Stepping Up

Stepdad’s owners Oliver Ridgeway (left) and Tyler and Melissa Williams

Stepdad’s, the name of the new Land Park tavern from chef Oliver Ridgeway and nightlife mavens Tyler and Melissa Williams, doesn’t just pay homage to its space’s longtime former occupant, Dad’s Kitchen. The bonus-father theme also served as a key design principle in readying the Freeport Boulevard spot for opening—on Father’s Day 2025, naturally—and continues to be its cheeky spiritual guide.

“It kind of lets people know that we are not taking ourselves too seriously,” says Tyler. As proprietors of the midtown tiki bar The Jungle Bird and barbecue haunt Tank House BBQ and Bar, he and his wife Melissa are accustomed to creating casual hot spots.

However, for their British-born partner, Stepdad’s is a down-home departure. Ridgeway owns downtown’s upscale, Michelin-recognized restaurant Camden Spit & Larder. Before that, he completed an acclaimed six-and-a-half-year tenure as executive chef of Grange Restaurant & Bar at The Citizen Hotel. “I have come from a fine-dining background, and Camden is elevated dining,” Ridgeway says, so his Stepdad’s offerings are “simply more Americana” than what Sacramento has seen from him before. “It’s a very approachable, recognizable menu.”

Remaining relatable to the families who patronized Dad’s before it closed in July 2024 (its Fair Oaks outpost remains open) was crucial to the Williamses and Ridgeway. As residents of South Land Park and Curtis Park, respectively, they often visited Dad’s with their own children. Although they clearly have spiffed up the space in all conceivable ways, Stepdad’s maintains a clear resemblance to Dad’s in both design and comfort cuisine.

While Camden Spit & Larder ships in fresh oysters almost daily and serves caviar and steak tartare, Stepdad’s offers chicken tenders and a burger with a 6-ounce patty that Ridgeway calls “fast-food”-sized as entrées. Sure, the patty is crafted with Wagyu beef, and the house-made tenders are brined and breaded in the kitchen, where their jalapeño ranch dipping sauce is also created from scratch, but you get the point.

The 1924 Burger with Wagyu beef, white cheddar, pickles, red onion and house-made “Stepsauce”

Calling the place “Stepdad’s” was Ridgeway’s idea. He thought it was just too perfect, given the space’s history of familial names. “It was Mums [Vegetarian Restaurant] back in the day, and then Dad’s, and now Stepdad’s,” he explains, still sounding tickled.

Once the name was set, Melissa Williams ran with it. Responsible for most of the new project’s interior design, she painted the tavern’s playful slogan—“Your Mom’s New Favorite”—on a back wall of the bar area. The phrase also adorns servers’ T-shirts, which Stepdad’s sells to the public as well and can barely keep in stock.

“I was kind of worried it would be too bitey, and people were going to take offense, but people seem to really love it,” Melissa says of leaning into the “stepdad” theme. The affection and familiarity built into the term—as opposed to stepfather—informed her décor touches, which were influenced by her 1970s and ’80s youth and present the stepdad as a fun-loving, almost mythical figure.

Travel posters lining the walls of the bar area “are kind of what your stepdad would have in the garage,” Melissa reasons. (They came from her late father’s own garage). To decorate the elegant yet cozy seating cubbies newly built into the wall separating the bar and dining room, Melissa pored over family photo albums for inspiration.

“It’s basically my drunk uncles in the 1970s,” she says with a laugh of the resulting photos, one of which shows her uncle Tim in a vintage San Francisco Giants cap relaxing on a yacht.

The recessed booths are decorated with collages of family photos.

When Dad’s Kitchen closed, “it was sad for all of us in the neighborhood,” Tyler Williams says. Tyler and Ridgeway knew each other for years but grew close during the pandemic while commiserating about the state of their industry over beers on the porch of mutual friend James Biller, a financial advisor who lives next door to the Williams family.

