destruction of the Marshall and the BFD

In full disclosure, I've known owner Marvin Maldonado and his wife, Bridgitte, for a few years now. Since the time when Bridgette's fashion truck, Gypsy Mobile Boutique, rolled on to the scene. That's why I've declined to write a review before - the association. 

I've gone to Federalist a few times now and the experience has been so good I just have to at least throw in my recommendation for a few pizzas. 

I really like the vibe at Federalist. So much so that I had my summer birthday party there. The inside/outside aspect of the shipping container construction gives it a casual, relaxed feel. Even in the winter it is sheltered enough, with heaters, to make it comfortable. 

I also appreciate the fact that they have non-alcoholic beverages, fresh made strawberry lemonade and kombucha, on tap. 

I thought I was just going to another opening event last night. Instead I ended up leaving feeling pretty excited about the new R Street Complex, the one at 15th & R that includes the brand new Iron Horse Tavern, Roxie Deli & BBQ, and Dos Coyotes. Oh, and European Wax Center. Even better, the event was used to raise funds for the Children's Receiving Home of Sacramento.



Let's start with the big guy in the building, Iron Horse Tavern. Created by the Wong brothers who also have Mix and Cafeteria 15L, it's a great new place that's sure to be a big draw. 



I love the layout. Inside there is a long U-shaped bar with loads of bar stools, flat screens mounted above, and a couple of cozy nooks that would be great to snag if you have a group of friends. Next to it are long communal bar tables before the actual dining room seating starts. There are plenty of tables to feed the crowds that are sure to come.



There's a great patio on the outside with lots of long tables. My only thought on the patio is the lack of shade/cover structure for extreme heat or winter weather. Perhaps that is coming down the road.

the new Paragary's patio

If you've lived in Sacramento for a few decades then at sometime you were sure to have eaten at a Paragary restaurant. For three decades Paragary's has seen a generation grow up, graduate, get married, and start another generation — all while celebrating over a meal with family and friends at the restaurant. Now the flagship restaurant has been overhauled and poised for relaunch this Friday.

Randy Paragary with wife, Stacy

The midtown location at 28th & N streets originally opened in 1983. For me, that's the year I graduated high school. Then I did my four years attending college in Portland before I moved to Sacramento in 1987. Even in college I was eating well and dining out often. My taste in fine dining came with me to Sacramento and I remember how, at the time, Paragary restaurants were the best in town. They were where you went to celebrate special occasions, Valentine's Day, or just wanted a good meal. I had a friend who was a manager for Zinfandel Grill Folsom and even had company Christmas dinners there. (Zinfandel Grills are no longer associated with Randy Paragary.)

Over the last decade (and since I've been food blogging for 7.5 years) I rarely ate at a Paragary restaurant. If I did, it was at their more casual Cafe Bernardo's. Having once been the leader of the Sacramento restaurant scene, it just seemed that they weren't keeping up with the times and were stuck in the late 90s. Not only with food and look, but also by their lack of social media and guest interaction. There were so many other new and more exciting restaurant concepts coming to town.

Last Friday I was invited to a media event to see the revamped Paragary's. Over the decades I probably ate there only a couple of times. I didn't even know they had a patio, although I heard about it. The old restaurant had dark wood, booths, and carpeting. 

You won't even recognize the place now. After being completely gutted and reconfigured, the new restaurant is bright, open, simple, clean. Someone referred to it as Napa French and that seems accurate. A California interpretation of French bistros. 



The most significant change is architectural. The windows were taken out and enlarged and the outside given a French bistro style facade. Inside walls were torn down, including the one that separated the back patio from the restaurant. In its place is now a wide open doorway leading directly into the patio. The bar was moved and also given the French bistro treatment. Even the kitchen was gutted, save for the wood fire pizza oven. All the kitchen equipment is new as well.  



The  menu is not all that different and certainly not edgy except for maybe a bit more use of offal. There's salads and small plates (gnocchi, liver mousse, pizza) and the entrees include French staples such as Steak au Poivre and Salad Nicoise. Paragary classics of their famous mushroom salad and their rosemary pasta remain.

Spataro and Ostrander

The kitchen will be helmed by Scott Ostrander, formerly over at sister restaurant Esquire Grill. Kurt Spataro is part owner of Paragary Restaurant Group and Executive Chef, overseeing the culinary side of all Paragary restaurants.


My feeling was that an important missing element these last few years has been a lack of good social media. Sure they send out email newsletters, but more creative and interactive engagement via Twitter and Facebook is needed to capture today's social media savvy crowd.  A good part about increasing your restaurant's reach is social engagement. This will be an important part of the restaurant's renewal.

