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Diners at Grange enjoy a full view of downtown. The restaurant has been busy since it opened in early December.

Every good restaurant review begins with a lie.

In that way, this job is a little like espionage, though the only weapon I carry is my trusty Fisher Space Pen (it writes upside down, underwater and over food smudges).

Back to the lie: I call up or go online and make a reservation under an assumed name. I resisted going with the name of my first dog and the street I grew up on – Tiger Woodruff.

It's a long-standing tradition in newspapers to dine anonymously and to never accept freebies from restaurants. We go to great lengths to make sure my experience is typical rather than exceptional.

There may come a time when I am found out. If I detect I am getting unusual treatment, I will share that with the readers. The Bee picks up every tab, though dining with me is not necessarily a treat. I tell you what to order. Though I am exceedingly polite, I will steal your food. I talk to myself. I scribble things under the table and sometimes that just looks weird. I ask you questions when your mouth is full. I will steal your dessert. The one I told you to order.

Apart from that, I try to have fun. That's why we go out. I like to make jokes and hear jokes and tell stories and talk about what's going on in the world. I enjoy conversing with servers and asking them about the food, their lives and the weather. That may lead to them asking me what I do for a living.

I lie.

I also eat.

Most reviews will involve at least two visits to each restaurant. This should give me the opportunity to assess several entrees, a variety of appetizers and desserts, along with the service and consistency of the cooking.

It is not an exact science. It is simply my opinion, though I go to great lengths to make it an informed one.

How? I have people I trust eat with me. I start by asking them what they think. We might argue or agree. Disagreeing might lead me to reconsider or reaffirm my stance.

Where possible, I will follow up my visit with a phone call to chat with the chef to learn more about the menu, the ingredients and the techniques.

I like to think I know a fair bit about food and cooking, but I want our readers, many of whom read food blogs and watch cooking shows as a way of life, to get an insider's perspective and, perhaps, learn something along the way. I think today's food enthusiasts are more demanding – and more curious – than ever.

After all that, I am ready to give my ratings based on a four-star scale in these categories: service, ambience, food, value and overall. They won't all be weighted equally. This may occasionally be controversial. If the food is excellent and the restaurant a visual delight, the so-so service might not put a dent in the overall rating. If that's the case, I will explain my reasoning.

On the other hand, superb service and good food may not save a place where the prices are alarmingly high and they nickel and dime you with extras.

Also, there may be places that simply do an excellent job of living up to their rather narrow promise. A rib joint with the best ribs in town could earn four stars overall even if I sit on a wobbly chair, the menu has but four items and I am required to listen to country music blaring from cheap speakers.

I just won't be doing it as Tiger Woodruff.

Servers Danielle Larovere, left, and Clark Andress stop in to the kitchen of Grange Restaurant & Bar.

If you happened to be strolling near the corner of 10th and J streets just past midnight recently and gazed through the large windows of the new Grange Restaurant & Bar, you would have spotted one very talented, forward-thinking chef, immersed at the back of the house.

It was after hours, of course, but Michael Tuohy (pronounced Too-ee) was preparing a large batch of braised short ribs.

Rub the meat with salt and pepper. Sear it at high heat in grape seed oil, forcing the juices toward the center. Sauté the mirepoix, deglaze with zinfandel, which nudges the fond from the pan and builds flavor in the stock, which goes into the pot, which braises the beef.

Then, it's a longer process at low heat, which forces the meat to release its juices into the flavorful stock, breaking down the tough tendons over time. And with the right amount of pressure, magic and science inside the covered pot, the wondrous melding of liquids is drawn back into the beef.

That takes 15 hours.

I ordered an 8-ounce portion of what is described on Tuohy's ever-changing menu as "Zinfandel braised Vande Rose beef short ribs" for $26. They left out "heavenly."

I'm still thinking about that oh-so-tender meat, served without the bone atop a silky and surprising rutabaga purée, and I'd pay $26 this instant simply for another glimpse, a whiff, a tease.

The same goes for the beet appetizer, which was nothing like the beets of my youth – bleeding, bland and ugly. Tuohy boils three kinds of beets, then puts them in a pickling brine of apple cider vinegar, sugar and seasonings. With the crumbled goat cheese, we oohed and aahed to the last bite.

On and on it went – the duck, the lamb, the squab cooked rare (as it should be), the raw sturgeon crudo, the carpaccio (raw beef sliced tissue thin).

I loved the boldness of flavors and the crust of the hangar steak. For that, the chef uses a rub featuring his favorite spice, pimentón, a Spanish smoked paprika.

Tuohy pretty much had me at hello, slipping into town with a reputation as one of Atlanta's best chefs and as a pioneer in that city's farm-to-table and Slow Food movement.

After 22 years in Atlanta, the Bay Area native sold his widely admired Woodfire Grill over the summer and headed west.

He was a key hire for the San Francisco-based Joie de Vivre Hotels. The restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch, will anchor the new 198-room Citizen Hotel. (Grange was already decided upon as the name, but it cleverly reflects Tuohy's way of thinking; it refers to the fraternal organization formed by 19th century American farmers.)

After perhaps the most expensive renovation the city has known, the hotel emerged from what was once a grand office building dating to 1926.

Folks have been talking about Grange for months, and it opened Dec. 4 to a packed house. The attractive second floor, featuring some private booths, will open later.

I arrived three days into the feeding frenzy. The room is tall and striking, the lighting stylish, the seating cozy but not cramped. The espresso-colored bamboo floors are beautiful – and different.

Four weeks into a crowd- pleasing but occasionally clumsy opening, is it too soon to suggest it will take its place among the very finest restaurants in the region? I don't think so.

It's also safe to predict Tuohy will become, as he was in Atlanta, a beacon not only to fine-dining aficionados but those buying into the Slow Food movement.

Tuohy's pork and lamb come from Bledsoe Pork in Yolo, where John Bledsoe believes in gently raising his livestock free of antibiotics. Same with the duck from Sonoma County Poultry. The beef is from two premier sources, the squab from Modesto. The produce comes in from boutique farms that emphasize sustainable practices.

This sourcing is impressive, practically fanatical.

But what about Grange's execution?

That depends – less on the capable kitchen and more on the staff in the front of the house.

Some are good. Some aren't. My server for Sunday brunch seemed overwhelmed.

I told him I wanted a grilled sturgeon salad ($18). He returned with the smoked sturgeon salad ($11). When I pointed this out, he was baffled.

When he arrived with the bill, he had charged me for the more expensive one. And he breezed past my table six times without gathering the check and credit card.

But it wasn't enough to detract from an otherwise wonderful brunch with excellent coffee, especially when you factor in the very fine smoked salmon eggs Benedict and the delicious huevos ranchero fried eggs with chorizo and black beans.

On the side were some of the most exhilarating little potatoes – patatas bravas – I've ever had, thanks to Tuohy's pimentón, backed up with cumin and coriander. It was a taste that grew on the palate and lingered there, crisp, complex and animated.

But back to dinner, the make-or-break meal here.

The first concern comes moments after the host shows us to our table – the only bad one in the room, right next to the servers' station. As they tapped on the touch screen, it felt like the servers were hovering over me. The station should be moved from the center of a beautiful room to an inconspicuous place.

When I asked the host for a different table, she said, "No, we're too busy." Our server later moved us easily.

Hmm. My recent experience at Tre, a new restaurant on Howe Avenue, was decidedly different. A smiling woman greeted us and asked where we wanted to sit. When I told her I was unfamiliar with the place, she smiled again and said, "Why don't I give you a tour?" Much better.

Our server on our second visit to Grange was a friendly fellow who proceeded to fumble the snap and never recovered the ball.

That menu you handed me? You really should know what's on it. The food? All those cool details the chef went over in the meeting two hours ago? That was so you could tell me about them when I ask.

We sat down at 7 p.m. The food came to the table at 9:18. By then, we had finished the bottle of wine and I was tipsy. We got our check at 10:50 – three hours and 50 minutes after I arrived.

Slow food is about buying locally and from sustainable sources, not keeping diners waiting until they lose circulation in their legs.

A restaurant at the top of its game would have made some amendment to the bill, followed by an apology.

That's the kind of thing they can iron out at Grange with the right mix of guidance and screaming. I'm certain there are many capable servers at Grange already.

By the time we stood to leave, I had an insider's view of Tuohy and the next batch of ribs. He was about to mix magic and science, toiling into the wee hours.

For that dish and many others, and for all this place has accomplished so far, I'm looking forward to watching Grange reach our lofty expectations.

Grange Restaurant & Bar is at 926 J St., inside downtown Sacramento's new Citizen Hotel, which itself is in a former office building dating to 1926.
The dungeness crab salad with avocado, apple, shallots, herbs, and citrus vinaigrette at the Grange Restaurant & Bar at the new Citizen Hotel in Sacramento.
A wall of windows is a feature of Grange's airy dining room.
Michael Tuohy, Grange's executive chef, works in the kitchen on an evening last week. Tuohy sold his Woodfire Grill in Atlanta to cook in Sacramento.

Our twisted adventures in casual lunchtime dining have concluded for another year. These are the 10 places we especially enjoyed in 2008, listed in order of preference.

1. Buonarroti

Town & Country Village, Marconi and Fulton avenues; (916) 265-2110

The menu shows off thin-crust pizza blistered in an almondwood-burning pizza oven; veal, chicken and seafood; plus homemade pastas (rich lasagna, linguine with clams). Seasonal daily specials recently included osso bucco (veal shanks) cooked in the chef's marvelous red sauce.

2. Frasinetti's Winery

7395 Frasinetti Road, Florin; (916) 383-2447

The menu and chalkboard combine traditional Italian dishes with bright daily specials (swordfish salad) in a dining room that breathes winemaking tradition. Our favorite dish is Grandma Rose's pot roast – shreds of tender meat topping a mound of al dente spaghetti. Melding the two is a deeply flavored sauce, the result of simmering the meat in beer, demi-glace and herbs.

3. Fog Mountain Café

1000 I St., Sacramento; (916) 444-0144

The café serves creative sandwiches on excellent bread from Bella Bru. Chef Eric Harnish's concocts two to four kinds of soup a day, but be quick – they and the crab cakes (Fridays only) invariably sell out.

Note: They're closed for the holidays, reopening Monday.

4. Hawaiian Style Grill

8259 Laguna Blvd., Elk Grove; (916) 478-7316

So-called Hawaiian cuisine is a mélange of native Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Thai, Indian and Portuguese cooking styles and ingredients. The "local kine grinds" include saimin noodle soups, marinated kalua pork, mahi-mahi and short ribs. Those in the know show up for the Friday specials, which can include Korean meat jun – and a ukulele jam session.

5. Amore Cafe, Bakery and Espresso Bar

2220 Gold Springs Court, Gold River; (916) 463-0011

The dishes are "a fusion of Mediterranean, Italian, French and Persian," says veteran restaurateur Nader Shirakh. Tops: spectacular baked goods; salmon topped with roasted red- pepper sauce; crunchy chicken salad; burger stuffed with mozzarella and vegetables; and the kebab of chicken marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and saffron.

6. Awful Annie's

160 Sacramento St., Auburn; (530) 888-9857

More food than you want to think about is on offer for breakfast, lunch and dinner: scrambles, omelets, homemade onion rings, cold and hot sandwiches, killer chili, calamari steak and an especially tasty cheeseburger (ask for it on grilled sourdough).

7. Whiskey Wild Saloon

1910 Q St., Sacramento, (916) 443-0900

The female bartenders don't dance on the bar till well after dark, but there's enough on the lunch menu to keep you busy before the sun goes down. Such as deep-fried coins of jalapeño peppers, homemade potato chips, pulled-pork sliders and the buffalo meatball sandwich.

