Courtesy of Downtown Sacramento Partnership

Best Bright Lights for the Bold City

Build it and they will come. That was the idea behind the new 20-foot-tall Old Sacramento Waterfront sign that flickered to life for the first time in June atop the California State Railroad Museum, beckoning motorists to pull off the interstate and back in time, à la Radiator Springs. Commissioned by Downtown Sacramento Partnership (in collaboration with California State Parks, the California State Railroad Museum and Foundation, and the Harvego Family Foundation), the sign was designed by Bill Dickson of the locally based Pacific Neon Company and fabricated with “cutting-edge faux neon LED lighting.” The “tracks” are a hat tip to Sacramento’s historic role as the western starting point of the Transcontinental Railroad, and the blue waves a minimalist reference to our two rivers. The coloring for our city’s name is, of course, a nod to the Gold Rush. Personally, we’re suckers for beautiful and brightly lit wayfinding signage. So, Bold Sacramento, here we come. —Rob Turner

Photos by Max Whittaker

Best Way to Keep the Doctor Away

Around this time every year, you may find yourself thinking, “Well, how about them apples?” That’s because while Labor Day weekend may signal the unofficial end of summer, for Sacramentans, it also happily marks the start of Apple Hill season. We can’t wait to make our annual pilgrimage this fall and hit our “must” spots like Rainbow Orchards (for warm, made-to-order, melt-in-your-mouth apple cider doughnuts), Delfino Farms (for cinnamony handheld Walkin’ Pies), Denver Dan’s (for sweet jams in flavors like apple mint), and Abel’s Apple Acres (for to-die-for apple pie caramel apples and buttermilk apple pies). There’s Golden Delicious in them thar hills—not to mention Granny Smith, Pink Lady and McIntosh—and we’re thankful to the core. applehill.com —Elyssa Lee

Photo by Jeremy Sykes

Best Way to Go Rolling on the River

What’s the news? Don’t know. Who’s trending? Don’t care. Nothing seems urgent or important when your phone is sealed in a dry bag and you’re floating down a lazy river. Tubing on the Lower American—a serene escape full of elegant herons, curious ducks, and soothing nature around every bend—is a regional rite of passage, but until now, you needed to organize your own gear and car shuttle, hassles that can seriously harsh your mellow. Enter Rancho Cordova’s American River Raft Rentals, the family business that’s been offering its namesake watercraft for 48 years. In June, it smoothed out the bumps by adding a new float option that caters to those who would rather chill on a tube. Start at the company’s home base near Sunrise Boulevard and South Bridge Street, where you can collect your inner tube, life jacket and one-handed paddle (to help with steering), and then walk to the water’s edge and drift away. When you get to the end of your go-with-the-flow adventure at River Bend Park, you can hop on the provided shuttle for a quick trip back to your car. A tranquil float and a sweet ride? Peace out. raftrentals.com —Sean Timm

Best Trip to Middle Earth

It’s time for second breakfast, Hobbits, so grab a ham, Brie and fig jam hand pie and a cup of Halfling Tea (with steamed almond milk, cinnamon and caramel), and fuel up for an epic quest at downtown’s There and Back Cafe. Ross and Heidi Rojek, who also own the nearby Capital Books, opened this fantasy-themed, Lord of the Rings-inspired board-game cafe in February. In the 10-table back room, you can play everything from Clue to Catan (there are five versions to choose from) while you indulge in creative and heartwarming food—rustic Shire-cuterie boards adorned with locally sourced quail eggs steal the show. The ever-evolving menu also boasts a coterie of avocado toasts, flatbreads and hand pies so good that you’ll be whispering, “My Precious” over every last crumb. thereandback.cafe —S.T.