It will be interesting to see if the revamp brings them up to date to attract the younger crowd. After all, it's this new generation of diners which will be the next set memorable meals at Paragary's.

Last year I got a Brinkmann smoker and my goal once I got it was to learn how to smoke salmon. So far I have been pretty successful considering it is very hard to keep a low consistent temperature in this type of smoker. 

A few weeks ago I wrote about how we had a collection of Sacramento chefs going to the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Show. After a tiring weekend of nonstop events, we are all back home and the chefs are exhausted. 

Unfortunately my press pass was very limited in that I only got to go to the tasting events. No dinners, seminars, or cooking demonstrations. Also no after hours parties and that's where Bill Ngo and Michael Thiemann were.  Never did catch up with Ramon Perez or Ravin Patel. I did catch sight of Kelly McCown as he was leaving. He was done by Saturday afternoon and heading home. Therefore my coverage only extends to Meatopia on Friday and the Grand Tasting Tents on Saturday and Sunday.

Kudos must be shared for Michael Passmore of Passmore Ranch.  Most of the chefs used his fish (trout, catfish, sturgeon, caviar) and he even did a special for Kelly by supplying lamb. He also worked his butt off. He was assisting many of the chefs, but it paid off for him because he got to talk about his business with many people in the food business, including a posse of Top Chefs from the Bravo TV show.

Friday night - MEATOPIA!

Although no Sacramento chefs were featured at the Meatopia event, there was still a good showing as they assisted Chef Matthew Accarrino of SPQR in San Francisco. Accarrino was recently nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Chef of the West and he's a big fan of Passmore Ranch.  He had a great wow factor bite in that they served up sturgeon chicharron with caviar and then roasted sturgeon. 



The roasted sturgeon was pretty spectacular. Michael says that the fish was 120 pounds out of the water, pre-evisceration. They stuffed it with citrus and herbs and then put it on a spit. They encased it in chicken wire so it wouldn't fall apart as it cooked. As always, the sturgeon was delicious and I even scored the cheek!

Michael talks to celebrity chefs

Helping Accarrino that day was Michael Passmore and Bill Ngo and Tyler Bond from Kru.  I missed seeing Bill on his own as he had the After Parties on Thursday and Saturday nights and press pass had no access.

More from Meatopia...



Bottom left is Kevin Gillespie from Atlanta's Gunshow. You may recognize him from Top Chef. He once said on Top Chef Masters how our own Michael Tuohy was his mentor. I must say that both his bites, Friday and Sunday, were among my favorites from the whole weekend — packed with flavor. Friday's was pork belly with pickled apples and smoked peanut butter (and I'm no peanut butter fan).


Saturday Grand Tasting

Saturday was the second event for Oliver Ridgeway of Grange.  He had also done some catfish poboys for Thursday's golf event. Once again, Michael Passmore was on hand to help out. Oliver got many compliments for his dish being not only tasty, but standing out as different.  It was a dill Yorkshire pudding with trout rillette and caviar with shaved bottarga on top. Bottarga is a new term for me — salted and cured fish roe. It hardens into a block so you can shave it like truffles.  This bottarga was made with sturgeon caviar. (At the time I thought they were shaving truffles.)





Below are shots of some of the other areas.  Driscoll's was a major sponsor so you can see their Berryland in the top right - all berry desserts.  Lexus was also a major sponsor, thus the cars. There were a LOT of wineries represented. A ridiculous number. Lucky for me Perrier was also there. 




And, of course, plenty of bites. The ones in the middle are especially noteworthy. The beef pho from Charles Phan of The Slanted Door. It was good, but difficult to consume with the noodles, etc. The pie slice you see is foie gras and orange and it was delicious. It came from The Modern NYC. I also ran into Dana Cowin, Editor of Food & Wine Magazine (hosts of the event) and asked her to pay more attention to Sacramento, we have so much great food!





There were plenty of celebrity chefs, including Curtis Stone, Charles Phan, Aaron Burns, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Brian Malarkey (from The Taste on TV). I also spotted Elizabeth Falkner, Anita Lo, Jenn Louis, and Iron Chef Morimoto.

Sunday Grand Tasting

It was Mother's turn to shine on Sunday with Matt Masera representing.  I had seen Michael Thiemann on Friday and he explained he had to do the After After Party that night, but it turns out he had to return to Sac for other Mother obligations and so Matt was there with his wife, Dana, to man the fort. Their dish was an almond cake with pea dust soil, carrot puree, turmeric glass, and fennel frond.  He ran out about an hour before the event so hopefully they got to go around and eat what was left around the tent.



