Michelin Mash-Up

It’s rare enough for a restaurant to have a single Michelin-rated chef, but two? Now that’s cooking with fire.

If all goes according to plan, come January, you’ll be able to shake off the winter northerlies with savory plates of flame-roasted fish, meat and veggies at Pedregal—a new cantina opening in Folsom with co-chefs Patricio Wise of Roseville’s Nixtaco and Brad Cecchi of East Sacramento’s Canon sharing the helm. Both chefs’ individual restaurants have earned Michelin Bib Gourmand status (which Michelin doles out sparingly for “good quality, good value cooking”). When Michelin first began rating Sacramento restaurants in 2019, Canon was one of just three establishments bestowed with the Bib Gourmand award, and Nixtaco joined the exclusive group in 2021.

When a prime spot came available in Folsom just off East Bidwell Street, adjacent to Mikuni, they decided to partner up to maximize the opportunity for chefly creativity while sharing the workload.

Patricio Wise and his wife Cinthia Martinez, who both hail from Monterrey, Mexico, opened Nixtaco in Roseville in 2016, lifting the humble taco to new heights and earning raves last year from Food & Wine magazine, which called the restaurant “one of the best chef-driven taquerias in the U.S.”

Wise has many friends in the restaurant scene in his native Monterrey, and he’s drawing inspiration from their creative approach to traditional dishes to think outside the tortilla for Pedregal. The menu will focus on shareable small plates (“botanas” in cantina parlance) and family-style service. “We’ll be showcasing authentic dishes from the northeastern parts of Mexico with very bold flavors and high-heat cooking techniques,” Wise says. They hope to use locally sourced kid goat for the cabrito—the signature dish of Wise’s hometown. “Monterrey was founded by Sephardic Jews 500 years ago,” he says. “They emigrated with goats, they were shepherds, and that’s what they ate. That’s where the term shepherd-style, or al pastor, comes from.”

The rest of the food lineup will feature items like whole fish preparations, grilled octopus, and bone-in rib-eye steaks. “The flavor profiles that you’ll basically see will be very heavy on oregano, cumin, black pepper, allspice, rosemary, garlic, spicy green chili and orange,” Wise says.

For native Sacramentan Cecchi, his journey took him from American River College’s culinary program to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and then to working under the celebrated chef Patrick Mulvaney at Mulvaney’s B&L before maintaining the coveted Michelin star at Calistoga’s Solbar, first as chef de cuisine, then as executive chef in 2017. “I’m a big fan of Nixtaco,” Cecchi says. “For me, it’s a great opportunity to bring my expertise in running fine dining restaurants and developing concepts, and to learn traditional northern Mexican food from Patricio, and then adapt our level of hospitality to it.”

Cecchi is equally excited about the inventive cocktail menu. “We don’t want to be a margarita house,” he says. “We want to be a place that is very experimental and creative when it comes to using spirits from the Nixtaco Distillery [Nixtaco’s private-label brand of spirits] and mixing them with flavors of Northern Mexico.” There will, of course, be a margarita or two on the menu, but it won’t be anything like the one you remember (or don’t) from spring break. For example, at Nixtaco, Wise offers a margarita using the distillery’s orange-infused moonshine. “I dissected the cocktail thinking like a chef,” he says. By infusing the liquor with the essence of orange, he’s able to leave out the Triple Sec for a drink that’s meant for grown-ups.

Logo design by Rodolfo Baquier. Courtesy of Pedregal.

The décor will also be a grown-up take on the cantina concept, a paean to mountainous Monterrey, according to Canon’s co-owner, entrepreneur Clay Nutting (an original co-founder midtown’s LowBrau and West Sacramento’s Franquette), who developed the visual concept with Martinez, long-time design collaborator Matthew Lechowick (Franquette and Canon), and Sacramento architecture firm Studio Oxeye. “The name Pedregal means a rock field,” he says. “Monterrey sits at the base of the Sierra Madre mountains, so the land is really similar in some ways to the rocky hills of Folsom into El Dorado.”

“We started digging into Patricio and Cinthia’s memories for the tone-driven patinas and colors and textures of home,” Nutting notes. Local artisan Phill Moskalets of Phillbuilt (who has created furnishings for Canon as well as Michelin-starred Localis) will contribute hand-crafted furniture like benches and booths. “We’re definitely going to be referencing a lot of natural earth tones, but there will also be these really fun pops of color to reference the bright palettes of Mexican cantinas and restaurants,” Nutting adds, explaining that some of the inspiration comes from classic Mexican cinema. “Scenes would take place in these cantinas, and they had this sophistication and elegance to them.”

“There is a trend in metropolitan Mexico,” says Cecchi, “toward an elevated cantina experience—more of that post-World War II feel of the classiness of having a cocktail.” Classic cocktails in a cinematic setting? We’re putting this double feature on our can’t-miss list for the new year.

Find Pedregal on Instagram and at cantinapedregal.com

A rendering of one of the interior spaces at Pedregal. Image by Studio Oxeye and courtesy of the restaurant.