Mushrooms. Walnuts. Pomegranate seeds. Mashed potatoes. Can this really be Mexican food? Welcome to Mesa Mercado, a new market-to-table restaurant in Carmichael that celebrates Mexico’s historic cuisine.

Go in search of great venison recipes and you’ll likely come across uninspiring ones for dishes like brown stews and charred roasts instead. Well, the hunt is over, thanks to Orangevale-based food writer and chef Hank Shaw’s newest cookbook, Buck, Buck, Moose: Recipes and Techniques for Cooking Deer, Elk, Moose, Antelope and Other Antlered Things.

Inspired by their trips to cities like Rome and Naples, the Selland family opens Obo’ Italian Table & Bar in East Sacramento. With house-made pasta dishes and scratch-made Neapolitan-style pizzas, it’s ciao time.

Skool on K’s inventive take on fish dishes hooks food lovers, while the new midtown restaurant’s playful concept reels in the whole family.

Saddle Rock, Sacramento’s first restaurant, rises from the ashes of history, reinvented by a new generation of culinary pioneers. It’s time to reconsider the oyster, among other delectations of Gold Rush gastronomy.

Tank House’s lemony frozen treat is the summer super quencher that just might turn you into a day-drinker. (After all, it’s always beer-thirty somewhere.)

The recently reopened Poor Red’s Bar-B-Q is a blast from the past, serving up its legendary cocktail, the Golden Cadillac, with a heaping helping of history.