You've been warned.
Ever since I moved to Sac in 2011, people have been all, "you have GOT to try a Friday night dinner at Sampino's! There's one a month, do it do it do ittttt."
Samps is a restaurant pretty close to the newsroom. It's tiny, but family owned and operated, and delicious. My first introduction involved a meatball sammy for lunch -- and although I'd never been inclined to go that route before, the sando came highly recommended and just ... yep. Worth it. Devoured it then, have re-visited several times since and it's just perfection. Without fail. I won't even try anything else on the menu.
So, I soon learned that 'Friday night dinner' means the restaurant closes down to the public (or maybe it's not open that late anyway), and accepts like, 20-30 people for a private event. Samps rolls out a huge looooong table, and you make new friends and share a 55-course dinner together. You can bring your own wine or buy a bottle there, although we just ended up purchasing since I thought $20 in corkage was a little high. (Well, my bottle only cost $24, so.)
Anyway, after Samps had to cancel on us two months in a row, I was feeling like it might never happen.
But it happened.
G and I went to FND last week and it was about as incredible as I expected. If you're anywhere near Sactown, you've got to do this.
Here's the deal: You get there at like, 6, sit down and munch on some pepperoncini and bread/balsamic (I think other people ate cold cheese and olives too? That's not really my thing). You make friends with your tablemates and pop bottles. If you're me, you've been fasting for this (well, nearly), so you probably eat too much bread while waiting for the first course.
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| Jimmers! |
Then you get soup. In this case, potato leek. Which sounds boring but it wasn't. It was super creamy and flavorful and YUM. Nothing came out in huge portions, but they definitely weren't small, either.
As I look back on the meal, I keep coming back to the soup. Wish I had the recipe to re-make that exact batch! Drooling, brb.
Anyway, next up was something called timbale, according to Samps' FB page. Which included puff pastry, penne pasta, meatballs, eggs, salami, mushroom, marinara, grana padano and mozzarella (good thing they listed the menu on social meds, yo).
This was like, can you picture a roll-cake? Like a pumpkin roll or a jelly roll? This was that. In savory form, You just got a small slice. Of like, pizza/calzone/goodness. Again, wonderful. A little weird looking, but wonderful.
THENNNNNN it was risotto time. (Luckily, a WAY smaller portion!) Wild mushroom and black truffle. I realized in this dish that I've never made a successful risotto. It was one of those, "Oh, is this what it's supposed to taste like?" moments.
Was getting full.
For the main course, we ordered one cioppino and one prime rib. We figured we'd split. Cioppino is like a seafood stew (expect this time it was over egg noodles) and PR is G's all-time fav.
As it turned out, they left the cioppino with him and the meat with me and it just kind of stayed that way. We traded a few bites but ... we were busy digging in. My PR came out with a lovely horseradish sauce and before I knew it, I was done.
Ugh but getting SO FULL now.
So, next we got a salad. Toward the end of the meal, weird, right? Apparently not, I guess it's a very European thing to do. It was arugula and roasted beets and I skipped the beets but thought the arugula and citrus dressing were pretty light and refreshing.
We finished up with a bread pudding/pecan gelato. By this point, I seriously needed someone to roll me outta there. The woman who had been sitting next to us was out for a neighborhood walk. We. Were. Stuffed.
So, I'd do it again! And I obviously recommend the experience to anyone in or rolling through NorCal. Sac is the Farm-to-Fork capital of the world right now, and this meal kinda proved it.
I think it came out to about $50 or $60 each, but that included wine. And like I mentioned (once or twice), included an F TON of food. Get on it!
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