8. O'Connor's Santa Maria Grill

9267 Greenback Lane, Orangevale; (916) 988-0112

There are as many styles of barbecue as there are cookers making it. One classic is "Santa Maria," which involves cooking meats over red oak in an open pit. We gave thumbs-up to the meaty spareribs at O'Connor's, infused with house-blended spice rub. Don't leave without tasting the grilled half-chicken.

9. Burgers and Brew

403 Third St., Davis; (530) 750-3600

Juicy half-pound burgers made from Niman Ranch ground beef drive this student-dominated pub. Don't forget the beer-battered onion rings and old-fashioned milkshakes.

10. Country Waffles

2721 El Camino Ave., Sacramento; (916) 488-5440

An odd choice? Not if you appreciate retro and some bang for your buck. The legion of regulars fill the booths for uncomplicated and classic dishes – omelets, ham 'n' eggs, waffles with real maple syrup, pot roast, meatloaf and chicken-fried steak.

We all have guilty pleasures, and aren't they good? Mallomars, bacon, ice cream, french fries, potato chips, chocolate truffles ...

This column has pleasures, too, but darned if I've ever felt guilty about them. Still, as 2008 closes, I'll offer a list in the spirit of non-guilt:

• A crab tart weighty with crab meat (not filler), flecked with bell pepper, onion and spices. So rich it feeds two, but so light it's been known to float away.

Get it at Dominick's Italian Market & Deli, 8621 Auburn-Folsom Road, Granite Bay; (916) 786-3355.

• Cheese beoreg, an Armenian specialty made with layers of buttered phyllo dough stuffed with grated jack cheese and seasonings.

Get it at Maad Tea Party, 4355 Town Center Blvd., El Dorado Hills; (916) 933-2121.

• Chicken-fried steak made with a New York steak, hand-cut from a strip loin, breaded and deep-fried, with from-scratch country gravy.

Get it at Evan's Kitchen, 855 57th St., Sacramento; (916) 452-3896.

• Clam chowder made from tender chunks of sea clams, clam broth, white wine, sherry, cream, butter, bacon, potato, fresh thyme, bay leaves, Old Bay seasoning, celery, onion, carrot and coarsely ground black pepper. The best in town.

Get it at Jamie's Grille, 427 Broadway, Sacramento; (916) 442-4044

• A muffuletta, the legendary sandwich created in 1906 by Salvatore Lupo at the Central Grocery in New Orleans. Picture a stack of ham, mortadella, Genoa salami and provolone on ciabatta, heavily smeared with a piquant condite of chopped olives, peppers, cauliflower, carrot, celery, mushroom, artichoke, onion, garlic and olive oil.

Get it at Pennisi's Deli, 1237 J St., Sacramento; (916) 448-5610.

• Fish 'n' chips that set the standard – big chunks of Icelandic cod encased in a crunchy, oil-free jacket of house-made batter. Splash on Sarson's-brand malt vinegar ("Since 1794").

Get it at A Touch of Britain, 5712 Watt Ave., North Highlands; (916) 344-8472.

• Tarragon chicken salad – served cold – possessing a spectrum of flavors and textures that are relentless. A post-lunch tour of the adjoining housewares store will help you walk it off.

Get it at the Bistro at William Glen, Town & Country Village, Fulton and Marconi avenues, Sacramento; (916) 485-4335

• A burger constructed from a half-pound of seasoned ground chuck, served on a house-baked cheddar-scallion bun smeared with herbed mayo (Dijon mustard is better) and topped with melted imported Swiss cheese and sautéed mushrooms.

Get it at Ettore's European Bakery, 2376 Fair Oaks Blvd., Sacramento; (916) 482-0708.

• A real Polish dog in a natural casing, from the century-old Vienna Beef Co. of Chicago. Ask for it Chicago-style, topped with mustard, neon-green relish, sport (serrano) peppers, kosher dill pickle spear, chopped onion, tomato wedges and celery salt.

Get it at Capitol Dawg, 1226 20th St., Sacramento; (916) 444-1226.

• House-made corned beef hash (corned brisket, potatoes, onion and spices chopped up together). Once you taste it, you'll forget about the canned stuff. Team it with eggs and fluffy buttermilk pancakes, and pour real maple syrup over everything.

Get it at Original Pancake House, 10000 Fairway Drive, Roseville; (916) 788-3040.

• Finally, a hot link that's a real wurst, packing flavor, texture and heat. It's from Frank's Quality Meats in Sacramento, and cooked in a smoker over mesquite charcoal supplemented with cherry and apple woods.

Get it at Reed's Ribs, 9408 Kiefer Blvd., Sacramento; (916) 366-0125.

• A warm, soft-and-crispy cinnamon bun that redefines the concept of mixing together flour, yeast, egg, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and then baking it. Try the one topped with walnuts and raisins.

Get it at Spinners Bakery, 1425 15th St. (at O Street), Sacramento, (916) 442-3997; and at Downtown Plaza in Sacramento, (916) 441-7655.

P.S.: Next Friday, I'll name the 10 restaurants my lunch pals and I especially enjoyed in 2008.

How about a little wild boar for Christmas dinner?

More and more diners are moving away from traditional turkey or ham to nontraditional fare for the holiday table, according to Reno-Tahoe chefs.

Also, more families are opting to dine out rather than preparing a feast at home. There are multiple benefits, not the least avoiding having family members who can't stand each other sit together for an extended period of time.

Reno-Tahoe casinos load the banquet tables mightily. They do good business, of course, hoping that extends even in this year's economy. The offerings are diverse, ranging from traditional to boldly innovative. The buffets are there for the family and the reservation-only dining rooms provide a quiet festiveness.

Boar is the entree in the Christmas menu at Friday's Station atop Harrah's Tahoe. The restaurant, which was called the Summit when the hotel tower opened, has panoramic views of Lake Tahoe, and winter, with some luck, makes them all the more awesome. The boar is pistachio-encrusted and served with orange and mango demi-glace and leek compote. It comes with artichoke bisque soup, mesclun and butter leaf salad, and spiced-walnut-caramel cheesecake, all for $40 (5:30-9 p.m.).

Across the highway at Harveys, the rooftop restaurant is 19 Kitchen-Bar, and it's offering grilled beef tenderloin and Alaskan crab legs with a diver scallops and foie gras appetizer and a trio of desserts (raspberry crème brulee, chocolate marquise and nougatine profiterole, all enhanced by eggnog ice cream). It's $60. (5-9:30 p.m.)

The venerable Sage Room at Harveys, there since Wayne Newton sang as a youngster in the open lounge, offers a grilled Kurobuta pork chop with a port wine reduction, frisee and mesclun salad, artichoke bisque and spiced walnut caramel cheesecake for $45. (5-9:30 p.m.)

Down in Reno, head to Harrah's for Andreotti, the Italian restaurant with a traditional non-Italian Christmas special of sweet Dijon mustard glazed ham with cream of potato soup or salad, and pecan pie with butterscotch caramel sauce for $25. (5-9 p.m.)

Or go to what has always been called the finest restaurant in Reno, usually without dispute, the Steak House, for a truly elegant meal featuring beef Wellington with black truffle bordelaise sauce for $38.99. (5-9 p.m.)

Just down the street at the Silver Legacy, the exceptional restaurant Sterling's provides a meal with options of Long Island duck, salmon en croute with Dungeness crab, or black Angus roast prime rib, plus appetizer (choices include tuna tartare), lobster bisque or Caesar salad, and a dessert of a chocolate apricot log with almond nougatin, for $55. (5-9 p.m.)

The Eldorado's Roxy, which easily ranks among the best in town, offers a reasonably-priced holiday feast of leg of lamb, free-range chicken stuffed with wild mushrooms, or a filet mignon, along with lobster chowder or pear salad, vegetables, and dessert for $35 adults, $17 children. (Open at 4 p.m.) Its popular Prime Rib Grill offers roasted leg of lamb with berry and wine sauce, soup and salad bar, and dessert for $18. (Open at 4 p.m.) That's Italian!

The Eldorado's La Strada has a four-course meal starting with a mix of roasted pear, duck prosciutto, arugula, Robiola cheese, and fig vinaigrette; a second course with a choice between pappardelle with wild boar "Sugo" or risotto with chestnuts; a main course of either striped bass wrapped in prosciutto or a lamb chop gratinato; and an Italian panettone served with warm mascarpone and Grand Marnier cream, all for $33. (Open at 4 p.m.)

The Atlantis' newest restaurant, Bistro Napa, has a choice of entrees of brined turkey or smoked prime rib for $38, $48 with a wine pairing (from 4 p.m.); and for some very informal chow, check out the new Manhattan Deli's Santa's Favorite Sandwich of sliced turkey, cranberry sauce and dressing for $9.99 (from 11 a.m.).

John Ascuaga's Nugget Steak House offers turkey or king crab and filet of beef Napoleon or pan-seared halibut with grilled wild shrimp for $34.95, $17.95 children. (3 to 10 p.m.)

Trader Dick's mixes the Polynesian with the American with rib eye steak crusted with black sesame and pepper, or sautéed flounder with shrimp won tons or turkey for $31.95, $15.95 children.

There's also always the option of taking a drive through colorful Carson Valley to the Carson Valley Inn and going to Fiona's Bar and Grill for either the traditional turkey ($21.95) or smoked buffalo prime rib (10 ounces for $25.95, 16 for $31.50), ( 4:30-9 p.m.)

And the buffets: Three of them at John Ascuaga's Nugget: at the Rotisserie Restaurant (11 a.m.-8 p.m.), in the convention center (1-6 p.m.), and in the Basque-themed Restaurante Orozko (2 p.m.-7 p.m.) The first two are $22.95 adults, $11.95 children, and the last is $37.95 adults, $19.95 children.

Two at the Atlantis: Toucan Charlie's Buffet (10 a.m.-9 p.m.) for $21.99 adults, $12.99 children; and a special "gourmet" spread in the brand new Grand Ballroom (1-6 p.m.) for $34.99 adults, $13.99 children.

The Eldorado's new buffet (11 a.m.-9 p.m.) costs $24 adults, $13 children.

Flavors! The Buffet at Silver Legacy (11 a.m.-10 p.m.) costs $19.99 adults, $9.99 children.

Carvings at Harrah's Reno (4:30-9 p.m.) costs $18.99, $9.99 children.

Forest Buffet at Harrah's Tahoe (10:30 a.m.-9 p.m.) costs $26.99, $15.99 children.

Can we get enough Thai cuisine? It appears not.

Thousands of restaurants specializing in the exotic dishes of Thailand have spread across the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. And throughout River City.

What's not to like about Thai? The cooking is largely one of pleasurable contrasts: warm and cool, sweet and sour, soft and crunchy. Its emphasis is on fresh ingredients accented with spices, herbs and vegetables – basil, mint, lemon grass, tamarind, coconut, kafir lime leaves – to produce intriguing flavors. It is a cuisine influenced by the cooking of India (the curries), China (the stir-fries) and even Portugal, which in the 1500s introduced a hot little number called the chili pepper.

We made recent trips to two Thai restaurants and found creative dishes at market prices. Best advice: Go and explore the menus on your own. Surprise your taste buds with something they've never experienced; they will send a thank-you card.

First, a word about pad Thai, sold by street vendors throughout Thailand. It's been the national dish of that country since World War II, mainly because of a rice shortage back then. Basically, it's pan-fried noodles with fish sauce, egg, bean sprouts, tofu, seafood and/or meat or fowl, plus anything else the chef chooses to add. We've had our share but avoid it now, as it's on every Thai restaurant menu and we want to explore new dishes.

Krua Thai Cuisine, Folsom

The menu at Krua Thai Cuisine in Folsom is extensive, priced from $5.95 (some appetizers) to $12.95 (prawns in red curry with fresh mango). It includes seven vegetarian dishes, plus white, brown and jasmine rices.

