Forget beer. This Sacramento restaurant is known for its soup flights

The Abridged verison:

• Algo Bueno serves flights of three housemade soups on wooden boards, as at craft breweries.
• The Mexican restaurant on Northgate Boulevard adds three soups per month throughout “soup season” until there are 12 to choose from.
• Popular choices include birria, carne en su jugo and two types of pozole.

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Zenaida Rodriguez stirred a huge pot of sopa de albóndigas at Algo Bueno on Tuesday morning, its deep red hue forming the backdrop to herbs floating on the surface. Behind her, a fellow cook kneaded a mixture of pork, beef, rice, eggs and spices to make the meatballs for the Mexican soup’s next batch.

Customers can order full bowls of the albóndigas, but they’re more likely to order smaller portions. In its four years on Northgate Boulevard, Algo Bueno has become known for its soup flights, trios of 10-ounce cups presented on wood boards as at craft breweries.

Algo Bueno begins celebrating “soup season” in October, and adds three soups to its lineup each month through December. By January, customers can build their dream board of three from a list of 12 soups.

That can mean birria, menudo and red or green pozole on a board next to each other. There’s also carne en su jugo (a piquant green broth with beef and bacon), a simplified version of the seafood stew siete mares and chicken soup to wash away winter illnesses. Rodriguez bulks up the simple noodle soup sopa de viejo with chickpeas, avocado and queso fresco; with a lentil soup as well and an in-the-works vegetarian pozole, Algo Bueno customers will soon be able to construct meatless flights.

“A lot of people like it because they don’t want a whole bowl of one thing. They want to try different things, especially when they come for the first time,” Rodriguez said. “They say, ‘I want to taste everything.'”

Algo Bueno has dropped down to three-soup options come March in years past. Given the flights’ popularity, though, the owners plan to keep six to eight on the menu year-round going forward. A flight costs $21 for 30 total ounces, while 28-ounce bowls of one specific soup go for about $18.

Rodriguez owns Algo Bueno with her husband Candido, her son Marco and Marco’s wife Melina Jimenez, all of whom live together in a duplex a few blocks away in the neighborhood where Jimenez was raised.

None of them had cooked professionally before starting Algo Bueno as a catering business in 2017; Candido was a truck driver, Marco was a diesel mechanic and Zenaida and Jimenez both worked in childcare. Today, Zenaida anchors the kitchen, Marco and Jimenez run the business side and Candido is the handyman who contributes recipes for carnitas and tortas.

Zenaida Rodriguez moved from Jalisco to Tijuana to East Los Angeles before she and Candido settled in Half Moon Bay, where Marco grew up asking for albóndigas instead of cake to celebrate his December birthday. After retiring from their previous careers, she and Candido relocated to the neighborhood where Jimenez was raised, and catered an extended family member’s wedding rehearsal dinner. When guests asked for their business cards, they figured it might be time to make them.

Rodriguez now leads a small team of cooks dipping shrimp in a housemade beer batter. Tortillas, tostadas and salsas are made in-house, along with three flavors of Michelada mix and the beef jerky that accompanies one of them. Cooks hand-peel nearly 200 dried peppers for each 75-pound batch of birria, which includes 20 total ingredients and mirrors what they might make for a loved one’s quinceañera.

“We cook as if we’re doing it for an event or our family. She’s cooking it like if her kids are coming, her grandkids are going to come eat at home,” Marco Rodriguez said.

Algo Bueno also offers sampler platters for tacos, chilaquiles and finger food appetizers. But Marco’s videos showing off the soup flights have drawn particular attention on Instagram and TikTok, where Algo Bueno has more than 45,000 combined followers.

The restaurant will celebrate its fourth anniversary all day Saturday with live music, lowrider cars and pop-up vendors in addition to soup. Other top sellers include a surf-and-turf quesadilla with shrimp and birria, and the AB shrimp taco with guacamole, a cheese skirt and housemade Baja-style creamy sauce.

Algo Bueno

Address: 2990 Northgate Blvd., Sacramento

Phone: 916-692-8370

Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-midnight Friday, 8 a.m.-midnight Saturday, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday

Website: None, but active on Instagram (@algobuenoofficial916)

Vegetarian/vegan options: Several, including two (soon to be three) soups

Drinks: Full bar with choice tequilas, more than half of which have no additives. Cafe de olla, Mexican Coke and Jarritos among nonalcoholic drinks.

Reservations: Available by phone

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.