Best Mixed Bags

Book lovers already know there is no end to the surprises awaiting them between two covers, but the Elk Grove bookstore A Seat at the Table has turned the delight up to 11 with its new, cleverly themed Mystery Bags. Each brown paper sack—stapled shut against curious eyes and prying fingers—contains a popular, hand-picked title (or two), a gift item like a candle or stuffed toy, an edible or imbibable treat (think cookies to crumble or tea to steep), and occasionally a $5 store gift card. The bags have been flying off the shelf since they were introduced on Instagram in June. Offerings have included “The Super Bag” for comic fans, or “An Evening with Agatha” for those looking to double the intrigue, and “Tweenage Dream” for bookish pre-teens. At $15 to $30 each (aka up to 50% off retail),we call that a bargain wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. aseatatthetablebooks.org —S.T.

Photo by Anna Wick

Best Reason to Break Bread

Organic unbleached wheat flour, water, rosemary, Meyer lemon zest, olive oil, yeast, sea salt. Auburn’s The Baker and the Cakemaker combines these seven simple ingredients to create its simply sublime Meyer lemon rosemary sourdough bread that’s salty-crunchy on the outside and pillowy and flavorful on the inside. How sublime? One Tripadvisor reviewer from Stockton says they drive an hour and a half to get hold of what they call the “Best Bread Ever!” Luckily, we don’t have to trek that far—not only is the bakery in our neck of the woods, but Whole Foods Market delivers the loaf to doorsteps around the region via Amazon. We may not be able to live on bread alone, but with a boule this ambrosial, we’d be happy to die trying. thebakerandthecakemaker.com —E.L.

Clockwise from top left: Anna Wick, Curtis Yee, Rob Turner and Max Whittaker

Best Hot Hood

Nearly every nook and cranny of our region boasts charming shops and trip-worthy restaurants, but midtown Sacramento is undeniably the most hospitable hostess with the mostess when it comes to the densest urban collection of retail and gastronomical wonders. From some of the city’s indisputably best restaurants (like Mulvaney’s B&L and The Waterboy) to cleverly themed bars (we’re looking at you, The Jungle Bird and The Cabin), sublime desserteries (like Babes Ice Cream & Donuts and Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates), local breweries (such as Alaro and Big Stump), irresistibly quirky shops (not one, but two glorious Strapping Stores!), an enchanting farmers’ market, and the cultural gem that is The Sofia, there’s hardly a bland block on the grid. And it’s gotten even better lately. The new Fort Sutter Hotel is a stunner. R Street’s Ice Blocks has set a high bar for mixing residential with exquisitely curated destination retail, and the city’s first microcinema (see below) recently opened in the neighborhood too. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein (who would have loved Time Tested Books), there’s some very serious there there. —R.T.

Courtesy of the City of Elk Grove, Public Works

Best Place to Drown Out the Drought

Sweating the Central Valley heat more than usual this year? You aren’t alone in the great California brown-out. Get your green on by heading down to the Elk Grove Rain Garden Plaza, a cool spot in every sense of the word and the first of its kind in the state when it opened 10 years ago to great acclaim. What’s a rain garden you ask? An engineering marvel where stormwater runoff is diverted from roofs and pavement and channeled underground where a man-made water table supports flowers and greenery—in this case, a thriving, pesticide-free oasis featuring over 25 types of drought-resistant native plants. Add in an interactive sculpture, a covered picnic area, and more than 1,000 tiles hand-painted by Elk Grove students, and you have a pocket of peace where you can watch innovation blossom in the shade of a California buckeye. —S.T.

Courtesy of Danielle Moné Truitt

Best Hollywood Star Who Hasn’t Gone Hollywood

As a busy TV actress, Danielle Moné Truitt—who currently stars as Sergeant Ayanna Bell on Law & Order: Organized Crime, which returns for its third season on Sept. 22—bounces between L.A. and New York. But lucky for us, the native Sacramentan and Sacramento State alum still stays close to her hometown roots, coming back regularly to visit family—her father is the pastor of Rancho Cordova’s STC: The Well church—and grace the local stage as a longtime company member of the B Street Theatre, where just this past summer she performed her one-woman play 3: Black Girl Blues. Two years ago, Truitt also joined the troupe’s online social justice series Re-Imagine, which launched in July 2020 to help amplify BIPOC voices. “I have always been very vocal about my love for my people and our art. I just felt like it wouldn’t be right if I wasn’t part of it,” she told us about serving as Re-Imagine’s artistic curator. “We all need to reimagine a better life for ourselves and for generations to come.” —E.L.