We sampled a bunch during lunch and dinner hours (the menus overlap): wide chow fun noodles stir-fried with chicken and broccoli; steaming duck noodle soup and wonton soup; lamb with vegetables in a deeply flavored coconut-accented curry sauce; wonderfully fresh steamed Thai dumplings; meaty chicken wings; and a plate of overcooked calamari tasting a day past its prime.

A dish we didn't try, but will, is the "boneless honey-roasted duck with bok choy and spicy soy sauce."

In 2005, Krua Thai was the Thai Bistro in Rocklin. The owners closed to move back to Thailand, but returned to town recently.

Chantara Thai Cuisine, El Dorado Hills

The elegantly decorated and comfortable Chantara in El Dorado Hills also has a long menu, from $6.75 (egg rolls) to $16.95 (seafood combination), and many dishes fit for vegetarians. Note that we were disconcerted when one particular server was quite abrupt on one visit ("I already told you what comes with noodles!") and almost charming on the next.

Our choices included wor wonton soup (the presentation involves actual fire); outstanding honey-roasted baby back ribs; angel wings (two boned and stuffed chicken wings, cooked tempura-style, with honey plum sauce); plump pot stickers with ginger sauce; rice studded with pineapple, cashews, shrimp and chicken; and a so-so green papaya salad, which we thought needed more shredded papaya and more heat.

A dish we didn't try, but will, is the "spicy rock Cornish hen: Deep-fried game hen with a magnificent chilies sauce."

Since pizza stirs so much passion among diners, here's the first thing: The pie at Buonarroti Ristorante is first-rate. The thin crust was smoky and blistered crisp in an almondwood-burning pizza oven, and topped with fresh and plentiful ingredients. Our Tuscan pie was studded with pepperoni, mushrooms and tangy Kalamata olive halves, not those tasteless bits of black olives from a can so overused at chain pizzerias.

A week before lunch pal Anne and I split that pizza, lunch pals Katie and Chris and I met to taste more serious offerings at the 3-month-old restaurant. After ordering, we walked around the high-ceilinged room and appreciated the murals and stonework, the textured walls and wall sconces that made us laugh out loud.

Soon, the dishes arrived: beer- battered fried cheese ravioli with tomato sauce and ranch dressing for dipping ($8); a panino of imported prosciutto, tomato and mozzarella cheese on a pressed and grilled sourdough baguette, with a cup of minestrone soup ($12); a wonderful lasagna, rich with Italian sausage and gooey mozzarella, finished in the wood-burning oven ($12); a daily special of osso bucco (veal shanks) with risotto and sautéed veggies ($16); and a tiramisu that redefined that classic dessert ($7).

Additionally, the lunch menu lists a half-dozen pasta dishes (some of the pasta is made from scratch, as in the marvelous linguini with clams), chicken and veal, panini, pizzas, salads and appetizers (the panko-coated calamari with lemon-basil aioli explodes with flavor).

"These ravioli aren't super-heavy like others I've had," Chris said. "They're fluffy." They were tasty morsels, yes, but we agreed an addition of something sharply flavored would lend a needed spark (even though there were shavings of Parmigiano- Reggiano on top, and the red dipping sauce was remarkable).

The minestrone was one of the better versions we've tasted. As Katie put it, "I like the crisp vegetables and the al dente pasta, and it's not too tomato-y."

Our panino was appropriately crunchy, with the salty tang of the Parma ham not shy about announcing itself.

The gratifyingly bold lasagna had such balance that each forkful offered a slighlty new taste and texture. It was the best version I've had in Sacramento in recent memory.

But it was the osso bucco that took the starring role. The fork-tender meat possessed a rarely found depth of flavor that seemed bottomless. We even dug out the marrow from the bone and relished it. Then, to create the ultimate comfort dish, we spooned the sauce over the risotto (creamy Arborio rice with Parmigiano-Reggiano, roasted red peppers and onion) and alternated with bites of veal. Somebody stop me!

Later, I phoned owner Daniel Alcantaro to inquire.

"I braise (the veal shanks) with vegetables (including carrots and celery) and slowly cook them in red wine and our red sauce," he said.

About that red sauce, which shows up throughout the menu: "My mother taught it to me, and her mother taught it to her," Alcantaro said. The ingredients are a family secret, of course, but "it's a vegetarian sauce with garlic, red wine and a lot of other things."

For purists, a bowl of that sauce with a basket of Buonarotti's warm bread and house-made garlic-infused whipped butter would make a meal. Really.

Last Friday, this column reviewed the Three Monkeys restaurant on the K Street Mall. Unbeknown to me, a sign went up sometime after our visit and before we published the review. The sign explained the Monkeys is "temporarily closed" due to "maintenance" issues. Our phone calls to get more information have not been returned.

Since pizza stirs so much passion among diners, here's the first thing: The pie at Buonarroti Ristorante is first-rate. The thin crust was smoky and blistered crisp in an almondwood-burning pizza oven, and topped with fresh and plentiful ingredients. Our Tuscan pie was studded with pepperoni, mushrooms and tangy Kalamata olive halves, not those tasteless bits of black olives from a can so overused at chain pizzerias.

A week before lunch pal Anne and I split that pizza, lunch pals Katie and Chris and I met to taste more serious offerings at the 3-month-old restaurant. After ordering, we walked around the high-ceilinged room and appreciated the murals and stonework, the textured walls and wall sconces that made us laugh out loud.

Soon, the dishes arrived: beer- battered fried cheese ravioli with tomato sauce and ranch dressing for dipping ($8); a panino of imported prosciutto, tomato and mozzarella cheese on a pressed and grilled sourdough baguette, with a cup of minestrone soup ($12); a wonderful lasagna, rich with Italian sausage and gooey mozzarella, finished in the wood-burning oven ($12); a daily special of osso bucco (veal shanks) with risotto and sautéed veggies ($16); and a tiramisu that redefined that classic dessert ($7).

Additionally, the lunch menu lists a half-dozen pasta dishes (some of the pasta is made from scratch, as in the marvelous linguini with clams), chicken and veal, panini, pizzas, salads and appetizers (the panko-coated calamari with lemon-basil aioli explodes with flavor).

"These ravioli aren't super-heavy like others I've had," Chris said. "They're fluffy." They were tasty morsels, yes, but we agreed an addition of something sharply flavored would lend a needed spark (even though there were shavings of Parmigiano- Reggiano on top, and the red dipping sauce was remarkable).

The minestrone was one of the better versions we've tasted. As Katie put it, "I like the crisp vegetables and the al dente pasta, and it's not too tomato-y."

Our panino was appropriately crunchy, with the salty tang of the Parma ham not shy about announcing itself.

The gratifyingly bold lasagna had such balance that each forkful offered a slighlty new taste and texture. It was the best version I've had in Sacramento in recent memory.

But it was the osso bucco that took the starring role. The fork-tender meat possessed a rarely found depth of flavor that seemed bottomless. We even dug out the marrow from the bone and relished it. Then, to create the ultimate comfort dish, we spooned the sauce over the risotto (creamy Arborio rice with Parmigiano-Reggiano, roasted red peppers and onion) and alternated with bites of veal. Somebody stop me!

Later, I phoned owner Daniel Alcantaro to inquire.

"I braise (the veal shanks) with vegetables (including carrots and celery) and slowly cook them in red wine and our red sauce," he said.

About that red sauce, which shows up throughout the menu: "My mother taught it to me, and her mother taught it to her," Alcantaro said. The ingredients are a family secret, of course, but "it's a vegetarian sauce with garlic, red wine and a lot of other things."

For purists, a bowl of that sauce with a basket of Buonarotti's warm bread and house-made garlic-infused whipped butter would make a meal. Really.

Last Friday, this column reviewed the Three Monkeys restaurant on the K Street Mall. Unbeknown to me, a sign went up sometime after our visit and before we published the review. The sign explained the Monkeys is "temporarily closed" due to "maintenance" issues. Our phone calls to get more information have not been returned.

Though I have never sought professional help, I have been told I can be obsessive-compulsive about certain things. More than one friend has called me fickle, fussy and opinionated.

A couple of weeks ago, I was told, to my great joy, that I would be this newspaper's next restaurant critic. I see a certain synergy working here.

Since I will be spending much of December dining out and getting up to speed until my first review is published Jan. 4, allow me to introduce myself.

For me, this is a dream job. I love food -- the history, the science, the endless combinations of ingredients and creative possibilities, the many cultural implications of food as a way of being and all the people involved in the process from farm to plate.

In many ways, what we eat says something about who we are -- or who we want to be.

I'm an avid cyclist and a scratch golfer, and I enjoy nothing more than the time I spend with my three dogs and two cats.

I also love to cook and bake. It is a large part of who I have become. I find it stimulating, inspiring, rewarding and, yes, humbling.

A two-day effort to bake the perfect sourdough loaf can fall short because of a change in humidity, because my starter wasn't refreshed in time or because the baker (me) lost patience and rushed a step.

A perfect loaf -- with a crust that is crisp and blistered and just the right color, that crackles when sliced or torn, can make me feel triumphant. It is something simple and real, like pulling a ripe tomato off the vine, feeling its heft in my hand and heading toward the kitchen to get a knife.

I don't need the timer on my oven to tell me a cake is ready. The cake announces itself with an aroma that appears suddenly. It's a whiff of new energy in the air that could mean nothing else, just as the aroma of something burned is final and irreversible and disheartening.

By no means was I born to be a restaurant critic. My otherwise wonderful stay-at-home mother was an unenthusiastic cook in a household that consumed roughly three variations of meat and potatoes -- the variable being corn, carrots or peas -- on a schedule that lasted until her divorce after 23 years. That's when she dumped the meatloaf.

Chicken was always Shake 'N Bake, cakes were two-step mixes from a box, pudding instant, pie frozen. My mom never met a piece of meat she couldn't obliterate through overcooking.

My dad? Worse. Once, when I was 5, he decided he would play the role of master chef one Saturday morning and cook Western omelets. My brothers and sister picked at theirs until the chef was red-faced with insult. They were sent to their rooms.

Dad said that anyone who finished it would get a special trip to the bakery for lemon meringue pie. Rising to the challenge, I mustered the courage to down those darn eggs and was rewarded with the first and last lemon meringue pie I have ever had. The experience was so unsettling, the pie's taste so closely linked to that dreadful meal, that the mere mention of "meringue," to this day, renders me slightly woozy.

Needless to say, my three siblings and I were fussy eaters.

In college, far from home, I was humiliated if a roommate would invite me to his family's home for dinner and I had to contend with broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, turnips, etc. I decided right then to devote myself to trying new foods.

In no time, I was cooking them, too. Imagine my surprise when I learned that pancake batter from scratch -- with buttermilk and eggs, flour, baking soda and a tablespoon or two of sugar -- took about 90 seconds longer to prepare and tasted a hundred times better than the stuff out of the box.

To this day, my two brothers and sister haven't changed. My well-traveled younger brother with the prestigious MBA takes a jar of peanut butter to France, of all places, so he can survive without having to eat French food.

I have a lot of admiration for chefs and servers and all those who make the dining experience a delight, often under the pressures of time and economics.

I have worked as a cook. I have been praised and yelled at. I know how it feels.

How will I judge these restaurants I visit? My assessments are bound to evolve over time. As the critic, I represent the dining public, but my pronouncements won't be the final word. Instead, I'd like them to be the start of a discussion with you and an opportunity for me to tap into your experiences. I'll have more on that in future columns.

Here are a couple of my current thoughts about reviewing.

I want to feel good when I go out. I expect to be treated with courtesy and enthusiasm. Great food can taste lousy when combined with service that is slow, gruff or sloppy.

