Best Sacramento-area restaurant meals I ate in June | Food reporter’s notebook
Down-home Korean fried rice, Samoan corned beef and burrata sprinkled with Eastern European berries make for some of the Sacramento area’s most memorable bites. Here’s where to find them.
These were my favorite meals from around the Sacramento region in June. All reviews were first published in my free weekly newsletter; sign up for future write-ups, along with more restaurant news, at bit.ly/bee_food_drink_newsletter.
Southside Super
Southside Super is as tasty as it is cute, and that’s saying something.
Phuong Tran and Seoyeon Oh’s year-old Southside Park restaurant makes excellent use of the minuscule space formerly home to Lo/Fi, a popular deli that The Sacramento Bee’s readers said made the region’s best sandwiches before it closed in 2022. Cartoon sheep, chickens and rice bowls sketched by local artist Benjamin Della Rosa surround the eight green counter seats and two tables, along with knickknacks and bags of chips.
At Southside Super, Tran and Oh prepare large batches of the comforting Vietnamese and Korean food they’d cook for hungry guests in their homes. About 2/3 of the menu goes in hot or refrigerated grab-and-go cases; come at the end of lunch, as I did, and your options will be limited to the selection of made-to-order dishes — and maybe some silky, veggie-adorned potato salad ($5) if you’re lucky.
Southside Super’s simplicity shines in the unassuming kimchi fried rice ($13.50). Studded with Spam chunks and topped with a furikake-dusted fried egg, the rice bowl was light on actual kimchi but dyed orange by its juices, crescendoing in a homey, savory delight that feels like the product of a skilled chef’s leftovers.
Braised short ribs ($20) were by far the most expensive menu item, and worth every penny. The juicy, tender stewed beef seemed to explode with rich flavors, soaked up only somewhat by the surrounding chewy rice cakes, new potatoes, roast carrots and rice.
For a lighter, summer-friendly option, try Southside Super’s bun ga nuong sa ($15). Chilled, slippery rice noodles formed the base for grilled lemongrass chicken thighs, bean sprouts, lettuce, cucumber slices and do chua (the pickled carrots and daikon frequently seen in Vietnamese dishes), with a hearty splash of garlic fish sauce to tie the salad together.
Address: 921 V St., Sacramento.
Hours: 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday-Monday, closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
Phone: (916) 822-4275
Website: https://www.southsidesuper.com/
Drinks: Asian and American sodas, teas and other nonalcoholic drinks.
Vegetarian options: Japchae made from sweet potato noodles, vegan kimbap with burdock root and pickled radish, egg salad sandwiches and more.
Noise level: Truly depends on busyness — the small space feels mellow during down times, but hectic amid a rush.
Outdoor seating: None.
The Slough House Kitchen
Drive southeast through Sacramento County past the fruit stands and grazing cattle and you’ll eventually reach Sloughhouse, a 7,000-person town with one restaurant. The Slough House Kitchen is a literal historical landmark originally constructed in 1850 and popularized as the Sloughhouse Inn throughout the 20th century; it’s taken on new life under Alisa and Slav Lisagor, a Moldovan-born couple who opened their restaurant in 2022.
A pastry chef by trade, Slav Lisagor’s specialties include housemade pasta and wedges of flaky, crusty sourdough bread made from a decade-old starter and served with a streak of rosemary-thyme butter. Small table lamps, brick walls, old wooden floors and antique photos make the restaurant’s inside feel rooted in Sloughhouse’s history, but a lovely backyard patio deck makes for a peaceful place to slurp Hog Island Oyster Co. bivalves and watch a rural sunset.
The Slough House Kitchen’s seasonal menus source largely from neighboring Davis Ranch and include a few nods to the Lisagors’ roots, mostly notably in the fixture burrata with sea buckthorns ($18). Soft, creamy cheese contrasts with small orange berries that hail from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which are pickled in apple cider vinegar made from Apple Hill fruit and have a sweet-tart taste somewhat similar to gooseberries.
A hefty pork schnitzel ($38) was pushed to the plate’s edge by light mashed potatoes and a trio of sauces: five-hour marinara, fermented chili and mushrooms in white wine. Pounded flat and seasoned with orange juice before being fried in neutral oils, the schnitzel puffed up to a sweet-ish shell almost like an oddly delicious funnel cake.
Poached barramundi ($39) is available grilled or deep-fried. Choose the former to more fully taste the tender fish, cross-hatched and simply presented in a beurre blanc sauce that makes its savory flavors jump out.
Address: 12700 Meiss Road, Sloughhouse.
Hours: 4:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 4:30-9 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday.
Phone: (279) 209-6409
Website: https://sloughhousekitchen.com/
Drinks: Full bar with an Amador County-focused wine list.
