How Sacramento Turned Into a Great Restaurant City
Soaring Bay Area housing prices, a highly diverse community and some of the world’s best produce have been catalysts for the dining scene in California’s capital.
On a recent evening in a dimly lit Japanese restaurant, nearly a dozen diners watched rapt from across the bar as a chef blowtorched a sliver of sturgeon until it was kissed with char. He topped the nigiri with crisped fish skin and a spoonful of caviar.
The quiet veneration from the customers, the practiced flick of the chef’s wrist and the buttery, bouncy pieces of fish might have suggested the meal was unfolding on a side street of Ginza.
The restaurant wasn’t in Tokyo, though. It wasn’t even in New York City or San Francisco — it was in a residential neighborhood of Sacramento, at a restaurant called Kru.