Sacramento’s culinary icon, Biba Caggiano, offers her own seasoned view. “When people see a new restaurant, they want to go. See it, taste it. The only reason you’re going to keep them is based on what’s on the plate.” Cookbook author, syndicated TV show host, and multiaward winning chef and owner of
Biba Restaurant, 2801 Capitol Ave., her enthusiasm for Sacramento and its dining public has not waned after almost two decades at the stove. “I’ve always welcomed competition; it’s good for everyone. It means you’re not going to do the same dishes you did a few years ago. You have to use your brain and get in the kitchen and test dishes more than you’ve ever done.”
As with Mahan at The Waterboy, Caggiano also credits a well-traveled populace, along with the plethora of books, magazines and TV shows dedicated to food with hastening a tremendous advance of local taste buds. Through constantly changing menus, she figures her customers’ knowledge and willingness to try new things has risen 60 percent to 70 percent over the past few years.
New dishes she would not have done years ago, such as salt cod, sweetbreads or kidneys, join her classic pastas, made daily by hand, gremolata-topped braised veal shanks, grilled New York steaks with rosemary-sage oil and homemade gelato. “It’s about time Sacramento is growing up. If I wasn’t pushing 70, I probably would get out there and do something else!”
Sustainable Trend? A newly sensitized collective palate notwithstanding, Sacramento hovers in the middle of the food-appreciation totem pole, with the fast-food crowd at one end and the foie gras clique at the other. Chefs point out that the cuisine fails to live up to promises at a large number of restaurants and that critics are more snob than substance, both of which make it harder for the public to recognize and appreciate the excellent work that is being done here.
But across the country, chefs are taking notice of what’s happening and are eager to get in on the ground floor of what they see as a coming restaurant boom in Sacramento. Similar to Kansas City (yes, Kansas City, highlighted recently in Food & Wine Magazine) the county’s rapid pace of relatively affordable housing developments, and the need for support services for those moving here indicate that now is the time to stake ground.
“When I talk to my fellow chefs, they’re psyched,” says Mason’s Wang with enthusiasm. “That’s why they’re coming here. The market is wide open for nice places. The more nice places, the more cachet Sacramento has, the more people will want to come. It’s part of a cycle. The city is very much on the day of its rise right now.”
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