The following is from City of Treats, a food and drink newsletter by Abridged Senior Food Editor Benjy Egel. Want it sent directly to your inbox? Sign up here.
One woman took over her family’s farm, and grew it into Placer County’s largest organic operation. One began growing food during the early months of the pandemic to support her café. One enrolled in a farmer-training program when she and her husband became empty-nesters, and now grows specialty peppers for some of Sacramento’s hottest restaurants.
More than 45,000 California women are agricultural producers, according to state data. Women operate or help operate 63% of farms throughout California, more than in any other major agricultural state. And for all the challenges California farmers face — water supply and labor costs among them — 13% more women are now in the field than a decade ago. That’s the crux of Keyla Vasconcellos’ latest story, delivered two days after National Women in Agriculture Day.
Elsewhere in today’s newsletter, I tucked into family-made spaghetti at an Italian restaurant in Rosemont and homemade lentil curry on a weekend trip. Zoe Barrie is back with a bright salad recipe, key ingredients for which can be sourced from your local farmers market. And the first-ever “Yolofest” will celebrate food, wine and more in the agricultural county next weekend.
Let’s eat!
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Benjy’s Bites
Ippolito’s Trattoria | 9500 Micron Ave., Sacramento | 916-454-1908
So many Sacramento-area restaurants are family affairs, but few as much as Ippolito’s Trattoria. The Italian restaurant in Rosemont’s Bradshaw Square shopping center was founded in 2022 in memory of Sabrina Ippolito’s son Kristopher, who died earlier that year. Kristopher’s framed photo hangs in the kitchen, in which Sabrina and her husband Nick now work along their other kids and stepkids. Even the three-panel mural of Venice on the southern wall was painted by Nick’s cousin Lucía González Ippolito.
There’s care in the food, too, including the best-selling Tuscan chicken and shrimp pasta ($25). Curling casarecce catches sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and no small amount of garlic in a zingy tomato-cream sauce. The noodles are freshly made, as with the spaghetti carbonara ($22), which retains some pleasant chewiness in the face of a surprisingly light sauce.
Egel’s Nest
I live, play and cook in this community just like you. This recurring section is a window into my life outside of restaurants and bars, always with a food and/or drink angle.
Many of my winter weekends are spent in Tahoe Donner cabins with my partner Abbey’s family, chasing snow that’s been unfortunately elusive over the past few months. Whether it’s powder or slush, we always end the day with a bubbling pot of something hearty made by her parents, along with a beer or seltzer in the hot tub.
Last Friday, it was a simmering lentil curry over rice. Saturday was a buffet of ground chicken, refried beans, salsas and other fixings, which we piled into burritos, tostadas and hard-shell tacos. Both dinners yielded happy customers, and plenty of easy-to-reheat leftovers for next-day lunches.
In the news
Localis chef/owner Chris Barnum-Dann will open four new businesses in the next year, he told Abridged last week. Betty Wine Bar + Bistro will expand to East Sacramento, and Barnum-Dann open a tapas/pintxos bar, a market and a high-end wine shop on the ground floor of a new Broadway apartment building.
California is the nation’s leading farming state for farming; it’s also the leading state for female farmers. Women make up a higher percentage of the farming population than in any other major agricultural state, and that number has only grown over the past decade. Keyla Vasconcellos spoke to a handful of female farmers around the Sacramento area about how and why they got into the trade.
Zoe Barrie’s latest Cooking In Season recipe, a Meyer lemon salmon salad, combines winter citrus with spring freshness. You can make it ahead of time for a next-day lunch, or add crusty sourdough or white beans to round out a dinner. Grilling the salmon and asparagus is recommended, but not required.
Happening this week
- The first annual Yolofest, a countywide celebration of food, wine and more, takes place Friday-Sunday. Businesses such as Polestar Farm (Esparto), Berryessa Gap Vineyards (Winters) and the Center for Land-Based Learning (Woodland) will dish out tours and tastes throughout the weekend.
- Can’t make it to Yolo County over the weekend? Check out Full Belly Farm & Kitchen, a new cookbook from the Guinda family farm released earlier this month and now available in Sacramento-area bookstores. The hyper-seasonal guide to eating in this region (it’s broken into sections such as “early fall” and “midsummer”) comes endorsed by esteemed cookbook author Mark Bittman and former Chez Panisse chef Cal Peternell, among others.
- The Sacramento region’s latest Yemeni coffee shop, Haute Coffee, began its soft opening Monday at 4000 Foothills Blvd., Suite 130 in Roseville. Launched in Florida in 2023, its first foray out of state includes expansion plans to Sacramento and Elk Grove as well.
Benjy Egel is the senior food editor at Abridged. Born and raised in the Sacramento region, he has covered its local restaurants and bars since 2018. He also writes and edits Abridged’s weekly food and drink newsletter, City of Treats.