Courtesy of Serve Sacramento

Best (Free) Book Dealers

Remember that one special book you cherished throughout childhood? Where the Wild Things Are, The Secret Garden, The Giving Tree, maybe? While libraries are great institutions where children of all walks of life can experience the joy of reading, there’s something undeniably special about a book of one’s own. So four years ago, the educational nonprofit Serve Sacramento started distributing books at community events and deploying Free Book libraries at area schools, family shelters and other places in the form of refurbished Sacramento Bee sidewalk racks stocked with kid-friendly titles for children to take—and more importantly, take home. According to executive director Colette Charles (pictured above), it’s the gift that keeps on giving. “Books are a form of imagination,” she says. “Then if a parent sees their child reading, they could bond together through collaborative communication. Then the [child’s] grades and test scores go up. It’s an on-going process.” As this literacy program reminds us, sometimes the best things in life truly are free. servesacramento.org —S.T.

Photo by Iwan Baan, Courtesy of SO-IL and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Best Example of Architectural Expressionism

UC Davis is far more accustomed to agricultural rather than architectural plaudits, but in January, the school’s Manetti Shrem Museum received an unexpected expression of appreciation when the prestigious ARTnews magazine deemed the cultural oasis one of “The 25 Best Museum Buildings of the Past 100 Years.” Also included on the list: Oh, just Paris’ Pompidou Centre, New York’s Guggenheim, Bilbao’s Guggenheim and architect I.M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid, to name a few. Under the guidance of Manetti Shrem’s founding director Rachel Teagle, the museum’s structure was designed by Florian Idenburg of Brooklyn’s SO-IL and Karl Backus of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (the firm that designed Pixar’s headquarters), and its massive steel canopy roof was fashioned to reference the surrounding region’s patchwork of agricultural grids. So the next time you visit, take a moment to soak in the art outside first. It’s getting rave reviews. manettishremmuseum.com —R.T.

Photo by Peter Csanadi

Best Fruitful Endeavor

If Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth, then our region is one of its key dopamine providers. In addition to other local connections to the theme park—for instance, its Main Street Electrical Parade was inspired by an 1895 electrical parade in Sacramento (the world’s first!)—did you know that the iconic Dole Whip, which has been attracting long lines outside the Enchanted Tiki Room for nearly four decades, was invented by a UC Davis alum? Kathy Westphal, who earned a degree in food science and technology from UCD in 1982, was a recent college graduate working at Dole when she was charged with developing a dairy-free, pineapple-based mix for a frozen treat that mimicked traditional softserve. Disneyland and Disney World started, um, doling out Westphal’s creamy creation in the mid-1980s, and the rest is Disney-Davis history. Turns out it really is a small world after all. —E.L.

Portrait by E. Pia Struzzieri, Courtesy of Tom Lin

Best East-Meets-Western Novelist

When Tom Lin arrived at UC Davis to initiate his English doctoral studies in 2019, only one piece of his furniture had arrived—an armchair. With three weeks to kill before classes, it turned out that a chair and a laptop (and visits to the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento for research) were all he needed to finish his debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. Before arriving in Davis, Lin, who was born in Beijing but grew up in New York City, had explored the deserts of Southern California and was inspired to pen a Western through the lens of a Chinese American protagonist. The book was published last year, and in January, Lin was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (at 25, he was the youngest-ever winner of the distinguished award), and now the book has been optioned for a television series. Next up for Lin: a science-fiction novel—and another chance to go where no young man has gone before. —R.T.

The Delta Breeze in action, shared by San Francisco Chronicle meteorologist Gerry Díaz on Twitter.