Dreadful service dripping with that you're-bothering-me by-showing-up-here attitude is why I finally removed a certain vegetarian eatery from my cell phone. Like a bad breakup with an old flame, I still wish things had turned out differently.

Food? Great food is open to interpretation. In this case, it will be mine and, to some extent, those dining with me. I hope to have conversations with the chefs or owners before I write the review because an opinion should be informed and detailed.

Value is something we, as diners, are often shy about bringing up. Yes, the food can be excellent, but if it is overpriced and only marginally better than a place across town that charges much less, my score card will reflect that. If the meal was $250 and I was overjoyed, the value might deserve a top rating.

As a journalist, my background is in news and features. I have written about racial strife in the Deep South, rampant crime in Detroit, about all kinds of political and social scandals. In recent years, I focused on human interest stories.

It might seem like an unusual background for a restaurant critic. The way I see it, a critic is charged with making wise, informed and consistent evaluations. As a writer, that's what I have been trying to do all along.

Good writing is about judgment and wisdom, about seeing things and telling stories, about talking to people and putting it all together in a way that comes to life. Like a recipe, it's about knowing what to put in and what to leave out.

Taking over from Mike Dunne, whose legacy of restaurant reviews in these pages dates to 1984, is a daunting assignment. His contributions were immense. His professionalism and talent are an inspiration to me and many others as he heads off for retirement.

In my own way, and from a perspective shaped by a mother who over-roasted roasts and a dad whose singular omelet continues to haunt decades later, I hope to carry on the tradition of excellent food writing at The Bee.

Now, please excuse me. I have to rush off to my next meal.

Though I have never sought professional help, I have been told I can be obsessive-compulsive about certain things. More than one friend has called me fickle, fussy and opinionated.

A couple of weeks ago, I was told, to my great joy, that I would be this newspaper's next restaurant critic. I see a certain synergy working here.

Since I will be spending much of December dining out and getting up to speed until my first review is published Jan. 4, allow me to introduce myself.

For me, this is a dream job. I love food -- the history, the science, the endless combinations of ingredients and creative possibilities, the many cultural implications of food as a way of being and all the people involved in the process from farm to plate.

In many ways, what we eat says something about who we are -- or who we want to be.

I'm an avid cyclist and a scratch golfer, and I enjoy nothing more than the time I spend with my three dogs and two cats.

I also love to cook and bake. It is a large part of who I have become. I find it stimulating, inspiring, rewarding and, yes, humbling.

A two-day effort to bake the perfect sourdough loaf can fall short because of a change in humidity, because my starter wasn't refreshed in time or because the baker (me) lost patience and rushed a step.

A perfect loaf -- with a crust that is crisp and blistered and just the right color, that crackles when sliced or torn, can make me feel triumphant. It is something simple and real, like pulling a ripe tomato off the vine, feeling its heft in my hand and heading toward the kitchen to get a knife.

I don't need the timer on my oven to tell me a cake is ready. The cake announces itself with an aroma that appears suddenly. It's a whiff of new energy in the air that could mean nothing else, just as the aroma of something burned is final and irreversible and disheartening.

By no means was I born to be a restaurant critic. My otherwise wonderful stay-at-home mother was an unenthusiastic cook in a household that consumed roughly three variations of meat and potatoes -- the variable being corn, carrots or peas -- on a schedule that lasted until her divorce after 23 years. That's when she dumped the meatloaf.

Chicken was always Shake 'N Bake, cakes were two-step mixes from a box, pudding instant, pie frozen. My mom never met a piece of meat she couldn't obliterate through overcooking.

My dad? Worse. Once, when I was 5, he decided he would play the role of master chef one Saturday morning and cook Western omelets. My brothers and sister picked at theirs until the chef was red-faced with insult. They were sent to their rooms.

Dad said that anyone who finished it would get a special trip to the bakery for lemon meringue pie. Rising to the challenge, I mustered the courage to down those darn eggs and was rewarded with the first and last lemon meringue pie I have ever had. The experience was so unsettling, the pie's taste so closely linked to that dreadful meal, that the mere mention of "meringue," to this day, renders me slightly woozy.

Needless to say, my three siblings and I were fussy eaters.

In college, far from home, I was humiliated if a roommate would invite me to his family's home for dinner and I had to contend with broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, turnips, etc. I decided right then to devote myself to trying new foods.

In no time, I was cooking them, too. Imagine my surprise when I learned that pancake batter from scratch -- with buttermilk and eggs, flour, baking soda and a tablespoon or two of sugar -- took about 90 seconds longer to prepare and tasted a hundred times better than the stuff out of the box.

To this day, my two brothers and sister haven't changed. My well-traveled younger brother with the prestigious MBA takes a jar of peanut butter to France, of all places, so he can survive without having to eat French food.

I have a lot of admiration for chefs and servers and all those who make the dining experience a delight, often under the pressures of time and economics.

I have worked as a cook. I have been praised and yelled at. I know how it feels.

How will I judge these restaurants I visit? My assessments are bound to evolve over time. As the critic, I represent the dining public, but my pronouncements won't be the final word. Instead, I'd like them to be the start of a discussion with you and an opportunity for me to tap into your experiences. I'll have more on that in future columns.

Here are a couple of my current thoughts about reviewing.

I want to feel good when I go out. I expect to be treated with courtesy and enthusiasm. Great food can taste lousy when combined with service that is slow, gruff or sloppy.

Dreadful service dripping with that you're-bothering-me by-showing-up-here attitude is why I finally removed a certain vegetarian eatery from my cell phone. Like a bad breakup with an old flame, I still wish things had turned out differently.

Food? Great food is open to interpretation. In this case, it will be mine and, to some extent, those dining with me. I hope to have conversations with the chefs or owners before I write the review because an opinion should be informed and detailed.

Value is something we, as diners, are often shy about bringing up. Yes, the food can be excellent, but if it is overpriced and only marginally better than a place across town that charges much less, my score card will reflect that. If the meal was $250 and I was overjoyed, the value might deserve a top rating.

As a journalist, my background is in news and features. I have written about racial strife in the Deep South, rampant crime in Detroit, about all kinds of political and social scandals. In recent years, I focused on human interest stories.

It might seem like an unusual background for a restaurant critic. The way I see it, a critic is charged with making wise, informed and consistent evaluations. As a writer, that's what I have been trying to do all along.

Good writing is about judgment and wisdom, about seeing things and telling stories, about talking to people and putting it all together in a way that comes to life. Like a recipe, it's about knowing what to put in and what to leave out.

Taking over from Mike Dunne, whose legacy of restaurant reviews in these pages dates to 1984, is a daunting assignment. His contributions were immense. His professionalism and talent are an inspiration to me and many others as he heads off for retirement.

In my own way, and from a perspective shaped by a mother who over-roasted roasts and a dad whose singular omelet continues to haunt decades later, I hope to carry on the tradition of excellent food writing at The Bee.

Now, please excuse me. I have to rush off to my next meal.

For years, there's been optimistic talk about revitalizing the K Street Mall. Though strides have been made, frankly a stroll on the strip can be dicey, especially after dark.

On the positive side are the first-rate lunch and dinner houses that line the mall – the Esquire Grill, the Broiler, Ella, the Pyramid Alehouse and restaurateur Randy Paragary's new Cosmopolitan complex.

Then there's the eclectic Three Monkeys, an interesting 10,000-square-foot space that opened last year. It's the home of the $12 Ultimate Martini.

Recent history: Three business partners were the original "monkeys" who founded the restaurant, later joined by a fourth partner.

Ancient history: Depending on which source you consult, the origin of the Three Monkeys "pictorial maxim" to see, hear and speak no evil came out of India centuries ago, moved to China and later went to Japan. And the monkeys' Japanese names? Mijaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru, respectively.

Lunch pal Michele and I were mulling that over in a booth at the Three Monkeys restaurant while we scanned the six-page menu. The place is comfortable – red brick, dark wood, artwork, mellow music – with seats at the sushi bar for viewing the sushi chefs' craft.

"I've been looking for a restaurant with Japanese food," said sushi veteran Michele, "but I'd be suspicious just walking in here because it's not a sushi place."

Strictly, it's not – but in a way, it is. There is a sushi bar, as noted, and the word "Sushi" is in the restaurant's formal name. Besides, two menu pages are devoted to various forms of Japanese-themed appetizers ($12 to $14), nigiri (a wedge of rice topped with raw fish; $4 to $7) and sushi rolls ($10 to $15).

Moving on, the menu becomes diverse: small plates (wings, ceviche; $9 to $12), hot and cold sandwiches (Reuben, roast beef; $10 to $16), house specialties (seafood, pork schnitzel, steak; $12 to $39), pasta ($13 to $18), and soups and salads ($4 to $15). The tab adds up quickly.

We started with crunchy seaweed salad dashed with vinaigrette ($5). Michele was enthusiastic, but two bites did it for first-timer me. What's the point?

Next were two plates of buttery salmon and meaty red tuna nigiri on firm fingers of rolled rice, with white ginger and sinus-clearing wasabi on the side. The raw fish was fresh and meltingly tender.

A cup of shrimp bisque looked and smelled good but tasted tinny.

We moved on to three pulled-pork sliders, tender shreds of rich meat sauced on the sweet side, topped with too much crisp coleslaw and served on soft buns that had been buttered and grilled. I liked them a lot, once half the slaw was scraped off, but Michele found them overwhelming.

The accompanying crinkle-cut fries were standard issue, which brought up a point: We thought hand-cut to-order fries (like shoestrings, maybe?) would better suit the culinary profile the Three Monkeys promotes, as in this from its Web site: "American, European and Asian classics uniquely designed by our master chef." Aren't fries an American classic?

The hit was the house-made Bavarian-style bratwurst with mild sauerkraut. The perfectly seasoned coarse-ground pork possessed deep flavor and wonderful texture.

"This brat looks and tastes like the sausagemaker is in the kitchen making them," Michele said.

That was a good guess but could not be confirmed later. Voicemail messages left at the restaurant over a week's time were not returned and other attempts by phone were unsuccessful as well.

Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni, (916) 321-1128.

For years, there's been optimistic talk about revitalizing the K Street Mall. Though strides have been made, frankly a stroll on the strip can be dicey, especially after dark.

On the positive side are the first-rate lunch and dinner houses that line the mall – the Esquire Grill, the Broiler, Ella, the Pyramid Alehouse and restaurateur Randy Paragary's new Cosmopolitan complex.

Then there's the eclectic Three Monkeys, an interesting 10,000-square-foot space that opened last year. It's the home of the $12 Ultimate Martini.

Recent history: Three business partners were the original "monkeys" who founded the restaurant, later joined by a fourth partner.

Ancient history: Depending on which source you consult, the origin of the Three Monkeys "pictorial maxim" to see, hear and speak no evil came out of India centuries ago, moved to China and later went to Japan. And the monkeys' Japanese names? Mijaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru, respectively.

Lunch pal Michele and I were mulling that over in a booth at the Three Monkeys restaurant while we scanned the six-page menu. The place is comfortable – red brick, dark wood, artwork, mellow music – with seats at the sushi bar for viewing the sushi chefs' craft.

"I've been looking for a restaurant with Japanese food," said sushi veteran Michele, "but I'd be suspicious just walking in here because it's not a sushi place."

Strictly, it's not – but in a way, it is. There is a sushi bar, as noted, and the word "Sushi" is in the restaurant's formal name. Besides, two menu pages are devoted to various forms of Japanese-themed appetizers ($12 to $14), nigiri (a wedge of rice topped with raw fish; $4 to $7) and sushi rolls ($10 to $15).

