Sac Foodies

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Favorite food:

Savory: At the risk of sounding totally cliché, I am a cheese lover at heart. Take me to fondue and I’ll love you forever.
Sweet: Magic Cookie Bars . . . if you don’t know what those are then you’re missing out. And you should keep reading.

Favorite local restaurants (formal dining, ethnic, neighborhood bistro):

To me, local means Berkeley, so let’s start there:

Sandwiches: AG Ferarri on College Ave
Pizza: Cheese Board on Shattuck Ave
Sweets: Love at First Bite Bakery
Special Occasion: The Paragon at the Claremont Resort
Chinese: Shen Hua on College Avenue
Sushi: Kirala on Ward Street

As a recent returnee to the Sacramento area, I’m a rookie when it comes to actual local dining. I will share one Sacramento gem with you, Capital Tea Garden on T & 11th Streets – if you like dim sum then it’s a must! I’ve also fallen in love with the “Ziggy” roll at Kru on J Street.

Favorite dining experience of all time: There are too many to choose from! Ranging from a simple picnic to a fancy dinner out, the company that I’m eating with always seems to make or break any meal. With that in mind, there is one particular “dining experience” (if you can even call it that) that jumps to the forefront of my mind. It was mid-May of this year and all 65 of my housemates and I (welcome to sorority life) were anxiously anticipating the end of another school year. But for us seniors, the end meant a flurry of emotions that we had never previously encountered. The last day of class marked the beginning of an unknown and instead of celebrating like we should have, many of us felt overwhelmed with job searching and the steadily encroaching “real world.” That is, until I received a text message from my roommate Julia saying that she was on her way home with “wine, treats, and happiness.” And (not surprisingly) that’s all it took to turn our frowns upside down! She returned with an Andronico’s bag filled with brie, baguette, strawberries, and two bottles of Riesling . . . the perfect cure for an uncertain day and definitely one that I will revisit often.

Earliest food-related memory from childhood: My long term memory is like burned taste buds - bumpy and unreliable. But if I dig deep enough, I can remember decorating holiday sugar cookies from the day I arrived on this earth. It’s a past time that I’ve carried with me to this day; ask my friends - we celebrated our 21st birthdays and aggressively competed for “Most Creative Frosting Snowman Outfit” last year.

Most impressive dish you’ve whipped up using only ingredients on hand: Hmm, I guess I should try that sometime. Living at home with a family full of talented chefs and then whisking away to college, to spend four years living and eating in a sorority house that puts most restaurants to shame, hasn’t exactly inspired any spontaneous culinary adventures. This seems to be a year of firsts for me; however, so this answer will surely be updated in the near future.

Favorite family recipe: So many to choose from! Of all the gourmet treats I have been lucky enough to try, I always go back to my mom’s magic cookie bars (gently borrowed and modified from the back of a chocolate chip bag). There’s something about them that just screams “comfort food!”