And, of course, more bites...
Notable in this collage would be the foie gras peanut butter doughnuts (didn't work for me) and the bottom right, which is Kevin Gillespie's pork and raisin crepinette that I liked. The bottom left is Morimoto's cold noodles with beef and that was a huge hit.  And there was Morimoto, on noodle duty, scooping out handfuls of noodles into each bowl and picking up droppings from the floor to be neat and tidy.



I didn't get too carried away with chef groupie selfies.  Took one with Kevin to say "hi" to Michael Tuohy and then had to get Fabio during prep time before the doors opened. I might not have gotten to more events, but at least it got me in early for the tastings. 



I want to thank Wagstaff Worldwide and Coastal Luxury Management for granting me the pass.  They don't give too many away to bloggers and so I was thrilled that they allowed me the opportunity to cover our Sacramento chefs. And they were a big hit too! Just check out Eater.com's review of the event and see #4 and #12! 

I'm quite sure I fall among the majority of Americans in that I wish I could go through life without having to exercise. But as I have now reached the half century mark, I've resigned myself that my middle age aches and pains will only be magnified as I age if I don't exercise. The fact is, I've never been athletic and I'm terribly uncoordinated. I have a crappy sense of balance and the only kind of dancing I can do is freestyle.

Going to the gym is a chore and not a pleasure. It's no wonder that I've constantly been on the search for an exercise that I can tolerate if not like. I was really happy with spin until my arthritic hip started hurting. That definitely means running is out. Last year I took up swimming and I find that I rather enjoy it, but trying to get a lane to yourself at a pool is a chore in itself. 

I've also had curiosity about other fitness programs such as The Dailey Method and pilates. The trouble is, you want to try them without having to buy a package. The answer is finally here - ClassPass. 

ClassPass is a fitness membership that spans across multiple fitness facilities. The beauty of it is that with the one membership you can go to pilates, yoga, barre, crossfit, cycling, boxing, and more at numerous facilities that belong.  Just launched in Sacramento this month, ClassPass is in every major city in the U.S. and even in London and Canada. Each city has different pricing — Sacramento is $79 a month.

Club Pilates in Midtown

For that $79 you get an unlimited number of classes at any of the member facilities. The only catch is that you can only go three times to any one. For instance, you can go to The Dailey Method three times, Aerial Evolution three times, Club Pilates three times, etc.  If one is a group, such as Dailey Method with multiple locations throughout Sacramento, it's three times altogether. You can't go to the downtown one three times and then then to the East Sac one another three times. 

I was given a one-month pass to check it out. So far I've gone to both The Dailey Method downtown and to Club Pilates. I liked both classes. What was great was that they used muscles that I obviously hadn't been using during my other workouts with my trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. The Dailey Method really focused on my core while at Club Pilates I got to finally see and try those pilates machines/contraptions they use with all the straps and pulleys. 

The beauty of ClassPass is that you can switch up your routine and try something new. It also gives you a lot of variety and flexibility. And like my 24 Hour Fitness membership, it's usable in any city that also has ClassPass. In fact, in some cities your ClassPass even includes gyms such as 24 Hour fitness and Gold's Gym. 

At this point I'll probably be joining ClassPass next month. I'm liking the access to different studios and working on other parts of my body in new ways. 

Tiffany and Michele Steeb, CEO

Tiffany has a gorgeous, sunny smile and bright, clear eyes. She is gloriously happy, perhaps for the first time in years...or maybe even her life. She has a roof over her head, her son with her, and a bright future. This is in stark contrast to just six months ago when she and her son were living in her car and she was (and still is) dealing with custody battles with her in-laws. She had been homeless for over a year, living in her car and on friend's couches. Tiffany represents the growing number of homeless families in Sacramento and her happy smile is due to one thing - finding help at Saint John's.

Saint John's Program for Change is a charity that was founded in 1985 on the footsteps of St. John's Lutheran Church. It's mission is to help women in crisis come to grips with their lives, battle their demons, and through education, assistance, and a job program, lead them to a new life of independence, productivity, and self sufficiency.

I had recently been asked to come to one of Saint John's guest chef dinners, which we'll get to later. I had been to the dinners before and have ready many posts and articles about them. I wanted to know more.  I wanted to know about the program leading up to the Plates Cafe and to the success stories that come from Saint John's.