Moving on, the menu becomes diverse: small plates (wings, ceviche; $9 to $12), hot and cold sandwiches (Reuben, roast beef; $10 to $16), house specialties (seafood, pork schnitzel, steak; $12 to $39), pasta ($13 to $18), and soups and salads ($4 to $15). The tab adds up quickly.

We started with crunchy seaweed salad dashed with vinaigrette ($5). Michele was enthusiastic, but two bites did it for first-timer me. What's the point?

Next were two plates of buttery salmon and meaty red tuna nigiri on firm fingers of rolled rice, with white ginger and sinus-clearing wasabi on the side. The raw fish was fresh and meltingly tender.

A cup of shrimp bisque looked and smelled good but tasted tinny.

We moved on to three pulled-pork sliders, tender shreds of rich meat sauced on the sweet side, topped with too much crisp coleslaw and served on soft buns that had been buttered and grilled. I liked them a lot, once half the slaw was scraped off, but Michele found them overwhelming.

The accompanying crinkle-cut fries were standard issue, which brought up a point: We thought hand-cut to-order fries (like shoestrings, maybe?) would better suit the culinary profile the Three Monkeys promotes, as in this from its Web site: "American, European and Asian classics uniquely designed by our master chef." Aren't fries an American classic?

The hit was the house-made Bavarian-style bratwurst with mild sauerkraut. The perfectly seasoned coarse-ground pork possessed deep flavor and wonderful texture.

"This brat looks and tastes like the sausagemaker is in the kitchen making them," Michele said.

That was a good guess but could not be confirmed later. Voicemail messages left at the restaurant over a week's time were not returned and other attempts by phone were unsuccessful as well.

Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni, (916) 321-1128.

We hadn't finished the first course when my wife looked up to ask, "Sure you want to give this up?"

She was saying more than that she was enjoying the salad of chickpeas and shrimp, sweetened with plump sultana raisins and spiced with just a whiff of curry.

I shrugged, my passive way of reminding her we'd been through this, that the time had come to try something new, something I hoped would be as enlightening and as fun as reviewing restaurants.

"Did you forget what I married you for?" she pressed.

I could have squirmed. Instead, I laughed. She did, too.

Martha and I have been dining out together for more than 40 years. Those first meals had nothing to do with reviewing restaurants. We began to date in the mid-1960s at San Jose State.

A date occasionally meant driving up the Bayshore Freeway to a play, club or restaurant in San Francisco. If columnist Herb Caen had made a restaurant sound intriguing, that's where we'd head if it wasn't too expensive.

My mother sometimes would send me $20 to help with textbooks or other college expenses. I never told her that her hard-earned money often was spent at a San Francisco restaurant she'd likely never visit herself. I was selfish and unfair, but now can rationalize with little guilt that those meals were part of my education.

For Martha and I, our first memorable meal out together was at Omar Khayyam's, a plush Middle Eastern restaurant in San Francisco's theater district. If I remember correctly, the hefty menu was embossed with quatrains from the Persian poet's best known work, "The Rubaiyaat." Something about "a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse – and thou beside me singing in the wilderness." We were in the wilderness and too young for the wine, but our infatuation with restaurants was under way.

It was the first restaurant where we sat side by side, a thrill for a couple of college kids who'd never imagined such a romantic concept. Someone in a suit, with a proprietary air, sat down with us at the outset. He announced he was about to "break bread" with us as a symbolic gesture of welcome.

"I'm here to serve you," we remember him saying, despite our unease over just who he was and what he was up to.

I wonder to this day if he might have been the owner, legendary restaurateur George Mardikian, a Fresno Armenian American who in 1951 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions as a food consultant to the Army during World War II and the Korean War.

I've no idea what we ate, but I doubt it included eggplant. That wasn't something I grew up with, but even then I think I was fairly adventurous. Something about what people ate and how they ate it intrigued me, and still does.

I haven't a clue about what's behind this curiosity, though I can speculate that a person's behavior at and about the dining table says a lot about them – "know the bread, know the baker," that sort of thing.

Back in San Jose, as a student reporter, I finagled occasional assignments to review acts at a local nightspot, the Safari Club. Food was secondary to the thought of getting a drink with a fake ID and getting an interview with such entertainers as Trini Lopez and Mel Tormé.

During one visit to the Safari Club I had an opportunity to impress Martha by lighting a tabletop candle whose wick was cold and black. I fired up the tip of a rolled-up paper napkin and then watched it explode in flames as I stuck it into the candle holder.

It got the candle going, but the napkin burned so fast and so hot I had to drop it into the holder. For a terrifying moment, I had visions of the Safari Club becoming the Torch Club, and writing a far different story.

To this day I wonder if that unsettling incident accounts for my mild irritation whenever I walk into a restaurant to find tabletop candles unlit.

I did not grow up in a family of gourmets. My father could pan-sear a steak. My mother was a fine cook, in the way of someone who had grown up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. She had a weekly meal schedule that customarily included fish on Fridays, chicken on Saturdays, roast beef on Sundays, and meatloaf some other time during the week.

After she died, I went through her recipe box. She'd clipped and copied recipes for "lapin sauté au vin blanc" ("rabbit," she parenthetically noted), stuffed manicotti with olive sauce, fried shrimp with "prong sauce" and other dishes we never had. We ate well, but nothing so fancy.

By 1970, Martha and I had been married five years. We'd moved to Oregon a few years earlier, but for two native Californians the Northwest was just too cloudy and too damp too much of the time.

With one son 3, the other 18 months, we drove around the country for about six months, seeing where we might next settle. Our checklist of things to do along the way included eating chili in Dallas, shrimp Creole in New Orleans, ribs in Knoxville, Tenn., and beans in Boston. We often stayed at communes, where we were introduced to all sorts of granolas, hummus and salads of roadside weeds.

Though we especially liked Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina, we drifted back to California and settled in the Sierra foothills. I went to work part-time for the Amador Dispatch in Jackson, and began to freelance for The Sacramento Bee.

In 1978, when a longtime features writer retired, I was invited to come aboard full time. I've been in The Bee's features department ever since.

Soon after I walked into the department, feature writer Dick Tracy walked across the room to join the staff of what then was California Life, where he became the garden writer. He left behind a standing column he'd started called The Food Sleuth. Joe Evans, the features editor, told me to pick up where Dick left off.

That meant finding and writing of people making their livelihoods in the culinary arts, generally in new or offbeat ways. So I wrote about a tofu factory on the edge of downtown Sacramento, a candy maker in the Mother Lode, a couple marketing caviar from Sacramento River sturgeon, the annual pig slaughter and sausage making by an oldtime Gold Country ranch family, the food technologist who created Pop Rocks, some guy in Texas who developed a jalapeño lollipop and the downtown restaurateur whose weekend specialty was cabeza de borrego, or head of the lamb, the entire skull, eyes included (oddly sticky).

When escargot, truffles, falafel and white zinfandel began to generate buzz in town, I got the assignment to find out what was up with that. This usually included a tasting, sometimes involving dozens of products of a kind – deli potato salads, bottled waters, mustards.

It was fun and it was educational, and the job – job? – gave me an opportunity to hang out with several of the more influential practitioners of the American food and wine trades over the past three decades.

M.F.K. Fisher made lunch for us at her Sonoma Valley cottage. I strolled about the farmers market in Santa Barbara with Julia Child. Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti shaved flakes of gold leaf over a risotto he'd cooked for dinner.

There were interviews with journalist, novelist and humorist Calvin Trillin, whose extensive oeuvre includes three books on food; vintner Francis Ford Coppola; cooks Jacques Pepin, Alice Waters, Martin Yan, Diana Kennedy, Hubert Keller and Thomas Keller.

Even before Sacramento wine merchant David Berkley became wine adviser to the White House during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, I admired his aplomb as he pulled the cork, decanted and shared an 1815 Port at the Folsom restaurant in which he was a partner, Cafe Natoma.

It was a great time to be writing of the culinary arts in California.

My involvement in reviewing restaurants grew out of a progression in writing of food and wine. It started with that column The Food Sleuth, which led to more extensive features on food, wine and dining, which led to a wine column in various formats, most recently Dunne on Wine.

All that seasoning helped provide a grounding for reviewing restaurants, which for me started in the mid- 1980s, then resumed in the mid-1990s after a break for a few years.

I've been surprised and gratified in recent weeks by the number of people who right after they say they've heard I'm leaving The Bee ask what I'll do with myself.

I'm not sure. I haven't been one of those people to listen to retirement experts who urge people to plan the next phase of their lives.

Virtually every journalist who hasn't already written a book thinks about doing so, and maybe that's what I'll do, think about it.

And Martha's putting the finishing touches to the "Dunne InterNational Restaurant Rating System" (DINRRS), an original analytical, holistic and numeric approach to restaurant criticism. I guess we'll continue to eat out.

First, I want to relax and reflect. A couple of trips are in order. The first will be to Thailand to meet our grandson, Rayden Light Kanah-Dunne, born in May.

From what I've heard and read, and not just from our son, who manages an entertainment complex that includes a restaurant, Bangkok is one heck of a place for exhilarating food.

To prepare for the trip, I've bought a new notebook.

We hadn't finished the first course when my wife looked up to ask, "Sure you want to give this up?"

She was saying more than that she was enjoying the salad of chickpeas and shrimp, sweetened with plump sultana raisins and spiced with just a whiff of curry.

I shrugged, my passive way of reminding her we'd been through this, that the time had come to try something new, something I hoped would be as enlightening and as fun as reviewing restaurants.

"Did you forget what I married you for?" she pressed.

I could have squirmed. Instead, I laughed. She did, too.

Martha and I have been dining out together for more than 40 years. Those first meals had nothing to do with reviewing restaurants. We began to date in the mid-1960s at San Jose State.

A date occasionally meant driving up the Bayshore Freeway to a play, club or restaurant in San Francisco. If columnist Herb Caen had made a restaurant sound intriguing, that's where we'd head if it wasn't too expensive.

My mother sometimes would send me $20 to help with textbooks or other college expenses. I never told her that her hard-earned money often was spent at a San Francisco restaurant she'd likely never visit herself. I was selfish and unfair, but now can rationalize with little guilt that those meals were part of my education.

For Martha and I, our first memorable meal out together was at Omar Khayyam's, a plush Middle Eastern restaurant in San Francisco's theater district. If I remember correctly, the hefty menu was embossed with quatrains from the Persian poet's best known work, "The Rubaiyaat." Something about "a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse – and thou beside me singing in the wilderness." We were in the wilderness and too young for the wine, but our infatuation with restaurants was under way.

It was the first restaurant where we sat side by side, a thrill for a couple of college kids who'd never imagined such a romantic concept. Someone in a suit, with a proprietary air, sat down with us at the outset. He announced he was about to "break bread" with us as a symbolic gesture of welcome.

"I'm here to serve you," we remember him saying, despite our unease over just who he was and what he was up to.

I wonder to this day if he might have been the owner, legendary restaurateur George Mardikian, a Fresno Armenian American who in 1951 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions as a food consultant to the Army during World War II and the Korean War.

I've no idea what we ate, but I doubt it included eggplant. That wasn't something I grew up with, but even then I think I was fairly adventurous. Something about what people ate and how they ate it intrigued me, and still does.

I haven't a clue about what's behind this curiosity, though I can speculate that a person's behavior at and about the dining table says a lot about them – "know the bread, know the baker," that sort of thing.

Back in San Jose, as a student reporter, I finagled occasional assignments to review acts at a local nightspot, the Safari Club. Food was secondary to the thought of getting a drink with a fake ID and getting an interview with such entertainers as Trini Lopez and Mel Tormé.

During one visit to the Safari Club I had an opportunity to impress Martha by lighting a tabletop candle whose wick was cold and black. I fired up the tip of a rolled-up paper napkin and then watched it explode in flames as I stuck it into the candle holder.

