All That Glitters

The Claude Chana cocktail features edible gold leaf flakes on ice cubes.

As I looked down into my Claude Chana cocktail at The Hillmont, I realized I was in the hands of people who love Auburn and its history. Edible gold leaf draped around two ice cubes, in honor of the drink’s namesake, a pioneering miner who in 1848 was the first to discover gold in the area. At this new Auburn restaurant by husband-and-wife proprietors Jordan and Melinda Minyard, the flaxen elixir, made with bourbon, yellow Chartreuse, chrysanthemum honey and lemon, is one detail among many that illustrate their hometown pride. “We’re first and foremost Auburn people,” says Jordan.

In fact, everything that diners encounter at The Hillmont—which opened in late July and is housed inside a 8,000-square-foot space that is also home to the Minyards’ Remedy Supply Co. coffee roastery and their Fairwell Collective branding agency—seems imbued with sentiment and meaning. The structure’s signage employs the Goudy Old Style font to evoke the feel of an earlier era and complements the historic signage on the 1913 Placer County Bank building across the street, a stalwart enterprise that weighed and processed gold on its way to the mint in San Francisco.

Vintage street signs top the bar’s bottle tower at The Hillmont.

The Hillmont itself resides in a vintage building, dating back to the 1940s. When Jordan was growing up in Auburn, it held a record shop whose name lives on in the gin-based Nancie’s Mixtape cocktail. The structure later housed a shoe store called Mickey’s Boots, which also gets a menu nod in the form of a rum cocktail served in a charming glass boot. “Watching [shoe store owner Mickey Bennett] drink from the boot was really pretty surreal,” says beverage director Drew Garrison, who serves the same role in the Minyards’ nearby coffeehouse, The Pour Choice. (For her part, Nancie has come in and tasted her drink, but usually opts for a spiced rum and Coke instead.) A pair of boots that Jordan wore—and wore out—during the construction of The Hillmont dangle from the rafters by their shoelaces, a silent testament to the building’s past. You feel like you’re in the presence of really proud grandchildren honoring their familial heritage.

Elsewhere, exposed wood beams meet textile wall hangings and tropical chandeliers meet pastoral murals. The interior design is artfully eclectic, and one of the crowning details is the crisscross display of street signs for Lincoln Way and Hillmont Street that sits atop the bar’s alcohol tower. A friend of the Minyards discovered the sun-bleached metal road markers, which were used for decades until replaced by modern versions, in the basement of City Hall.

The Hillmont owners Jordan and Melinda Minyard flank executive chef Ashley Strickler.

My husband and I visited a month after the restaurant opened, trying our luck as walk-ins since we couldn’t secure a reservation. (The Hillmont accepts a limited number of bookings—only about 25 percent of seating capacity—to encourage the community to simply drop by.) We arrived after power had been out for an hour so things were a little backed up, but we visited shops on Lincoln Way and were pleasantly surprised to receive a text alert that our table was ready just 30 minutes later.

The mostly seasonal menu comprises shareable small plates organized into five sections: Bread, Light & Bright, Salads, Hot Bites and Fried Fare. We began with a butter board containing from-scratch focaccia and generous dollops of three house-made butters: allium, sesame and stone fruit. Executive chef Ashley Strickler, who also leads the kitchen at The Pour Choice, explains that the stone fruit version started with Sierra Nevada Cheese Company cultured butter and incorporated “odds and ends from local farmers”—blemished or bruised fruit—with finishing salt and dried Aleppo pepper. (The lineup of butters rotates. For instance, a potential new winter trio could be persimmon, marmalade and truffle.)

The Hillmont’s creative butter board is a menu highlight.

We moved on to the jumbo Parmesan and garlic chicken wings, which were succulent, with a substantial, crackly coating (other flavors include dukkah, house barbecue and kimchi buffalo). But our favorite dish just may have been the chili melon shrimp. Each bite, with its symphony of poached shrimp, cured melon, apple mint, pickled radish and drizzled chili oil, was a delectable, textural mouthful.

While the chili melon shrimp isn’t currently on the menu, thankfully it will be back in rotation when summer rolls around again. Further good news for shellfish lovers: In the future, Strickler plans to place a heavier emphasis on seafood, with at least half the menu devoted to it. And while she’ll stick with the small plates format, she also adds, “I’d like to bring a little more adventure to Auburn.” (Think a duck cassoulet or a salad with duck eggs.)

The “Hot Bites” section of the menu features a grilled 8-ounce flat iron steak.

For our dessert, my husband and I decided to share The Remedy, a dark chocolate cake made with coffee from the titular roaster, salted caramel and Italian buttercream. Swoon. My husband accompanied it with a double espresso shot split into two cups, one served straight and one with steamed milk. Charmingly, our bill arrived tucked into a paperback of a Louis L’Amour Western to carry on The Hillmont’s historic theme.

After I finished the Claude Chana, I couldn’t bear to part with my gold so I transferred the two ice cubes to my water glass, and ended up flaking the gold leaf off with my fingernail. Once unattached from the ice, the gold behaves like glitter and tends to scatter. As we left, my husband said, “Look at your arm.” Sure enough, it was bedecked with shiny flecks. I couldn’t think of a more fitting end to the evening, since I felt like I’d struck gold at The Hillmont. 

875 Lincoln Way. Auburn. 530 881-8200. hillmontauburn.com