The Abridged version:
- Innovative Mexican bakery and cafe No Sabo Concheria opened Sept. 14 in downtown Sacramento.
- Its owners, a group of native Mexicans and second- and third-generation Americans, stock the bakery with traditional items and creative inventions.
- Breakfast tacos, common in Texas but rarely seen in California, are created under a separate label called Drunken Tortilla.
The Rojas family had a traditional Mexican bakery for years. Their new concept is anything but.
No Sabo Concheria, the family’s new cafe and bakery, opened Sunday at 801 14th St. in downtown Sacramento. It’s heavily influenced by the tastes of Suzett Rojas Hernandez, who grew up in South Natomas after her parents immigrated from Mexico.
While No Sabo has classics such as vanilla conchas and house-roasted café de olla, its flagship items are from the minds of second-generation Americans. There are Danishes filled with Mexican vanilla custard, brisket hash breakfast tacos wrapped in housemade flour tortillas and chocolate mazapán lattes with orange blossom syrup, honey and oat milk.
“If you would have asked me last year, I never would have expected to put together Oaxacan cheese and Spam,” Rojas Hernandez said, describing a croissant on No Sabo’s menu. “… It’s been a bit drastic to see, but it’s definitely letting us be a lot more creative with our menu items, and it’s a lot more fun to come up with these different ideas and concepts.”
Second-generation and proud
No Sabo’s name itself is a play on that multifaceted identity. Latinos born in the United States who don’t speak Spanish are sometimes referred to as “no sabo kids,” a joke that intentionally uses a grammatically incorrect translation for “I don’t know” (“no sé” would be right). While Rojas and her brother Luis Jr. speak fluent Spanish, they’ve nonetheless been teased.
“We’ve been called ‘no sabo kids’ by older generations because, ‘oh, you’re born in the U.S., you’re not real Mexican,'” Rojas Hernandez said. “So we kind of took it upon ourselves to reclaim that, and it’s like, ‘you know what? Yeah, I am. So what?'”
Luis Rojas Sr. and Aire Hernandez immigrated from the Mexican state of Puebla 20 years ago, a year before Suzett was born. They eventually opened Galdy’s Bakery, a since-closed Northgate Boulevard panaderia where Suzett and Luis Jr. worked while growing up.
Suzett and Aire then both worked for Buckhorn BBQ + Grill, daughter in The UV shopping center near Arden Arcade and mom in the downtown location that now neighbors No Sabo. Most fast-casual Buckhorn salad-and-sandwich shops are owned by Full Tilt Hospitality, which also opened pan-Asian restaurant Buddha Bowls & Rolls on No Sabo’s other side last year. A second Buddha Bowls debuted in the California Natural Resources Agency building at Seventh and P streets in April.
Aire brought in homemade cakes for staff members’ birthdays, wowing Full Tilt partners Justin Fong and Nai Saeturn in the process (those cakes are still available upon advance order). The two sides struck up a deal about six months ago, and No Sabo began soft-launching its guava cream cheese croissants in Buddha Bowls’ CNRA location earlier this summer, along with Mexican-Asian creations such as ube- or pandan-crusted conchas.
No Sabo, Buddha Bowls and Buckhorn now share a dining room, decorated with a mural displaying cartoon versions of each restaurant. All food comes from a central kitchen as well.
Breakfast tacos, and more to come
There’s a fourth label involved, too: Drunken Tortilla, No Sabo’s line of breakfast tacos filled with scrambled eggs and potatoes in seven-inch flour tortillas, plus items such as linguiça, roasted poblanos or Sonoran-style chorizo. These tacos are popular in Texas, but scarcely found in California, where burritos largely take their place.
“Sacramento doesn’t have that many places, if any, that serve homemade flour tortillas that are smaller than your forearm,” said Fong, who opened three taquerias in Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut earlier in life. “I started asking people that worked for the company and my friends that are of Mexican descent, (and they said) it’s like a nostalgia thing. This is what your mom or your grandmother made you before you went to school.”
Drunken Tortilla will become a bigger part of No Sabo when lunch and dinner service begin in about six weeks. Look for chicken tingas, barbacoa and carnitas in the future, along with Asian fusion tacos, Fong said.
For now, No Sabo is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
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.