It got the candle going, but the napkin burned so fast and so hot I had to drop it into the holder. For a terrifying moment, I had visions of the Safari Club becoming the Torch Club, and writing a far different story.

To this day I wonder if that unsettling incident accounts for my mild irritation whenever I walk into a restaurant to find tabletop candles unlit.

I did not grow up in a family of gourmets. My father could pan-sear a steak. My mother was a fine cook, in the way of someone who had grown up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. She had a weekly meal schedule that customarily included fish on Fridays, chicken on Saturdays, roast beef on Sundays, and meatloaf some other time during the week.

After she died, I went through her recipe box. She'd clipped and copied recipes for "lapin sauté au vin blanc" ("rabbit," she parenthetically noted), stuffed manicotti with olive sauce, fried shrimp with "prong sauce" and other dishes we never had. We ate well, but nothing so fancy.

By 1970, Martha and I had been married five years. We'd moved to Oregon a few years earlier, but for two native Californians the Northwest was just too cloudy and too damp too much of the time.

With one son 3, the other 18 months, we drove around the country for about six months, seeing where we might next settle. Our checklist of things to do along the way included eating chili in Dallas, shrimp Creole in New Orleans, ribs in Knoxville, Tenn., and beans in Boston. We often stayed at communes, where we were introduced to all sorts of granolas, hummus and salads of roadside weeds.

Though we especially liked Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina, we drifted back to California and settled in the Sierra foothills. I went to work part-time for the Amador Dispatch in Jackson, and began to freelance for The Sacramento Bee.

In 1978, when a longtime features writer retired, I was invited to come aboard full time. I've been in The Bee's features department ever since.

Soon after I walked into the department, feature writer Dick Tracy walked across the room to join the staff of what then was California Life, where he became the garden writer. He left behind a standing column he'd started called The Food Sleuth. Joe Evans, the features editor, told me to pick up where Dick left off.

That meant finding and writing of people making their livelihoods in the culinary arts, generally in new or offbeat ways. So I wrote about a tofu factory on the edge of downtown Sacramento, a candy maker in the Mother Lode, a couple marketing caviar from Sacramento River sturgeon, the annual pig slaughter and sausage making by an oldtime Gold Country ranch family, the food technologist who created Pop Rocks, some guy in Texas who developed a jalapeño lollipop and the downtown restaurateur whose weekend specialty was cabeza de borrego, or head of the lamb, the entire skull, eyes included (oddly sticky).

When escargot, truffles, falafel and white zinfandel began to generate buzz in town, I got the assignment to find out what was up with that. This usually included a tasting, sometimes involving dozens of products of a kind – deli potato salads, bottled waters, mustards.

It was fun and it was educational, and the job – job? – gave me an opportunity to hang out with several of the more influential practitioners of the American food and wine trades over the past three decades.

M.F.K. Fisher made lunch for us at her Sonoma Valley cottage. I strolled about the farmers market in Santa Barbara with Julia Child. Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti shaved flakes of gold leaf over a risotto he'd cooked for dinner.

There were interviews with journalist, novelist and humorist Calvin Trillin, whose extensive oeuvre includes three books on food; vintner Francis Ford Coppola; cooks Jacques Pepin, Alice Waters, Martin Yan, Diana Kennedy, Hubert Keller and Thomas Keller.

Even before Sacramento wine merchant David Berkley became wine adviser to the White House during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, I admired his aplomb as he pulled the cork, decanted and shared an 1815 Port at the Folsom restaurant in which he was a partner, Cafe Natoma.

It was a great time to be writing of the culinary arts in California.

My involvement in reviewing restaurants grew out of a progression in writing of food and wine. It started with that column The Food Sleuth, which led to more extensive features on food, wine and dining, which led to a wine column in various formats, most recently Dunne on Wine.

All that seasoning helped provide a grounding for reviewing restaurants, which for me started in the mid- 1980s, then resumed in the mid-1990s after a break for a few years.

I've been surprised and gratified in recent weeks by the number of people who right after they say they've heard I'm leaving The Bee ask what I'll do with myself.

I'm not sure. I haven't been one of those people to listen to retirement experts who urge people to plan the next phase of their lives.

Virtually every journalist who hasn't already written a book thinks about doing so, and maybe that's what I'll do, think about it.

And Martha's putting the finishing touches to the "Dunne InterNational Restaurant Rating System" (DINRRS), an original analytical, holistic and numeric approach to restaurant criticism. I guess we'll continue to eat out.

First, I want to relax and reflect. A couple of trips are in order. The first will be to Thailand to meet our grandson, Rayden Light Kanah-Dunne, born in May.

From what I've heard and read, and not just from our son, who manages an entertainment complex that includes a restaurant, Bangkok is one heck of a place for exhilarating food.

To prepare for the trip, I've bought a new notebook.

Eating-wise, there's a lot to like at the Quarry Ponds Center in Granite Bay. The deeply flavored, two-days-in-the-making short ribs at Hawk's restaurant. Any of the meat and fish on display in the Vande Rose Farms cold case, where the butcher will hand-cut a hangar steak on request. The homemade brownies at Pullman Kitchen. The French toast and applewood-smoked bacon at Toast. The Acme breads, cheeses and jams at Bay Gourmet Market.

Add to that list the relatively new place on the block – Rincon Tarasco, which opened in July in the large space (with a deck) formerly occupied by Sammy Sausage. The Mexican restaurant emphasizes the cuisine of Michoacán, one of the 31 states of that country.

It's family-run, and the dishes are from-scratch and made-to-order, said manager Irma Jimenez. Their fresh tastes reflected that.

Irma Jimenez's mom, Irma Mendoza, makes the salsas fresh daily and cooks the menu items from recipes "that go back to her great-grandmother," said Jimenez.

I was there with lunch pal Beth, a world traveler and veteran diner. We began with a basket of crunchy tortilla chips paired with an excellent dipping salsa that had the look and texture of puréed watermelon but was really a smooth mix of tomato, jalapeño, onion and salt. There's some heat involved – and some addiction.

Next, we agreed the ambitious guacamole ($5) had too much crunchy pico de gallo ("rooster's beak," a salsa of chopped tomato, onion and chiles). "I'm tasting a lot of onion and tomato, but not avocado," Beth said. "It's too cluttered. Sometimes, the best things are the simplest."

Under the heading "Choices of Meats" are carne asada (cut-up steak), desebrada (shredded beef), al pastor (sweetish smoked pork marinated in pineapple juice and topped with pineapple on the grill), carnitas (seasoned pork roast cooked in lard and simmered till tender), chorizo (sausage) and pollo asado (grilled chicken). The idea is to pick a meat as a filling for an item.

We chose two soft tacos al pastor, topped with cilantro, onion and salsa ($3.50 each); a grande quesadilla, the blistered and toasted tortilla filled with gooey cheese and tender carnitas ($8, with sour cream and guacamole); and a torta, an airy toasted bun holding carne asada, beans and cheese (think sandwich), with an excellent fiery house-made dipping salsa we were told is made from "cauchiles" ($8). I spooned it up like soup and wiped away tears, and then poured it on everything and asked for more.

The meal was better than fine, with the tender, tasty meats complemented by salsas and tortillas, sour cream and that chunky guacamole.

To our dismay, the homemade chiles rellenos were still being cooked when we arrived at 12:30 p.m., but we'll certainly go back for them – maybe even today.

RINCON TARASCO

WHERE: Quarry Ponds Market Hall, 5550 Douglas Blvd., Granite Bay

HOURS: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily; one menu for lunch and dinner

FOOD: 3 stars

AMBIENCE: 2 stars

HOW MUCH: $

INFORMATION: (916) 772-7333

Hand-crafted chocolate

Next time your travels take you near Tahoe City, don't miss the Tahoe City Chocolates store in the Boatworks Mall (530-583-6652).

There you'll find restaurant and catering veteran (and big-time skier) Mike Akay and his hand-crafted chocolates and candies.

"I'm exploring and creating intense flavor profiles," he said when we dropped by to taste some of his most popular offerings: blueberry-pecan-jalapeño cluster in dark chocolate; milk-chocolate ganache truffle with grapefruit-habañero dipped in white chocolate; cherry-almond in dark chocolate; and avocado-key lime in milk chocolate.

The rich combinations were certainly different and made for an exciting change from the run-of-the-mill. Plus, this time of year we don't have to worry about them melting in the car.

Eating-wise, there's a lot to like at the Quarry Ponds Center in Granite Bay. The deeply flavored, two-days-in-the-making short ribs at Hawk's restaurant. Any of the meat and fish on display in the Vande Rose Farms cold case, where the butcher will hand-cut a hangar steak on request. The homemade brownies at Pullman Kitchen. The French toast and applewood-smoked bacon at Toast. The Acme breads, cheeses and jams at Bay Gourmet Market.

Add to that list the relatively new place on the block – Rincon Tarasco, which opened in July in the large space (with a deck) formerly occupied by Sammy Sausage. The Mexican restaurant emphasizes the cuisine of Michoacán, one of the 31 states of that country.

It's family-run, and the dishes are from-scratch and made-to-order, said manager Irma Jimenez. Their fresh tastes reflected that.

Irma Jimenez's mom, Irma Mendoza, makes the salsas fresh daily and cooks the menu items from recipes "that go back to her great-grandmother," said Jimenez.

I was there with lunch pal Beth, a world traveler and veteran diner. We began with a basket of crunchy tortilla chips paired with an excellent dipping salsa that had the look and texture of puréed watermelon but was really a smooth mix of tomato, jalapeño, onion and salt. There's some heat involved – and some addiction.

Next, we agreed the ambitious guacamole ($5) had too much crunchy pico de gallo ("rooster's beak," a salsa of chopped tomato, onion and chiles). "I'm tasting a lot of onion and tomato, but not avocado," Beth said. "It's too cluttered. Sometimes, the best things are the simplest."

Under the heading "Choices of Meats" are carne asada (cut-up steak), desebrada (shredded beef), al pastor (sweetish smoked pork marinated in pineapple juice and topped with pineapple on the grill), carnitas (seasoned pork roast cooked in lard and simmered till tender), chorizo (sausage) and pollo asado (grilled chicken). The idea is to pick a meat as a filling for an item.

We chose two soft tacos al pastor, topped with cilantro, onion and salsa ($3.50 each); a grande quesadilla, the blistered and toasted tortilla filled with gooey cheese and tender carnitas ($8, with sour cream and guacamole); and a torta, an airy toasted bun holding carne asada, beans and cheese (think sandwich), with an excellent fiery house-made dipping salsa we were told is made from "cauchiles" ($8). I spooned it up like soup and wiped away tears, and then poured it on everything and asked for more.

The meal was better than fine, with the tender, tasty meats complemented by salsas and tortillas, sour cream and that chunky guacamole.

To our dismay, the homemade chiles rellenos were still being cooked when we arrived at 12:30 p.m., but we'll certainly go back for them – maybe even today.

RINCON TARASCO

WHERE: Quarry Ponds Market Hall, 5550 Douglas Blvd., Granite Bay

HOURS: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily; one menu for lunch and dinner

FOOD: 3 stars

AMBIENCE: 2 stars

HOW MUCH: $

INFORMATION: (916) 772-7333

Hand-crafted chocolate

Next time your travels take you near Tahoe City, don't miss the Tahoe City Chocolates store in the Boatworks Mall (530-583-6652).

There you'll find restaurant and catering veteran (and big-time skier) Mike Akay and his hand-crafted chocolates and candies.

"I'm exploring and creating intense flavor profiles," he said when we dropped by to taste some of his most popular offerings: blueberry-pecan-jalapeño cluster in dark chocolate; milk-chocolate ganache truffle with grapefruit-habañero dipped in white chocolate; cherry-almond in dark chocolate; and avocado-key lime in milk chocolate.

