The Abridged version:
- Bocce, chef Joe Pruner’s first solo restaurant, opens Tuesday in East Sacramento’s former V. Miller Meats space.
- The counter-service menu includes sandwiches, pastas, salads and pizza by the slice, alongside take-home meal kits.
- Beer and wine are expected within the next month or two, and Sunday hours are possibly coming later.
Joe Pruner spent the summer drawing long lines at pop-ups for his upcoming restaurant, Bocce Ristorante, including a final round this past weekend. Word spread through the restaurant’s Instagram page, with each pop-up serving as a preview of what was coming at the grand opening Tuesday.
The concept lands somewhere between a deli and a sit-down spot, with a once-a-month supper club planned for a day when Bocce is normally closed. It is built around counter service, though a few tables will be available for anyone who wants to sit down during regular hours.
The menu evolved with each pop-up over the summer. Early sandwiches included a hand-pulled mozzarella, a meatball sub built on fontina-stuffed smoked meatballs and a chicken parm smash. By the final weekend before opening, the lineup had grown to include a beef dip, a crispy pork belly sandwich and pastas like a pappardelle with roasted corn and Calabrian chilies, plus pizza by the slice or whole.
“The plan is to have four of each of those on the menu at all times,” Pruner said of the sandwiches, pastas, salads and pizza. “Two of which from each category kind of stay the same.”
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Deli salads, antipasti and family dinners
At the final pop-up, the cold case included deviled eggs “carbonara,” housemade sauces like marinara and alfredo, insalata tricolore, roasted olives, braised white beans, burrata caprese and a lemon dill potato salad. Pruner also plans a ready-made family dinner for pickup Tuesday through Friday, priced between $60 and $70 for up to four people.
Although Bocce is not opening on Sundays right away, Pruner’s eventual plan is a Sunday dinner built around meatballs, raviolis, Sunday gravy, garlic bread, a salad and minestrone soup.
“The whole idea is like Olive Garden. Soup, salad and bread,” Pruner said. “But with entrees, and people can pick it up.”
A small antipasti program will rotate three cured meats and three cheeses at a time, priced as a fixed plate rather than sold by the pound. Pruner plans to source most ingredients locally, importing only where it’s necessary, like Pecorino Romano and French cheeses.
Bocce originally aimed for a mid-July opening at the former home of V. Miller Meats butcher shop, but inspection delays pushed that back. It’s still waiting on a beer and wine license, so the drink list leans on housemade Italian soda syrups, San Pellegrino and imported sparkling fruit flavors instead.
The name “Bocce” came to Pruner as he drove his daughters to lacrosse practice next to East Portal Park, he said. The East Sacramento park is known for its bocce courts, home of the East Portal Bocce Club, and the name stuck with Pruner.
“I never thought I’d be opening an Italian restaurant,” Pruner said. “But when I started thinking about the concept, I was trying to think of a name that was whimsical and fun, that people had recognition with, but they didn’t really have a personal experience with unless they played bocce ball.”
Decades in kitchens, with a starring role still to come
Pruner already feels at home in the neighborhood, with his daughters’ school just up the street and his own house a couple of turns away.
He has spent two decades in Sacramento kitchens, starting as a 16-year-old working catering at The Kitchen. After time away, including a stretch in San Luis Obispo and a year in Portland, he came back to Sacramento and took jobs at OneSpeed and Sutter Street Steakhouse around the same time. He later worked at Mulvaney’s B&L and Empress Tavern, among other restaurants, before taking on executive chef roles at Allora and now-closed Woodlake Tavern.
His own restaurant is not the only thing new this summer. The chef is also taking on his biggest Tower Bridge Dinner role yet.
He worked the first two editions of Visit Sacramento’s annual farm-to-fork event early in his career, then stepped away for years as other jobs and restaurant openings pulled him elsewhere every September. He returned two years ago to run the event’s commissary kitchen, did it again last year, and was asked at the end of that dinner if he would be interested in taking on a lead role. This year, he said yes.
Pruner described this year’s dinner as honoring the immigrant groups who shaped the Sacramento Valley, with dishes representing Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, South American, Italian and Portuguese cooking. He described the Sacramento River as the thread connecting the people who have lived off it, then and now.
Bocce Ristorante
Address: 4801 Folsom Blvd., Suite 2, East Sacramento
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday
Website: https://www.instagram.com/bocce916/
Vegetarian options: Hand-pulled mozzarella sandwich, insalata tricolore, pappardelle, summer squash pizza, burrata caprese, lemon dill potato salad
Drinks: Housemade Italian sodas, San Pellegrino, imported sparkling fruit flavors. Beer and wine expected within a month or two of opening.
Reservations: None, counter service