I stayed for a week in Honolulu for my vacation in January. In that week I went to Koko Head Cafe three times for breakfast.  It's that good.

Located a few miles from Waikiki in the Waialea neighborhood, Koko Head Cafe  calls itself an "Island Style Brunch House". It's become one of the most popular breakfast destinations on the island for the locals and word has spread enough to attract tourists as well. In fact, while I was there I watched Japanese media filming the place. It's tucked in just off of Waialea Avenue in a nondescript building, but inside it's bright and cheerful with a number of booths and counter seating. The staff are just as bright and cheerful too.

I went three times because the menu is so diverse and so enticing. It also demonstrates what I love most about Hawaiian cuisine, true fusion of American and Asian in a way that only the islands can achieve. Like our own Bacon & Butter, Koko Head Cafe only serves brunch from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. While you can find pancakes and eggs on the menu, they will be treated with a Hawaiian touch. For instance, Hawaiian style pancakes are made with a ricotta batter and don't need any syrup because they are sweet enough with their topping of chopped island fruits of pineapple, mango, and/or whatever is in season.

I am no fan of Yelp.  I hate the negativity of the bad, sloppy reviewers that you have to read through to get to good, insightful reviews. 

Yet Yelpers do seem to get the Top 100 list right. Recently the 2015 Top 100 Restaurants reviewed on Yelp came out. (I like to make clear that this is a list compiled from Yelp data.  Just like I wish people would realize that the Top 100 list on OpenTable is only of OpenTable restaurants and not ALL restaurants.) Anyway, the point is that two Sacramento area restaurants made this year's list and one was Ninja Sushi and Teriyaki in Roseville. 

Disclaimer:  Ninja reached out to me asking me to come by and check them out. I told them that I would have to come unannounced in order to do an honest review. They did send me a gift certificate to pay for my meal. But that in no way is what is influencing this review since I truly do see the reason they have such great reviews on their own.

Ninja is located just off of Highway 65 at Pleasant Grove Boulevard on the west side of the freeway. The complex has a lot of restaurants, including the new Chando's Tacos Roseville and the Brazil churrascaria restaurant, Flame and Fire. I went with a friend on a Sunday night to find that every table was occupied and there was a wait. 

I am no juicing expert, but I have gotten into juicing — in a rather convoluted way. You see, I'm a bit of a tightwad and so I see no sense in paying a juice store to do something I can do for far less money on my own.  The irony is in how much I've spent on actual juicers.

I started out with a Breville centrifugal juicer. When it busted I got a Ninja Bullet. Then when the Ninja busted (from me cramming too much into each jar) I went for the big bucks and got a Vitamix so that I could emulsify and keep the fiber.  But I got tired of so much fiber and so I went out and got an Omega cold press juicer to keep all those nutrients.  Finally, I received a free, new Ninja Auto IQ Blender, which I fell in love with.  Yes, I've spent a lot of money on juicers for being a tightwad.  

When I say that I'm not an expert, it's mostly because I don't make a variety of good tasting juices that I switch up each day. No, I keep things simple. I know that you should have mostly vegetables because fruit adds calories, so my juices are pretty green and veggie filled. My routine consists of going to the farmers market on Sunday morning, washing my purchases, then juicing or prepping for the entire week's worth of juices. 

Yes, my juices pretty much taste the same all the time, but I don't care.  I'm getting my nutrients. What do I put in?  Typically I go to the farmers market and buy the following (1 bunch each):  kale, cilantro, carrots (including the greens), celery, parsley, sometimes mint, a few cucumbers, green apples, sometimes kiwis.  At home I'm lucky enough to have a giant grapefruit and lemon tree to take care of the citrus. Citrus is important to cut that green, leafy taste. I'll also add the following at home, varying upon my mood: chia seed, tumeric and coconut oil (they need each other to work), cayenne pepper, pineapple, and ginger. As you can see, my juice is veggie heavy. 

I juice on Sundays and have juices every day for the rest of the week. And I don't lose much nutritional value because I freeze everything. 

Over the course of the last year I have developed three different methods for doing this.  Each has its own merits. Sometimes it's a matter of how lazy I am and sometimes it's a matter of if I want a lot of fiber or do I just want the juice. The common denominator is that I'm not interested in taking time every day to juice and clean juicers.  I'd rather clean up the whole mess just one time.

1. Mason Jars

Mason jars can be put in the freezer because the glass is so thick. The key things to remember is that you must use the wide mouth jars and you must leave an air gap because liquids expand. Forget the air gap and the freezing liquid could make your jar crack or explode in your freezer.