The Abridged version:
- These nine Sacramento restaurants’ appetizers are must-orders at the start of your meal.
- Contributor Becky Grunewald’s list includes tenured favorites such as The Waterboy’s veal sweetbreads, and newer classics such as Kodaiko’s shrimp toast.
- Think she missed one? Submit your appetizer of choice in the box at the bottom of the story.
We’ve all experienced this: you are at a restaurant that you already know you like. You get drinks, appetizers, maybe a salad, all stellar. Then your entrée (usually a slab of protein) arrives and it’s … lackluster.
You saw away at your aged ribeye or harissa-roasted chicken for bite after bite, and wish you were still eating those scintillating little pre-entrée snacks. Why not dispense with the entrée altogether and just load up on starters? That’s the idea driving the increasing popularity of small-plates restaurants.
Regardless of trends, apps will always be the move. Here are nine Sacramento classics. Read through them all, then nominate another at the bottom for consideration in a future story.
Veal sweetbreads from The Waterboy
2000 Capitol Ave.
“Sweetbread” is such an innocuous name for a part of the animal that some may find challenging: the thymus and pancreas glands. Unlike other offal such as liver or tripe, sweetbreads have no distinctive, divisive flavor; their notable character is a soft texture and mild, white-meat flavor.
As presented at The Waterboy, the umami of the dish is ramped up with mushrooms and bacon, and cloaked in a rich French demi-glace cut with Marsala cooking wine. This labor-intensive dish yields a few rich and savory bites, and has been a must-order for the past 29 years.
“It’s very classic. Like you can’t get more classic. We still make demi-glace here, which doesn’t happen anymore,” owner Rick Mahan said. “It’s the second word they say after ‘Waterboy.'” $23
Fritto misto from OneSpeed
4818 Folsom Blvd.
OneSpeed is Mahan’s other restaurant, but this list will not just be his greatest hits, I promise! Fritto misto (literally “mixed fry” in Italian) as presented through the California cuisine lens of Mahan, is a fried-to-order platter of veggies, prawns, and most fun of all: thin lemon slices and anchovy-stuffed green olives.
Mahan attributes the lightness of the fry to a technique he picked up many years ago from the James Beard-awarded Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. “All of the things that go into the fritto go into a bowl and get drizzled with buttermilk and a little salt and pepper, mixed up very lightly, dusted with flour, a little semolina, and fried and that’s about it,” he said. With housemade aioli on the side, it’s a perfectly shareable platter. $18
Yu Kwok dumplings from Frank Fat’s
806 L St.
I don’t know how these deep-fried beef and pork dumplings can so vividly evoke the taste of a hamburger, but they do. I’ve always suspected that the accompaniment by a tray of dipping sauces that includes ketchup is a nod to this. Kevin Fat, CEO of Frank Fat’s and grandson of the founder, confirmed that “deep fried hamburger” is a common impression, and that some of his friends also compare them to various addictive substances.
According to him, these dumplings have been on the menu since the 1940s (the restaurant opened in 1939) and until the 80s they contained beef, pork and chicken liver. These dumplings were originally developed to use up extra cuts of meat, and more than 80 years in, they’re still one of Frank Fat’s signature dishes. $17.25
Shrimp toast from Kodaiko Ramen & Bar
718 K St.
Shrimp toast is a classic appetizer that originates from Hong Kong. Chef Takumi Abe grew up eating shrimp toast at dim sum in the Bay Area, so when Kodaiko opened, he developed a version with then-chef de cuisine Evan Perlick.
In the Kodaiko iteration, housemade Japanese-style milk bread is topped with a mousse of shrimp, garlic, ginger and green onion, which is then coated in panko and deep-fried. It’s finished with tobiko for crunch, lemony Kewpie mayonnaise and a showering of smoky bonito flakes. Abe laughed that his staff knows that he puts bonito flakes on everything, and said their addition on the app “kind of put it into the Japanese realm from being a Chinese or Hong Kong dish.” $14
Krispy rice from Binchoyaki
2226 10th St.
