The Abridged Version
- Eldo Chophouse & Kitchen and EDH Casino run on one kitchen, meaning the same team sends out chicken Parmesan, steak frites and burgers to both the dining room and the card tables.
- Happy hour ties the two spaces together, with dishes like the $34 steak frites and $16 burger with fries.
- Owners Angelo Heropoulos and John Keller, along with chef Brock Macdonald, bring experience from their Bay Area restaurant group and Sacramento kitchens.
Eldo Chophouse & Kitchen and EDH Casino operate as two separate businesses, but rely on one kitchen.
Orders move with the same steady rhythm as poker chips on the tables next door, running between the dining room and the card room well into the night. Whether you’re having dinner at Eldo or walking straight into the card room, the food and cocktail program both come from the restaurant.
Eldo adjoins EDH Casino in El Dorado Hills’ La Borgata shopping center, a bright, polished space of light wood, marble tables and geometric shelving. The restaurant reads upscale at first glance, but the intent is far more relaxed.
Owners Angelo Heropoulos and John Keller built Eldo around a simple idea: a space for good food where guests don’t feel like they’ve stepped into something formal.
“My goal always has been this: give people a high-quality product at an affordable price, and they will keep coming,” Heropoulos said.
Plentiful happy hours
Happy hour, run twice a day in the restaurant with an all-day version on Mondays, helps make that possible. The card room follows its own schedule, serving the same happy hour menu from mid-afternoon until midnight, including the $34 steak frites and the $16 burger with fries.
Anyone who wants the full menu can get it at either place. That kind of access is intentional because staying open late matters here; Heropoulos knows many families end up grabbing fast food after practices or activities that run past dinner.
Those hours demand a kitchen that can move, and chef Brock Macdonald sets the pace. Sacramento diners know him from Beast + Bounty, LowBrau, and the private dinners he cooked for years.
Prominent cooks have graced the space
This space has a long local lineage. Macdonald worked here in his early 20s back when the building housed Masque Ristorante, and he remembers it as a place where many Sacramento cooks honed their skills before heading to kitchens Hawks Provisions and Public House, Mulvaney’s B&L or Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates.
Macdonald’s experience shapes one half of the operation. On the other, Heropoulos steers the bar program. He sets wine prices close to what you’d find at large retail bottle shops rather than using standard restaurant markups, which is why glasses like Rombauer Chardonnay or Whispering Angel often land at $10. It lines up next to a cocktail list with its own highlights, including the tart Smoked Passion (mezcal, passion fruit, habanero and lime).
Food described as ‘elevated comfort’
On the food side, Heropoulos often resets expectations. While guests assume Eldo is a traditional steakhouse because of its “chophouse” name, he’s pushing the concept as “elevated comfort” instead.
“We are not a steakhouse,” Heropoulos said. “We serve some great steaks, yeah, but if you look at our menu it’s a cool mix of a lot of different dishes.”
The move here is to start with something a little fun. The buttermilk fried chicken and cornbread bites ($22) come out sweet and salty from the hot honey and candied bacon, with the cornbread soft enough to soak it all in. If you want something lighter, the crispy nigiri rice bites ($22) lean bright, built around tuna, salmon and hamachi with a hint of citrus. The Caesar salad ($16) brings its own punch, with marinated anchovies and fried capers giving it real texture.
From there, you can go in any direction. The chicken parmigiana ($38) arrives with a skillet of pink vodka sauce served tableside. The eight-ounce Wagyu filet ($72) comes with truffle butter and peppercorn demi-glace. The Eldo burger ($22) is a classic preparation built on a Wagyu blend with American cheese and onion jam. For groups, the $250 Ranch Platter comes out swinging, a table-filling mix of steak, lamb, lobster and sides that turns the meal into an event.
“If it’s good and people want it, we keep it consistent,” Macdonald said.
Eldo looks to emphasize the hits
Eldo is an extension of The Hero Ranch Kitchen, Flowers and Dos Burros, the Saratoga group Heropoulos and Keller built over many years. Popular dishes keep regulars coming back to those restaurants, and in the group’s first foray outside the Bay Area, they’re hoping for more of the same.
“Owners want to make hits,” Macdonald said. “If you go see the Rolling Stones and they do not play ‘Satisfaction,’ what do you do? You burn the venue down.”
Eldo reaches its one-year mark on December 19th, a year that Heropoulos said was about keeping the operation tight. Year 2, he said, will give Macdonald room to explore.
“Now, I think, it is an opportunity for Brock to spread his wings and do some things that are a little bit outside of the discipline box we have been living in,” Heropoulos said.
The structure will stay the same. One kitchen supports both sides of the property, and the team treats the card room with the same standards as the dining room. That consistency is part of the draw. The result is a neighborhood restaurant where a late-night burger, an eight-ounce filet or a plate of Bolognese shows up at the table as easily as a fresh deck of cards.
Eldo Chophouse & Kitchen
Address: 3909 Park Drive, Suite 160, El Dorado Hills
Phone: 916-467-5100
Hours:
- Happy hour:
- Monday: 3–9 p.m.
- Tuesday–Sunday: 3–5 p.m.
- Dinner:
- Tuesday–Saturday: 5–9 p.m.
- Sunday: 5–8 p.m.
- Late-night bar:
- Friday–Saturday: 9 p.m.–12 a.m.
Website: eldochophouse.com
Reservations: Yes (OpenTable)
Vegetarian options: Salads, pasta, sides, rotating vegetable dishes
Drinks: Full bar
EDH Casino
Address: 3909 Park Dr., Suite 100, El Dorado Hills
Phone: 916-941-3100
Hours: Gaming: 10 a.m.–3 a.m. daily
Food service: Same happy hour menu from mid-afternoon to midnight
Website: https://www.edhcasino.com
Reservations: No
Drinks: Full bar service available
Notes: Operates as a separate business but uses the Eldo Chophouse’s kitchen
Keyla Vasconcellos is a Sacramento-based freelance journalist.