Vegetarian options: A few pastas and appetizers, plus a house salad.
Noise level: Quiet.
Outdoor seating: Lovely deck patio with many seats.
Fresh Off Da Boat by Chef T
I first wrote about Fresh Off Da Boat by Chef T, Muagututia Tuala-Tamaalelagi’s Hawaiian/Samoan restaurant in a side-street office park, shortly after it opened in January. The chalkboard menu features approachable items travelers might have previously tried on their island vacations: intensely-marinated ahi poke over crispy taro chips, loco moco patties ground in-house and threaded with ginger, fish and chips using mahi mahi.
It’s Sunday, though, where Tuala-Tamaalelagi gets further back to his roots in American Samoa, with a separate menu curated for Pacific Islander elders but available to all. Dishes are available by weight, à la carte or in hefty two- or three-item combo boxes ($18/$24) with white rice, taro hunks cooked in coconut cream and two sides.
If there’s one dish to order on Sundays, it’s povi masima ($14.89 per pound), Samoan corned beef brined and braised in-house to a deep pink. It’s deliciously salty and ribboned with just the right amount of fat, firm-textured without being overcooked.
Turkey tail ($7.89 per pound) was a surprising table favorite as well, a Hawaiian organ meat specialty that’s actually the oily glands connecting birds’ tails to their bodies. In Tuala-Tamaalelagi’s classically-trained hands, they were coated in a sticky-sweet adobo sauce and transformed from an off-cut into a choice item.
There were plenty of Sunday sides worth adding — the aforementioned poke ($7.89), a taste of sea urchin ($12 for four ounces), pork-packed Hawaiian noodles called miki ($4). The toothsome fai’ai fe’e ($15), a Samoan octopus-coconut cream mixture, stands above the rest as an inky black study in contrast, suckers poking through the luscious base.
Tuala-Tamaalelagi wants to open a second restaurant exclusively for those soul-warming Hawaiian and Samoan niche dishes. Until then, you’ll only find them regionally at Fresh Off Da Boat on Sundays.
Address: 1515 Sports Drive, Suite 300, Sacramento.
Hours: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday.
Phone: (916) 418-7239
Website: https://www.cheftskitchen.org/
Drinks: Coffee, sodas and energy drinks.
Vegetarian options: Garden veggies on cassava cakes, or taro chips and fries during the week. On Sundays, try the palusami, a Samoan side of taro leaves stewed in coconut cream.
Noise level: Pretty quiet.
Outdoor seating: A few tables in front of the restaurant.
Hawks Public House
Hawks Public House is the closest restaurant to The Sacramento Bee’s newsroom, yet I hadn’t been since our offices moved into The Cannery development in 2021. Molly Hawks and Michael Fagnoni’s nine-year-old New American restaurant has undergone changes as well during that time, installing Francisco Rivera as the chef de cuisine after predecessor Derek Sawyer left for Allora.
A comparatively-casual-but-still-plenty-fancy offshoot of Hawks in Granite Bay, the public house has absorbed the Hawks Provisions, a pre-pandemic option for bites in an adjoined building. The menu today simply includes a “Provisions” category, nibbles such as duck liver mousse ($14) sealed in a maple apertif and black pepper gelée, that pair well with cocktails or mocktails during the weekday happy hour from 2:30-5 p.m.
Those provisions can also function as entryways to a larger dinner. That’s what my cousin and I did with a delightful mortadella tartine ($16), topped with wild arugula, pistachio crumbles, aged balsamic vinegar, cherries from Saeng’s Strawberry Stand in Granite Bay and the Italian cheese stracchino (also known as crescenza). Textures playfully contrasted throughout, and the sweet-savory flavors came together harmoniously.
Dried eucalyptus hangs in the gateway to Hawks Public House’s open kitchen, and other herbs including thyme, rosemary and tarragon season the herb-roasted chicken ($36). The excellently-cooked airline breast and thigh were enhanced by a mole negro that came out light brown but still had the flavor complexity one would want.
A tightly-wrapped heap of spaghetti fra diavolo ($35) took its heat not from traditional red pepper flakes but from Calabrian chile oil. While not uncomfortably spicy, that permeating burn overshadowed the more delicate Maine lobster vainly trying to stand out in the pasta.
Address: 1525 Alhambra Blvd., Sacramento.
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 5-10 p.m. Saturday, closed Sunday.
Phone: (916) 588-4440
Website: https://hawkspublichouse.com/
Drinks: Full bar.
Vegetarian options: A few options, including a crispy Delta asparagus starter, strawberry-jalapeño gazpacho and risotto with snap peas and assorted alliums.
Noise level: Loud.
Outdoor seating: Several tables across two patios.
