The Abridged version:
- The Pantry, a brunch restaurant in Roseville’s Palisades Plaza shopping center, melds American diner classics with Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian flavors.
- Chef Byron Hughes, who cooked at Kru and Canon before launching two different pop-up series, leads the kitchen.
- Owned by Havva Munir and Sofyan Abbasi, it’s the rare American breakfast house where Muslims can eat and drink everything on the menu.
Some people walk out of The Pantry upon learning it doesn’t offer mimosas or bellinis, chef Byron Hughes said. That’s OK: the halal brunch restaurant has plenty of customers without them.
The Pantry has become one of Roseville’s hottest weekend morning destinations thanks to Hughes’ cultivation of the most exciting, if not outright best, brunch program in Placer County. Opened in Palisades Plaza in December 2024, it seamlessly melds diner classics with Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian flavors.
“It’s American bones with this global inspiration that builds the flesh and the muscle and everything else for the body,” Hughes said. “We’re an American breakfast house. We have pancakes, waffles, French toast, egg Benedicts — all the things that you would expect to find at any American breakfast or brunch place. But we use global inspiration to paint the colors that you see.”
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There are the baklava pancakes ($18), cardamom-spiced rounds adorned with pistachios, orange blossom and honey. Turkish eggs ($18) come in a bright yogurt sauce with za’atar, chili crisp, herbs and pickled onions, with a thick paratha to scoop up the leftovers. “Pitaquiles” reimagine chilaquiles with fried naan chips topping the house shakshuka, finished with a yogurt sauce and herbs.
A mango lassi French toast special ($17) lifts off a purée made from prized Chaunsa mangoes, only available in India and Pakistan during the summer, with fresh mangoes and a cardamom yogurt drizzle on top. For something more savory, try the harissa hot chicken in a Nashville-esque sandwich or around a pair of Liège waffles. Looking to save some money? Try a $12 “green plate special” on weekday mornings
Grandma’s dishes and pumpkin chai pancakes
Havva Munir and Sofyan Abbasi opened The Pantry after returning from Miami, where Abbasi attended medical school. Munir’s father, Tariq, owns several Sacramento-area IHOP franchises, and both members of the couple managed locations before opening The Pantry.
Abbasi and Munir had to follow IHOP’s standard operating procedures and have the restaurants ready for surprise check-ins from Tariq and corporate employees, imparting a level of structure that they have carried over into their own restaurant. Both Muslims of Pakistani descent, they felt the Sacramento area was missing a family-friendly brunch spot with dishes related to those they grew up on.
“We try to incorporate a lot of things from our culture, our past, from things our grandmas used to make us back at home in Pakistan,” Abbasi said. “We’re just trying to bring that unique culture and flavor and mix it with classic American food.”
Take the pumpkin chai pancakes, customers’ favorite special of 2025, which will return to The Pantry’s menu on Sept. 1. Imagined as a wink at the Starbucks two doors down, they are pumpkin pancakes transformed with a true chai glaze — masala chai steeped in-house, mixed with cream and powdered sugar, then reduced. Pralines and a dollop of vanilla bean buttercream complete the spiced three-stack.
The desi omelet ($19) is somewhat of an exception, a common sight in Indian and Pakistani households rarely formalized into something that would appear on a restaurant menu. The Pantry’s take on the open-faced omelet (also known as a masala omelet) is stuffed with crushed red pepper, cilantro, onions, tomatoes and jalapeños and served with a paratha.
Read more: Inside Antalya Delights, the Sacramento region’s first Turkish café
From fine dining kitchens to brunch
Hughes’ culinary career began as a 19-year-old dishwasher thrust into emergency prep duty at The Golden Bear in Midtown Sacramento. He continued working in restaurants around Sacramento before leaving for Nashville, then the Bay Area, staging at two-Michelin-starred Lazy Bear and California cuisine pioneer Chez Panisse before graduating to higher kitchen jobs.
He returned to his hometown to help Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine make its 2016 move to East Sacramento, then cooked at fine dining neighbor Canon. Next were a pair of celebrated pop-up concepts: Last Supper Society, founded in 2018 with his friend Ryan Royster, and Restaurant XO, which Hughes launched with partner Mandy Lee last February.
Private chef and consulting gigs helped pay the bills between pop-ups, and Abbasi and Munir contracted him to help get The Pantry off the ground in late 2024. They brought him back for a second consultation in spring 2025. When that contract came to an end, they asked: What would it take for you to stay on full time?
Many chefs of Hughes’ caliber avoid cooking brunch, which Anthony Bourdain famously described as an overpriced dumping ground for leftover ingredients in his groundbreaking tell-all “Kitchen Confidential.” Some of that reluctance stems from “clopens,” Hughes said, where cooks close the restaurant at night and have to come back to work early the next morning — perhaps sporting bleary eyes or headaches from the time in between.
But The Pantry does not serve dinner, and with a 14-year-old son, daytime hours fit Hughes’ schedule better. Kitchens have evolved since Bourdain’s revelations in 2000, and The Pantry offered Hughes an opportunity to marry down-home and far-off foods “with the most intentionality,” he said.
“I had no plans, and no desire really, to do brunch,” Hughes said. “This plan was just to get them open, get them good and then get the hell out. But I started to find a little bit of home in this place, even during the consulting contract.”
When virgin mimosa and housemade soda programs floundered, Hughes recommend the owners bring in Andrew Calisterio, a well-known local industry pro who designed The Pantry’s new mocktail menu. Drinks such as The Woodsman (ginger beer, lime and maple syrup) or Guava Noir (guava juice, lime, black salt and mint), all $9, joined the menu alongside espresso beverages, teas, dirty sodas and fresh-squeezed orange juice and lemonade.
The bottomless mimosas and bacon-laden dishes of traditional brunch programs have not fully drawn in Sacramento-area Muslims, Abbasi said. With celadon walls, lots of natural light and a creekside patio, The Pantry gives them a full menu of options in an aesthetic upgrade from a traditional diner.
“In our culture, you know, nobody really wakes up early (to eat) and nobody really wants to go out to eat. But we wanted to give them a spot,” Abbasi said. “A lot of times you have different religious backgrounds, and everybody’s looking for a spot to eat. So we wanted to create a space where everybody can come and enjoy without having to sacrifice anything on the menu.”
The Pantry
Address: 1410 E. Roseville Parkway, Suite 140, Roseville
Phone: 916-222-1610
Hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily
Website: thepantryroseville.com
Vegetarian/vegan options: Roughly half the menu is vegetarian. Vegan options are significantly more limited, but adaptations can be made.
Drinks: No alcohol, but mocktails, Vaneli’s Handcrafted Coffee drinks, tea, juice and sodas.
Reservations: Not available, but you can join the waitlist online via Yelp.