So when Ridgeway called Tyler to suggest looking at the Dad’s space, the Williamses were game. The new ownership team quickly went to work beautifying the dining area with new wood paneling and built-in booths and making Dad’s beloved back patio even more inviting with additional greenery planted by Melissa and her mom.

Stepdad’s differs most from its predecessor in the bar area. Where the beer-paraphernalia-filled Dad’s bar introduced many Sacramentans (including Tyler) to new brews, the space has become decidedly spirit-centric, with bottles of liquor like Buffalo Trace bourbon, Macallan scotch and Tequila Ocho artfully lit and showcased on new mahogany shelving.

The glowing table lamps atop an upgraded black quartz bar give the room a timeless quality that, combined with the travel posters and ephemera, make it easy to imagine a 1980s stepdad on the next stool, fondly recalling his swank one-bedroom condo, red Corvette and trips to Aruba from his bachelor days.

Although Ridgeway says there is “nothing fancy-pants” about Stepdad’s, a certain level of sophistication is inevitable with an ownership group this experienced. Ridgeway’s compact marvel of a burger, for instance, is the product of careful consideration at every step, from naming to hand-feel. Dubbed the “1924 Burger” in honor of when the William Land Park Golf Course was built, it includes a spiky “Stepsauce”—Duke’s mayo, black pepper, chopped pepperoncini and Calabrian chili oil—created by Stepdad’s head chef, Jess Taylor (formerly of Empress Tavern). As sauce, Wagyu beef, white cheddar, red onion and house-made pickles become one with a cushy, easily handled Bella Bru brioche bun, the burger proves that flavor explosions need not cause a mess.

Deviled eggs topped with mustard seeds, bacon and green onion

The fish and chips entrée uses the same Alaskan cod and batter Ridgeway employs for Friday specials at Camden. The batter incorporates “a good beer or good lager—whatever we have on tap,” Ridgeway says. That’s usually Urban Roots’ EZPZ pilsner, which Ridgeway combines with soda water, flour and a few secret ingredients.

Although Tyler Williams and beverage director Nathaniel Wallner have created an extensive list of craft cocktails, Tyler also took care with the beer selections since, as he notes, “Beer curation was a big part of what Dad’s did.”

Several of his 10 taps (and counting) might be taken by local beers, but otherwise Tyler keeps his options open. When I visited Stepdad’s on a weekday evening, Wallner was tending bar, and recommended a Tiki Time Tropical Wheat from Walnut Creek’s Calicraft Brewing Co. to accompany Stepdad’s poutine fries. The beer’s brightness enlivened the rich dish’s already compelling texture and flavor medley of crunchy-creamy fries, sharp-tasting cheese curds, salty turkey-based gravy, and crispy, slightly sweet fried shallots.

The poutine fries, burger, and fish and chips will be offered year-round. Seasonal options, like the tomato and watermelon salad on the opening summer menu, are determined based on the small kitchen’s capacity—about a third of the size of Camden’s—to serve a restaurant with 115 seats (including the patio) that often are filled.

For dessert, Stepdad’s features a menu of soft-serve ice cream by Straus Organic. The Arbequina olive oil and sea salt option I tried tasted delightfully different from bite to bite, and often more savory than sweet.

Stepdad’s introduced brunch over Labor Day weekend, enabling one to foresee many Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gatherings in its future. The tavern’s owners say they already have seen lots of faces familiar from their kids’ activities at Land Park’s McClatchy High School and Holy Spirit Parish School, or the nearby Park Terrace Swim & Tennis Club.

“I recognize the kids first, and then I recognize the parents,” Tyler Williams says. “I am all about the bar and restaurant scene and have made most of my best friends working in midtown and downtown. But this opening feels different. It is not a ‘scene,’ as much as it is a welcoming to the community.”

And for any Dad’s die-hards still reluctant to embrace the new place, all we can say is: Please give it a chance, honey. It’s really  trying. 

2968 Freeport Blvd. 916-330-1628. stepdads916.com