rabbit, served over amaranth greens, sweet corn, and green tomatillos. He said that if everyone could make rabbit this delicious, it would be eaten much more commonly in America.

And here was my selection: Romanesco de Peix, a bowl of squid, mussels, clams, and shrimp cooked in a tomato-leek broth. It was simply perfection.

Finally, I couldn't resist dessert, especially since I desperately wanted to compare the apricot galette with the version I make using the Chez Panisse recipe - just to see how close I come in replicating the taste. Result? Because their galette is cooked in a wood-fired oven, the top gets a bit blacker and the bottom a bit browner and crisper, but other than that, it's definitely the same recipe - and a wonderful one.

Finally, we ended our trip with a stop at Stinson Beach. The smell of eucalyptus and fog and sea air always stirs something deep and moving inside of me. When the clouds quickly blew away, the sun was surprisingly hot and we moved on to exploring a little bookshop in town. It was a wonderful memory for this quickly fleeting summer of ours.