Best Salve for Climate Change

Mother Nature doesn’t get a lot of kudos for her blazing hot Sacramento summers. But as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change (The Sacramento Bee recently reported that we could see temps hit 90 and above for a third of the year by 2035), she does give us one thing that makes summer nights not just bearable, but blissful—the Delta breeze. As temperatures soar from spring to early fall, the sunsets bring cool air from the Pacific via the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to our neck of the state, and it is… unspeakably glorious. It is the proverbial wind beneath our wings and the antidote to our summertime blues. Mother, it seems, knows best after all. —R.T.

Best Long Gastronomic Goodbye

“Noooooooooooooooooo!” former Sactown reporter Stephanie Towne Benoit texted in June upon hearing the news that after 87 years, Club Pheasant will be shutting its doors, echoing our own heartbroken sentiments. That said, we are slightly buoyed by the fact that the West Sacramento restaurant plans to stay open through the end of this year, giving all of us plenty of opportunities to cry both happy and sad tears into our bowl of minestrone at this fourth generation, family-owned Italian institution. That soup, by the way, uses the same recipe that co-founder Luisa Palamidessi brought with her from her homeland, and is one of the many authentic offerings that we’re already nostalgic for, along with, of course, Club Pheasant’s famous scratch-made raviolis. Whether you order the raviolis fried or classic, stuffed with cheese or beef, topped with meat or marinara sauce, as an appetizer or entrée, or as a highly garlicky off-the-menu marinated version (call a few days ahead for this cult fave), the pasta-bilities to bid a fond farewell to this old friend are seemingly endless. theclubpheasant.com —E.L.

Illustration by Stephanie Fong

Best Buddhist Reincarnation

We’ve tried to be zen about the fact that Covid has canceled the Buddhist Church of Sacramento’s beloved feast-ival the past two years, but we have to say that we’ve been missing the tasty fun a ton—literally. The Japanese Food & Cultural Bazaar is among our favorite local traditions, one that had been filling a corner of Land Park with thousands of pounds of chicken, beef, shrimp, noodles and rice every year since 1947 until the pandemic hit. This time around,organizers will roll out a Covid-friendly drive-through version on Sept. 18. We’ll take it! The menu will include crowd-pleasers like teriyaki chicken bentos, vegetable chow mein and spam masubi. (But you’ll need to act fast: orders have to be placed on the church’s website by 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 4.) We hope this festival returns full throttle in 2023 and beyond, but in the meantime, we are so ready to pack our car trunks with boxes of deliciousness—vroom vroom, and nom nom. buddhistchurch.org —E.L.

Photo by Daniel James

Best Visual Homage to Local Legends

Call it the Mount Rushmore of Sacramento Greats. This year’s Wide Open Walls festival brought its annual bevy of eye-popping murals to the city, and one of our hands-down faves is the photorealistic depiction of four iconic Sacramentans—(from left) artist Wayne Thiebaud, actor LeVar Burton, Tower Records founder Russ Solomon and writer Joan Didion. The massive work, created in May by North Carolina spray paint artist Brian Lewis who goes by the alias Jeks One, isn’t as centrally located as it deserves to be, so you’ll need to head to a dead-end sliver of 12th Street, just off R Street, fittingly near the Warehouse Artist Lofts. But what the brick canvas lacks in visibility, it makes up for in vitality—bringing some of our city’s best to life at a scale befitting their outsized contributions to Sacramento and beyond. —R.T.

Courtesy of Luminarium Designs

Best Mood- and Scene-Setters

At Luminarium Designs, David and Hillary Albrecht’s love of woodworking shines bright—literally—through the delicate cutout details of their laser-etched basswood lanterns. The beaming boxes are hand-assembled at the husband-and-wife duo’s 1,000-square-foot home studio in Newcastle, and can be ordered in blond natural wood or stained a rich brown, and in a range of styles—plug-ins for indoor side table display or illuminated by flickering LED votives for hanging outside, for example. The designs range from Celtic knot patterns to silhouettes of bears and dragonflies, to spooky jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween or a depiction of the Auburn Firehouse, one of the couple’s earliest designs from their craft fair days. While the fledgling business debuted as a booth at the Old Town Auburn Christmas event in 2017, it wasn’t until 2020 that sales really took off as we all sought to add a little light to our homebound lives during the pandemic. Today you can snag a lantern at stores like Auburn’s Avantgarden and Grass Valley’s The West Wind—or be spoiled for choice with a dizzying 90-plus designs available on Luminarium’s website. With longer nights just around the corner, now is the time to get your glow on. luminariumdesigns.com —S.T.

