Inside the Sacramento region’s lone Venezuelan restaurant

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.

I’m always drawn to restaurants that are the sole brick-and-mortar representative for their cuisine in the Sacramento region. As a customer, it’s a novel experience tasting food you’d have to travel far to get elsewhere. But I’m also thinking of the business owner and employees, who — whether they’d like to or not — become de facto culinary ambassadors to the area’s 2.2 million residents, and easy hubs for people with shared backgrounds living nearby.

That’s the case with Chamos Kitchen, the Sacramento region’s lone Venezuelan restaurant. It has the challenge and opportunity of introducing people like me to dishes such as pepitos, street sandwiches somewhere between tortas and hot dogs that are loaded with meat, cheese, iceberg lettuce and thin fries, then finished with a hearty ketchup drizzle. It also served as a donation center after the two June 24 earthquakes that killed 5,000 people in Venezuela and caused an estimated $19.6 billion in damage. And, I’ll note given the impending heat wave, it has a couple of coolers with ice pops and chocolate-covered bananas in addition to take-home pastries.

Elsewhere in today’s City of Treats, I’ve leaned on cool spring rolls as an escape from the summer heat. Zoe Barrie has a new, similarly chilled recipe highlighting the cucumbers presently growing in home gardens. And a new East Sacramento pizza spot offers three styles of pies, none of them common in our area.

Let’s dig in.

Benjy’s Bites

Chamos Kitchen | 1810 E. Main St., Suite 102, Woodland | 510-444-9891

Several things might catch your eye upon walking into Chamos Kitchen: a display case of Funko Pops, an arcade and foosball table, a boba program left over from the building’s previous tenant. But here’s the real selling point: It’s the Sacramento region’s only Venezuelan restaurant.

Founded last year in Plaza Woodland shopping center, Chamos is your destination for nine types of arepas ($9-$14), corn pockets stuffed with proteins such as reina pepiada (a chicken-avocado salad created to celebrate the first Venezuelan woman winning Miss World in 1955). The menu leans on street eats such as loaded hot dogs or pastelitos andinos ($12 for three), Andean-born square pastries with beef and cheese wrapped in a sweet dough and served with an avocado crema.

But you’ll also find the national dish pabellón criollo ($20), a plate of shredded beef, rice, black beans with pork hunks, sliced avocado and sweet plantains. It’s the three primary colonial-era cultures on one plate (indigenous, Spanish and African), and a rare opportunity to taste such a dish around here.

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.

I’m doing everything I can to avoid turning on the stove or oven these summer days. This week that meant spring rolls, a delightfully crisp, cold and healthy option easily adaptable to what one has on hand. My partner Abbey did the prep Thursday for a craft night with her friends, and I reaped the benefits in lunches and dinners all weekend.

We filled rice paper with combinations of sesame-ginger-marinated tofu, avocado, mint and cilantro, with green onions and julienned cucumbers from loved ones’ gardens. Abbey whipped up an incredible peanut dipping sauce with rice vinegar, sambal oelek, soy sauce and garlic, which had me scraping the bowl with a spoon even after the last spring roll had been eaten.

In the news

Wine tasting in Lodi? End your visit at Jimmy’s, the town’s new Italian supper club. Jim Murdaca owned famed Italian restaurant Pietro’s in the same space for four decades before moving it to another Lodi development; now his son Pete has opened a tribute to his father in his stead. Look for Italian American appetizers, a raw bar, ice-cold martinis and two-person steaks.

People typically associated Sacramento summer produce with melons, stone fruit and berries, but it’s peak season for the humble cucumber as well. Zoe Barrie’s latest Cooking in Season recipe is for miso ginger smashed cucumber salad, a riff on the Chinese dish pai huang gua. 

Happening this week

• Fabulist Pizza opened July 21 at 3269 Folsom Blvd. in East Sacramento, replacing Café Caprichio. Owned by Andrew Tescher and Stacey Johnson, who ran pop-ups under the Side Hustle Pizza moniker over the past six years, it serves thin Roman pies, fluffy Sicilian grandma-style pan pizzas and twice-baked pizza pala Romana ovals.
• Taqueria La Perla Tapatia opened last Wednesday at 3221 Zinfandel Drive, Suite 1 in Rancho Cordova. With an original location in Arden Arcade, two more on the way in South Sacramento and Elk Grove and sister restaurant Taqueria La Nueva Vallarta operating in Northgate, Roseville and Lodi, it’s a growing empire of mariscos and more.
• NorCal Makers’ FriYay Night Market will pop up at Roseville’s Mahany Park from 5-9 p.m. this Friday. The second of three summer night markets (next up is Aug. 21), it’ll have more than 50 vendors hawking food, crafts, clothes and more.