Matching the Moment

One of Sacramento’s most legendary restaurant chains, Sam’s Hof Brau (named for proprietor Sam Gordon) opened its first location in 1955 at the corner of 17th and J streets. The cafeteria-inspired restaurant was known for German-style draft beers and sandwiches stacked high with hand-carved meats. Sam’s eventually spread across California, but its most celebrated location was the outpost at Watt and El Camino avenues, which opened in 1962 just steps from the world’s first Tower Records and boasted a Victorian-era interior design featuring historic photos of Sacramento and antiques that Gordon collected from his extensive travels. The restaurant closed for good in 2023 after a fire.

Founded in the late 1930s in Broderick (now part of West Sacramento), Tiny’s Motel and Coffee Shop was, according to The Sacramento Bee  archives, “one of the original motor hotels” in the region. A 1939 ad for the coffee shop portion of the hotel boasted that it was “a restaurant so pleasantly different that you will immediately like it… and eventually prefer it.” For years after the Tower Bridge opened in 1935, Tiny’s touted its location as two blocks from the “M Street Bridge”—still calling the Tower Bridge by the name of its predecessor.

Opened in 1936, the long-running Annex Spaghetti Palace was located near 7th and J streets, where Cilantro’s Mexican Food is today (and Ricci’s for many years prior to that). “The Quality and Deliciousness of Our Spaghetti are as rare as a White Elephant,” touted an advertisement for the restaurant that appeared in The Sacramento Bee  later that year, which added that patrons can indulge in its “tastefully seasoned” spaghetti and ravioli for just 25 cents.

Opened in 1906 at 3rd and “Eye” streets downtown, Hong King Lum was at one point Sacramento’s oldest restaurant. In 1969, it moved a short distance to 4th and J, where founder Dong Haw still used an abacus to calculate diners’ bills into the 1970s. Hong King Lum closed in 2004, but its spirit lives on. Not long after launching his restaurant, Haw hired his teenage nephew Dong Sai Fat, who had immigrated from China, to wait tables. That young nephew rose through the ranks to manager, eventually leaving his uncle’s establishment in 1939 to start his own eatery based on his chosen American name—Frank Fat.

Founded in 1939 at 806 L Street, Frank Fat’s is currently the oldest operating restaurant in Sacramento. Due in part to its close proximity to the Capitol, it’s been a longtime favorite of politicos for generations, from Gov. Jerry Brown to California State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and countless others. Best known for its honey walnut prawns and banana cream pie, the restaurant has been bestowed with both the Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand designation and the James Beard America’s Classics Award.

Sacramento’s first grand hotel, the Hotel Sacramento, opened in 1909 at the corner of 10th and K streets across from where the Crest Theatre stands today. Within weeks, city officials hosted President William Howard Taft for dinner as he passed through town. Upon its closure in 1956—to make room for a new F.W. Woolworth store—The Sacramento Union  published a remembrance of the local landmark by Joseph Beek, California’s longest-serving secretary of the State Senate. “For many years after its opening, the Sacramento Hotel was THE hotel of this city,” he wrote. “It was once said that political decisions were announced at the Capitol Building, but were decided at the Sacramento Hotel.”

Co-founded in 1954 by Sherwood “Shakey” Johnson, Sacramento’s Shakey’s Pizza Parlor was America’s first pizza chain, ultimately becoming an international brand with approximately 700 locations worldwide. Its original location at 57th and J (which was also well known for hosting Dixieland jazz concerts) closed in 1996, and today, the U.S.-based Shakey’s chain exists primarily in Southern California, plus a single NorCal outpost in Oroville and one location in Washington State. The pizzeria also still lives on in Japan and the Philippines.

In 1968, KZAP (98.5 FM) first hit the airwaves from its perch atop downtown’s historic Elks Tower. From its inception to 1992, the station reigned as the best-known rock station in the city, especially for its classic rock programming. Its logo was a Cheshire Cat-style image created by Sacramento artist Bill Styler. In 1992, the KZAP name was abandoned, and 98.5 switched to country music, eventually morphing into today’s 98 Rock. But in 2015, a group of early KZAP DJs formed K-ZAP (the unhyphenated call letters have been in use in Chico since 1995), and the station now airs locally online at k-zap.org.