Courtesy of Park Winters

Best Place to Pick a Pocketful of Poppies

If you’ve ever driven past the flower fields of Yolo County and longed to run down the floral rows, raising the fragrant blossoms to your nose in handfuls—your vivid dreams have come true. For the second year in a row, Park Winters—a 10-acre haven of bucolic bliss that has long been a favorite regional wedding destination and charming country inn—is offering a Pick Your Own Bouquet experience for $35 per bunch. Budding petal hounds can wander the property’s 1865 Victorian farmhouse inn, sunken rose garden and rustic barn, and then—armed with a provided bucket and pair of shears—embark on an aromatic U-pick adventure through abundant arrays of cosmos, marigolds, poppies, dahlias, sunflowers and other blooms, clip-clipping and snip-snipping to fill their makeshift vase with a riot of color and scent. Pro tip: Don’t forget to pick up a jar of flower-farm-grown honey as you exit through the gift shop for an extra sweet retreat. parkwinters.com —S.T.

Photo by Max Whittaker

Best Benevolent Bicyclists

Since 2017, the very good folks at Mercy Pedalers have been taking the growing homelessness crisis to heart by taking their hearts to the streets. Led by founder Sister Libby Fernandez (pictured above), who previously served as executive director of Loaves & Fishes, the volunteers at this five-year-old local nonprofit load up their bikes (or trikes) every single day, rain or shine, to reach our region’s unhoused residents and offer everything from coffee, bottled water and granola bars to toothbrushes, socks and ponchos—and perhaps just as importantly, a caring conversation. With Sacramento County’s homeless population having increased by nearly 70% over the past three years and surpassing that of San Francisco, we’re all the more indebted to these wheeled warriors who not only have mercy, but go out and show it too. mercypedalers.com —E.L.

Photo by Max Whittaker

Best Group with the Write Stuff

Writing is fundamental at 916 Ink, which takes a novel approach—so to speak—to improving youth literacy in our region. Since 2011, the South Sacramento-based nonprofit has been flipping the teaching script by focusing on writing first (versus reading), encouraging its students to put pen or pencil to paper during weeks-long workshops and then featuring their finished pieces in bound books and celebrating the achievement with release parties and, yes, readings. Thus far, the group has published 240 anthologies presenting more than 5,000 young authors’ prose and poetry. Of course, enhancing literary skills is only part of 916 Ink’s mission. As co-founder Katie McCleary recently told us, “It’s everything for the kids to see their names in print. Publication teaches them that their voice and stories actually matter, just by the fact that somebody would put all this work into putting it into a book. It’s a total confidence booster.” Now that’s something worth writing home about. 916ink.org —E.L.

Photo by Max Whittaker

Best Little Big Screen

Before multiplexes ruled the silver-screen world, cinephiles flocked to movie theaters to take in regular rotations of cult films by offbeat auteurs like John Waters and David Lynch. Reviving that lost tradition is Dreamland Cinema, a new “microcinema” concept that established residency in June at the historic Thistle Dew Dessert Theatre, a converted Victorian gingerbread house in midtown. Owners Lauren Hess and Tish Sparks installed a 110-inch screen in the 23-seat theater, where you can catch cozy showings of films like Dazed and Confused, Mulholland Drive or the 1960 crime classic Purple Noon. And this October, Dreamland will present a lineup of classic horror flicks. Hold onto your popcorn, because while the venue may be small, the thrills will be anything but. thedreamlandcinema.com —S.T.

Learn About Even More of the Best Our City Has to Offer:

The Best of the City 2021

The Best of the City 2020

The Best of the City 2019