The rich combinations were certainly different and made for an exciting change from the run-of-the-mill. Plus, this time of year we don't have to worry about them melting in the car.

Hostess Christina Ayrassian prepares table vases at the Delta King Hotel's Pilothouse Restaurant in Old Sacramento.

Sacramento-area restaurateurs wish every day was Thanksgiving Day.

While restaurants have struggled locally and nationwide amid an economic downturn that has seen consumers cut back on dining out, Thanksgiving Day is shaping up as a hopeful trend-breaker.

Simply put: Thanksgiving's standing as a big eating day apparently trumps economic jitters.

Lloyd Harvego, owner of the Firehouse restaurant in Old Sacramento, said he started serving Thanksgiving Day meals only a couple of years ago "because I wasn't sure people would want to come out, but they do come out.

"This is our third year, and we're almost fully booked from 1 to 7 (p.m. Thursday). We were a little concerned, but now people are filling out the last available slots."

Charlie Coyne, co-owner of the Delta King Hotel and its Pilothouse Restaurant, said Thanksgiving trails only Mother's Day in volume of meals.

"We did over 600 on Thanksgiving last year," he said. "Right now, our bookings are slightly behind last year, but I think we're going to be close to what we had last year. … We've been doing it for 20 years, and we have a lot of people who come back year after year."

On Thursday, the Pilothouse will have a buffet with traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Coyne speculated that family traditions and convenience work in local restaurants' favor for at least one day.

"It's just a whole lot easier. That's what they tell us, and a lot of it is families," Coyne said.

Daniel Conway, spokesman for the California Restaurant Association, based in Sacramento, said "going out on Thanksgiving is definitely more acceptable than it used to be."

"And I think it reflects other factors – people who can't travel, people without children," he said.

Price might also enter into the equation.

The American Farm Bureau's annual survey of the price of groceries needed to make Thanksgiving dinner for 10 jumped 5.6 percent this year to $44.61, or $4.46 per person.

Area restaurants offer traditional Thanksgiving Day dinners in the $10 to $25 range per person. That's pricey compared with the farm bureau's numbers, but restaurants market the fact that they do the hours of meal preparation and the cleanup afterward.

"There's more of a tendency to let somebody else do all the work and cleanup as opposed to doing it all yourself," Conway said. " … It's obviously a very challenging time for the restaurant industry, but (Thanksgiving) might be a day when people ignore the context of things. Still, I think it's possible that we'll see at least a minor drop-off (in business)."

Given the struggles of some restaurants this year, any kind of a big day would be welcome.

According to the trade publication Nation's Restaurant News, published in New York, some of the nation's major restaurant chains are taking a serious beating this year.

NRN said some of those hardest hit in 2008 include Ruby Tuesday Inc., net income down 80.8 percent in the year-to-year period; McCormick & Schmick's, down 76.9 percent; and Dallas-based Brinker International Inc. down 58.3 percent. Brinker oversees nearly 2,000 restaurants, including Chili's Grill & Bar and Romano's Macaroni Grill outlets.

Perhaps because of numbers like that, there's no shortage of competition locally for consumers' Thanksgiving Day dining dollars.

Nearly two dozen local restaurants ran advertisements touting Thanksgiving Day specials in last weekend's editions of The Sacramento Bee. They ranged from the Hof Brau at 2500 Watt Ave. in Sacramento, to McCormick & Schmick's seafood restaurant downtown, to Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln.

At Rudy's Hideaway restaurant at 12303 Folsom Blvd. in Rancho Cordova, co-owner Steve Ryan said he expects to serve about 300 Thanksgiving Day meals from 2 to 6 p.m. That would be equal to Thanksgiving last year, but not like Christmas Day, when Rudy's Hideaway faces less competition from open restaurants.

"We've been doing Thanksgiving for 36 years now, and it has always been a good day, but we served 547 meals in five hours on Christmas Day (last year)," he said. "We're one of the few open on Christmas, so we almost have to force the door closed that day."

Ryan said the Thanksgiving Day boost is historically tempered by the days after it: "The days following Thanksgiving are dreadful. People are at home eating all those leftovers."

Chef Julian Vasquez gears up for Thanksgiving. Last year, 600 meals were served, and owners expect only a slight downturn this year.
Jeanne Osofsky, right, dines with her granddaughter, Emily Osofsky, at the Delta King Hotel's Pilothouse Restaurant on Tuesday. Co-owner Charlie Coyne said Thanksgiving meals have been served for 20 years, and "we have a lot of people who come back year after year."

Hostess Christina Ayrassian prepares table vases at the Delta King Hotel's Pilothouse Restaurant in Old Sacramento.

Sacramento-area restaurateurs wish every day was Thanksgiving Day.

While restaurants have struggled locally and nationwide amid an economic downturn that has seen consumers cut back on dining out, Thanksgiving Day is shaping up as a hopeful trend-breaker.

Simply put: Thanksgiving's standing as a big eating day apparently trumps economic jitters.

Lloyd Harvego, owner of the Firehouse restaurant in Old Sacramento, said he started serving Thanksgiving Day meals only a couple of years ago "because I wasn't sure people would want to come out, but they do come out.

"This is our third year, and we're almost fully booked from 1 to 7 (p.m. Thursday). We were a little concerned, but now people are filling out the last available slots."

Charlie Coyne, co-owner of the Delta King Hotel and its Pilothouse Restaurant, said Thanksgiving trails only Mother's Day in volume of meals.

"We did over 600 on Thanksgiving last year," he said. "Right now, our bookings are slightly behind last year, but I think we're going to be close to what we had last year. … We've been doing it for 20 years, and we have a lot of people who come back year after year."

On Thursday, the Pilothouse will have a buffet with traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Coyne speculated that family traditions and convenience work in local restaurants' favor for at least one day.

"It's just a whole lot easier. That's what they tell us, and a lot of it is families," Coyne said.

Daniel Conway, spokesman for the California Restaurant Association, based in Sacramento, said "going out on Thanksgiving is definitely more acceptable than it used to be."

"And I think it reflects other factors – people who can't travel, people without children," he said.

Price might also enter into the equation.

The American Farm Bureau's annual survey of the price of groceries needed to make Thanksgiving dinner for 10 jumped 5.6 percent this year to $44.61, or $4.46 per person.

Area restaurants offer traditional Thanksgiving Day dinners in the $10 to $25 range per person. That's pricey compared with the farm bureau's numbers, but restaurants market the fact that they do the hours of meal preparation and the cleanup afterward.

"There's more of a tendency to let somebody else do all the work and cleanup as opposed to doing it all yourself," Conway said. " … It's obviously a very challenging time for the restaurant industry, but (Thanksgiving) might be a day when people ignore the context of things. Still, I think it's possible that we'll see at least a minor drop-off (in business)."

Given the struggles of some restaurants this year, any kind of a big day would be welcome.

According to the trade publication Nation's Restaurant News, published in New York, some of the nation's major restaurant chains are taking a serious beating this year.

NRN said some of those hardest hit in 2008 include Ruby Tuesday Inc., net income down 80.8 percent in the year-to-year period; McCormick & Schmick's, down 76.9 percent; and Dallas-based Brinker International Inc. down 58.3 percent. Brinker oversees nearly 2,000 restaurants, including Chili's Grill & Bar and Romano's Macaroni Grill outlets.

Perhaps because of numbers like that, there's no shortage of competition locally for consumers' Thanksgiving Day dining dollars.

Nearly two dozen local restaurants ran advertisements touting Thanksgiving Day specials in last weekend's editions of The Sacramento Bee. They ranged from the Hof Brau at 2500 Watt Ave. in Sacramento, to McCormick & Schmick's seafood restaurant downtown, to Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln.

At Rudy's Hideaway restaurant at 12303 Folsom Blvd. in Rancho Cordova, co-owner Steve Ryan said he expects to serve about 300 Thanksgiving Day meals from 2 to 6 p.m. That would be equal to Thanksgiving last year, but not like Christmas Day, when Rudy's Hideaway faces less competition from open restaurants.

"We've been doing Thanksgiving for 36 years now, and it has always been a good day, but we served 547 meals in five hours on Christmas Day (last year)," he said. "We're one of the few open on Christmas, so we almost have to force the door closed that day."

Ryan said the Thanksgiving Day boost is historically tempered by the days after it: "The days following Thanksgiving are dreadful. People are at home eating all those leftovers."

Chef Julian Vasquez gears up for Thanksgiving. Last year, 600 meals were served, and owners expect only a slight downturn this year.
Jeanne Osofsky, right, dines with her granddaughter, Emily Osofsky, at the Delta King Hotel's Pilothouse Restaurant on Tuesday. Co-owner Charlie Coyne said Thanksgiving meals have been served for 20 years, and "we have a lot of people who come back year after year."

Randy Paragary stands inside the nearly completed Cosmo Café just before its completion and recent opening. The site most recently was a Woolworth's.

At the darkest corner on the darkest street in the darkest hour of the economy, what should come bounding onto this grim stage with hope and cheer but the Cosmopolitan.

It's a dynamic and complete entertainment complex, an extraordinarily ambitious project that would have made sense five years ago but seems daft today.

Don't, however, underestimate the business acumen of the producers – restaurateurs Randy Paragary and Kurt Spataro, theatrical impresario Richard Lewis, nightclub sire Bob Simpson and developer David Taylor.

Together, they've taken the old Woolworth's department store at 10th and K streets and given the site something bright and moving besides the light-rail trains.

You push the button, jump off and do what we did one recent night – drinks, dinner or both in the bar of Cosmo Café, followed by a performance of the sweet musical revue "Forever Plaid" in the adjoining Cosmopolitan Cabaret, followed by a cocktail or beer in the upstairs Social nightclub, where the Spazmatics were performing a raucous brand of rock not likely to be mistaken for the mellow tunes of the cabaret.

The whole evening wasn't so much culture shock as delight that Sacramento's appreciation for fine dining and diversified theater shoulders on, even along the beleaguered K Street Mall during lean economic times.

While we enjoyed both the cabaret and the nightclub, I'll leave further comment on them to the theater and pop-culture critics, other than to note that the women's restroom in Social has a camera whereby exhibitionists can mug, then see their photos along a bank of plasma screens out front; pretty tame stuff, actually, but we were there relatively early.

Because the Cosmo Café is closely affiliated with the Cosmopolitan Cabaret, owners Paragary and Spataro drew inspiration from the delicatessens of New York's theater district.

The restaurant is more spacious and more finely appointed than either "café" or "deli" suggest. The floor is intricately tiled in black and white, the woodwork is stylish, and the light fixtures hang from the ceiling like arachnid sculptures from the moderne era. Booths are lined up where Woolworth's lunch counter once stood.

Understated art is the restaurant's most arresting feature, however. One wall is given over to large photos of downtown architectural landmarks, some of them long gone. Another is a gallery of Petaluma artist Marc Schmid's caricatures of local celebrities.

And the dining room in the back will delight patrons of Paragary's and Spataro's former Capitol Grill at 28th and N. When the two phased it out several years ago, they moved into storage a vast collection of political memorabilia that had the place looking like a convention hall where a presidential candidate was about to be nominated. At Cosmo, they've brought out the placards and posters and revived that mood.

Spataro and Cosmo's chef-de-cuisine, Scott Rose, who has returned to the Paragary stable after a stint with Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville, oversee a menu that while inspired by the traditions of the New York deli reinvents dishes to give them the freshness, lightness and energy of California cuisine.

The rich corned beef not only is juicier and more tender than usual, its accompanying cabbage was upgraded to savoy cabbage ($19).