Navigating Binchoyaki’s menu can put one a bit at sea. It starts with 25+ of their signature skewers (grilled over binchotan charcoal, hence the name), and then tacks between ramen, sushi, bento boxes, curry, katsu and more. The krispy rice is a port in a storm; start there.
Each of the four rice rectangles is hefty and dense, so one order can serve two to four people quite nicely. Seasoned sushi rice is deep-fried and then topped with a spicy tuna/Kewpie mayo mixture and crowned with a single serrano slice. You can up the tang already lent by the mayo and sushi rice and dunk it in housemade ponzu. It’s the texture that makes it an enduring classic — the tooth-sticking, chewy fried exterior of the rice is just fun as hell to bite into. $23
Bánh bèo from Quán Nem Ninh Hòa
6450 Stockton Blvd.
Appetizers at Vietnamese restaurants often arrive after the mains, and Quán Nem was no exception on a recent visit. This restaurant specializes in roll-your-own cuốn (rice paper rolls), usually filled with nem nướng (grilled pork patties), and the boat-shaped platter this dish is served in will be visible on almost every table.
But a platter of bánh bèo is a welcome addition. Bánh bèo are darling steamed rice cakes served in a palm-sized, shallow dish. They are 10 to an order and served warm, topped with bright orange dried shrimp, chives, and dried garlic. Sweet fish sauce is served on the side so that you can drizzle a bit over each dish and spoon the whole thing into your mouth at once. Each bite is a delightful flavor and texture journey. $10
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Smoked salmon with Irish brown bread from Mulvaney’s B&L
1215 19th St.
On Mulvaney’s B&L’s ever-changing menu, this appetizer is the one of only dishes that doesn’t budge, besides the fancified “Ding Dong” dessert. This app is cutely presented with a thin layer of cold-smoked salmon blanketing the plate and little piles of minced capers, red onion and egg, with the yolk and the white mounded separately.
The crumbly brown bread is an unusual touch, inspired by chef/owner Patrick Mulvaney’s first cooking job in Ireland. Non-yeasted quick bread is made with whole wheat there, as at Mulvaney’s B&L.
“Just like the plate and combination says comfort to me, it appears to have said the same to folks over the last 20 years,” he said. $18
Chicken drumsticks from Canon
1719 34th St.
My favorite way to dine at Canon is to sit at the bar and order several small plates to go with a cocktail. Canon could really have two entries on this classic appetizer list: both the tater tots with mole and the chicken drumsticks with urfa biber chili sauce, are always on the menu, and both are fun, piquant and pleasing to the eye.
Forced to pick one for the sake of the list, I’ll choose the chicken, but I’ll often order both. The two chicken drumsticks lean against each other chummily, resting on a pool of yogurt sauce. All of the work that a bone-in piece of chicken can present (exhausting, who has the energy?) is alleviated because they are Frenched — a technique that strips all but the meat from the bone and pushes it down to the other end creating a lollipop-like effect. They’re then cooked confit, which leads to succulent meat that yields to the lightest touch of a fork. Chilies bring smoke and lingering heat to the dish, which is tempered by the creamy yogurt sauce. $13
Pork and beef meatball from Masullo
2711 Riverside Blvd.
Masullo’s meatball is big and beautiful, served blanketed with bright tomato sauce. And Masullo’s meatball is soft, like a meat pillow. Chef/owner Robert Masullo attributed the texture to the large proportion of ricotta and bread in the mix.
“Too many meatballs are mostly meat and lack in the better texture,” Masullo said. “These are modeled by the stuff my dad and grandmother before him always made at home, tweaked a bit to work within the restaurant confines.”
One fun tweak: Masullo’s cooks grind in trimmings from the restaurant’s pizza toppings, which means a varying mix of prosciutto, mortadella and salami depending on the batch. A 2 ½ hour braise in the tomato sauce is the final step. Asked whether it will stay on the menu, Masullo said, “It’s hard to be an Italian American restaurant in the vein we are in and not have a meatball. People kind of expect it.” $9
Becky Grunewald is a freelance journalist in the Sacramento region.