The roast chicken was treated as if it were some rare and valuable bird, seasoned with black pepper, coriander, cinnamon and cumin to bring to the moist meat a suggestion of the Middle East, an impression reinforced by its fruity pomegranate glaze ($18).

Luscious slices of salmon on rye toast not only had been cured but smoked with coriander and black pepper, thus the descriptive "pastrami" on the menu ($9).

Beyond the clearly deli- inspired dishes, the Cosmo menu marks a departure for Spataro in that it is stylistically more personal and daring than his earlier works. His creativity is understated, even sly, and he brings a thoughtfulness to dishes that make them inviting even if they are out of the mainstream.

His pairing of seared sea scallops with bits of smoked ham hocks and beluga lentils, for one, couldn't have been more precise, with the richness of the ham under- pinning the sweetness of the scallops ($14).

And where in the world did this come from? The silkiness of a thick cut of lightly seared ahi tuna was picked up and extended poetically by slices of satiny and fruity Japanese pumpkin, further enhanced with the quiet earthiness of shiitake mushrooms and the smoky sweetness of a soy caramel sauce ($24). There are wines with less complexity and mouth feel that sell for $100 a bottle.

I think my single most favorite dish must have been conceived when Spataro was in the same inspired mood – feathery lengths of raw hamachi with slices of apple, punctuated with a hint of horseradish ($11).

In line with the season, the menu includes an autumnal bread pudding of finely diced butternut squash with chanterelle mushrooms and Parmigiano compressed into a lightly seasoned timbale ($16), as well as a pretty and lively salad of roasted beets with pistachios, avocado and feta ($8).

If Spataro were any more heavily into smoking meats, the city's pollution-control authorities might pull out their citation books on save-the-air days – at least until they tasted one of his smoked specialties.

These include a wonderfully spicy, smoky and sweet housemade sausage with fingerling potatoes, sauerkraut and mustard ($9), and a stunning salad of smoked chicken curling lyrically across a bed of flamboyant butterleaf lettuce with apples, walnuts, blue cheese and pomegranate seeds ($12), every bit as flavorful as it was attractive.

Traditional fall dishes almost invariably delivered muscle and warmth, including braised short ribs, dark, moist and rich without being fatty ($25); twin pork shanks dramatic in presentation and sweet in flavor, with carrots and parsnips ($19); and fantastic "fresh-egg" fettuccine with a homey and invigorating ragu of braised beef with beef stock, vegetables and red wine ($17.50).

The intensity and density of duck-leg confit with walnuts and golden raisins also was fitting for the season, even though not all the rich meat was as moist as it could have been ($15).

A few dishes could use some tweaking – spongy polenta fritters without corn flavor or graininess ($7); fish and chips wherein the fish was limp and its batter soggy, though the waffle chips were fresh and crispy ($13); a burger that while big and juicy was peculiarly sweet and overly salty ($12); and a creamy soup of chickpeas and pancetta that also suffered from too much salt ($6).

The cafe's homey desserts, prepared at Paragary Bakery along N Street, invariably were fresh and fitting for the season. They include, not surprisingly, a tall and fluffy "New York cheesecake" with a syrup from Concord grapes to reinforce the East Coast heritage ($7); a hot crisp of apple and pecans, ample enough for two people ($7); a creamy and tangy individual lemon tart with candied kumquats ($7); and warm and concentrated chocolate bread pudding, an old-fashioned interpretation, not a modern molten chocolate cake ($7). The only letdown was the butterscotch flan, finely textured but elusive in flavor ($6).

Cosmo's wine list is extensive but manageable, largely Californian but not chauvinistic, and priced to appeal to deep-pocket lobbyists from the nearby Capitol as well as the budget-conscious couple who drop in for a bite before taking in the show at the Cosmopolitan Cabaret.

In the past, the Paragary Restaurant Group has been conservative in its selection of wine, but with Cosmo it's more adventurous and more mature in its palate, offering such gems as the Margerum pinot gris from Washington state ($36), an Austrian grüner veltliner by Laurenz V ($34) and the New Harbor sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, more forthright than most New Zealand takes on the varietal ($27).

Paragary Restaurant Group has several of the top servers in the region, but it also manages to push onto the floor some without adequate training. I hate to think some are hired for their physical attractiveness, but I had trouble seeing how one who tended our table got the job for any other reason. Everything was a struggle – opening the bottle of wine, remembering that soup calls for a soup spoon, even pulling the pen from her notebook.

But for the most part, Cosmo is well staffed, and most of the servers were diligent. They also are working one of the more challenging venues in town. The place customarily fills up early with people who have tickets to "Forever Plaid." They've got to be out of there by 8 p.m., and both service staff and kitchen crew gamely try to meet that deadline, and they generally do, to judge by what I saw.

One evening, however, we ordered a light meal at the bar after the bartender assured us we could get our food and get it eaten before the show began. We didn't and we couldn't. However, we had a table in the cabaret, and the staff obligingly delivered our plates and beverages.

The cafe does have a limited small-plate menu for theater patrons, but manager Jennifer Novotny urges playgoers who want to nibble and sip through a show to take their seats 30 minutes to an hour before the curtain rises. Servers stop taking orders five minutes before the performance commences.

Incidentally, if you don't ride light rail to the restaurant, cabaret or club, a parking garage is right next to the complex along 10th Street, and the cafe offers validation.

It's still too soon to say whether K Street Mall can become the epicenter of Sacramento's nightlife, but the Cosmopolitan is a bold step toward realizing that longtime hope, and the producers of this exuberant complex deserve some sort of award for their gumption, but I suspect they'll settle for the sort of encouraging patronage they've seen early on.

Call The Bee's Mike Dunne, (916) 321-1143.

Scott Rose, Cosmo Café chef, with one of the historical photos of downtown Sacramento that along with the food enliven the establishment.
The back room at Cosmo Café at 10th and K streets in downtown Sacramento is dressed up with a collection of political memorabilia.

Randy Paragary stands inside the nearly completed Cosmo Café just before its completion and recent opening. The site most recently was a Woolworth's.

At the darkest corner on the darkest street in the darkest hour of the economy, what should come bounding onto this grim stage with hope and cheer but the Cosmopolitan.

It's a dynamic and complete entertainment complex, an extraordinarily ambitious project that would have made sense five years ago but seems daft today.

Don't, however, underestimate the business acumen of the producers – restaurateurs Randy Paragary and Kurt Spataro, theatrical impresario Richard Lewis, nightclub sire Bob Simpson and developer David Taylor.

Together, they've taken the old Woolworth's department store at 10th and K streets and given the site something bright and moving besides the light-rail trains.

You push the button, jump off and do what we did one recent night – drinks, dinner or both in the bar of Cosmo Café, followed by a performance of the sweet musical revue "Forever Plaid" in the adjoining Cosmopolitan Cabaret, followed by a cocktail or beer in the upstairs Social nightclub, where the Spazmatics were performing a raucous brand of rock not likely to be mistaken for the mellow tunes of the cabaret.

The whole evening wasn't so much culture shock as delight that Sacramento's appreciation for fine dining and diversified theater shoulders on, even along the beleaguered K Street Mall during lean economic times.

While we enjoyed both the cabaret and the nightclub, I'll leave further comment on them to the theater and pop-culture critics, other than to note that the women's restroom in Social has a camera whereby exhibitionists can mug, then see their photos along a bank of plasma screens out front; pretty tame stuff, actually, but we were there relatively early.

Because the Cosmo Café is closely affiliated with the Cosmopolitan Cabaret, owners Paragary and Spataro drew inspiration from the delicatessens of New York's theater district.

The restaurant is more spacious and more finely appointed than either "café" or "deli" suggest. The floor is intricately tiled in black and white, the woodwork is stylish, and the light fixtures hang from the ceiling like arachnid sculptures from the moderne era. Booths are lined up where Woolworth's lunch counter once stood.

Understated art is the restaurant's most arresting feature, however. One wall is given over to large photos of downtown architectural landmarks, some of them long gone. Another is a gallery of Petaluma artist Marc Schmid's caricatures of local celebrities.

And the dining room in the back will delight patrons of Paragary's and Spataro's former Capitol Grill at 28th and N. When the two phased it out several years ago, they moved into storage a vast collection of political memorabilia that had the place looking like a convention hall where a presidential candidate was about to be nominated. At Cosmo, they've brought out the placards and posters and revived that mood.

Spataro and Cosmo's chef-de-cuisine, Scott Rose, who has returned to the Paragary stable after a stint with Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville, oversee a menu that while inspired by the traditions of the New York deli reinvents dishes to give them the freshness, lightness and energy of California cuisine.

The rich corned beef not only is juicier and more tender than usual, its accompanying cabbage was upgraded to savoy cabbage ($19).

The roast chicken was treated as if it were some rare and valuable bird, seasoned with black pepper, coriander, cinnamon and cumin to bring to the moist meat a suggestion of the Middle East, an impression reinforced by its fruity pomegranate glaze ($18).

Luscious slices of salmon on rye toast not only had been cured but smoked with coriander and black pepper, thus the descriptive "pastrami" on the menu ($9).

Beyond the clearly deli- inspired dishes, the Cosmo menu marks a departure for Spataro in that it is stylistically more personal and daring than his earlier works. His creativity is understated, even sly, and he brings a thoughtfulness to dishes that make them inviting even if they are out of the mainstream.

His pairing of seared sea scallops with bits of smoked ham hocks and beluga lentils, for one, couldn't have been more precise, with the richness of the ham under- pinning the sweetness of the scallops ($14).

And where in the world did this come from? The silkiness of a thick cut of lightly seared ahi tuna was picked up and extended poetically by slices of satiny and fruity Japanese pumpkin, further enhanced with the quiet earthiness of shiitake mushrooms and the smoky sweetness of a soy caramel sauce ($24). There are wines with less complexity and mouth feel that sell for $100 a bottle.

I think my single most favorite dish must have been conceived when Spataro was in the same inspired mood – feathery lengths of raw hamachi with slices of apple, punctuated with a hint of horseradish ($11).

In line with the season, the menu includes an autumnal bread pudding of finely diced butternut squash with chanterelle mushrooms and Parmigiano compressed into a lightly seasoned timbale ($16), as well as a pretty and lively salad of roasted beets with pistachios, avocado and feta ($8).

If Spataro were any more heavily into smoking meats, the city's pollution-control authorities might pull out their citation books on save-the-air days – at least until they tasted one of his smoked specialties.

These include a wonderfully spicy, smoky and sweet housemade sausage with fingerling potatoes, sauerkraut and mustard ($9), and a stunning salad of smoked chicken curling lyrically across a bed of flamboyant butterleaf lettuce with apples, walnuts, blue cheese and pomegranate seeds ($12), every bit as flavorful as it was attractive.

Traditional fall dishes almost invariably delivered muscle and warmth, including braised short ribs, dark, moist and rich without being fatty ($25); twin pork shanks dramatic in presentation and sweet in flavor, with carrots and parsnips ($19); and fantastic "fresh-egg" fettuccine with a homey and invigorating ragu of braised beef with beef stock, vegetables and red wine ($17.50).

The intensity and density of duck-leg confit with walnuts and golden raisins also was fitting for the season, even though not all the rich meat was as moist as it could have been ($15).

A few dishes could use some tweaking – spongy polenta fritters without corn flavor or graininess ($7); fish and chips wherein the fish was limp and its batter soggy, though the waffle chips were fresh and crispy ($13); a burger that while big and juicy was peculiarly sweet and overly salty ($12); and a creamy soup of chickpeas and pancetta that also suffered from too much salt ($6).

The cafe's homey desserts, prepared at Paragary Bakery along N Street, invariably were fresh and fitting for the season. They include, not surprisingly, a tall and fluffy "New York cheeseca