Opened in 1957, the 15-story El Mirador Hotel at 13th and N streets was billed as “the luxury hotel of tomorrow,” with the Sky Room on the top floor overlooking Capitol Park, and the Esquire Bar on the lower level where, according to an advertisement at the time, patrons could “view scintillating underwater ballets” featuring “Mir-A-Maids” via a glass wall that afforded a glimpse into one of the property’s two swimming pools, akin to today’s Dive Bar on K Street.

In operation from 1939 to 1966, Capitol Bowl was located at 14th and L, across the street from Capitol Park. A 1940 Sacramento Bee  promotional section curiously touted the bowling alley as a place where “women find pleasure and added attractiveness.” The long-shuttered bowling alley has no affiliation with the Capitol Bowl in West Sacramento that started as El Rancho Bowl in 1960 and remains open today.

The Sutter Club—which opened at 9th and Capitol Mall in 1930—was designed by one of the city’s most prominent architecture firms of that era, Dean & Dean, in a style known as Spanish Eclectic. (Dean & Dean also designed the stately Memorial Auditorium.) While the club’s current home opened 96 years ago, the institution dates back to 1889 and its membership was open exclusively to men until a unanimous 1988 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court forced private men’s clubs to admit women. Among the justices who cast the vote: former Sutter Club member and Sacramento native, Anthony Kennedy.

Poor Red’s dates back to 1945, when married owners Red and Opal Sadler opened the BBQ restaurant and bar in the tiny town of El Dorado, inside a building first constructed as a Wells Fargo stagecoach stop in the 1800s. Seven years later, Red’s attracted international fame after one of its bartenders, Frank Cline, created a cocktail called the Golden Cadillac. The recipe was simple: Galliano liqueur, white crème de cacao and half-and-half blended with ice. As a result, the bar went on to become the world’s largest purveyor of Galliano. Poor Red’s closed in 2013, but reopened in 2016 after local investors bought and restored it.

Still attracting bowlers today, Country Club Lanes launched on Watt Avenue in Arden-Arcade in October 1959 with 48 lanes and its distinctive Googie-style (aka “Space Age”) architecture, holding an official grand opening—which included the debut of the Candlerock lounge—in 1960. An early ad exclaimed, “You’ll marvel at the gigantic parabolic and hyperbolic awnings’ reaching towards the sky.” The bowling alley will also always hold a footnote in global retail history, thanks to a young man named Russ Solomon who briefly ran a small branch of Tower Records inside Country Club Lanes, the first outside of his father’s drugstore in the Tower Theatre complex. Solomon soon moved out to launch what became Tower Records’ first-ever standalone store just a few doors down in late 1961.

During its nearly half century of operation, from 1949 to 1994, the Polynesian-themed Coral Reef on Fulton Avenue was unequivocally one of the most beloved eateries in Sacramento history. The décor featured fishing nets, scuba gear and large aquariums filled with exotic fish, while the expansive menu (which included signature dishes like the paper-wrapped chicken) boasted that the intended effect was to create “the most authentic atmosphere possible of a beachcomber’s shack in Tahiti or Pago Pago.” At 4 a.m. one morning in 1967, an armed burglar handcuffed an early-arriving kitchen worker, but thoughtfully offered the employee a beer first. According to The Sacramento Bee, the staffer declined, stating that it was “too early.”

The Hotel Senator opened across from Capitol Park in 1924, and had the most storied run of any lodging in Sacramento history. In 1927, Buster Keaton spent part of the summer there while filming Steamboat Bill, Jr. That same year, Charles Lindbergh was honored at the hotel after his celebrated flight from New York to Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis. And in 1975, less auspiciously, Charles Manson disciple Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford shortly after he left the Senator to walk to the Capitol. After the Senator—the city’s last remaining historic hotel—closed in 1979, it was converted into office space, largely occupied by lobbyists seeking close proximity to the Capitol.

Built in the late 1800s, downtown’s Hotel Clunie was more of a complex—in addition to a hotel, the structure also housed a performing arts theater and later added a popular coffee shop. The property closed in 1980 and was demolished in 1986 to make room for the 25-story Renaissance Tower, aka the Darth Vader building. Fun fact: According to her obituary in The Sacramento Bee, Gladyce Blunden—the mother of Sacramento native and longtime Good Morning America  co-anchor Joan Lunden (who dropped the B from her last name when she pursued a career in broadcast journalism)—worked as a young waitress at the Hotel Clunie soon after moving to Sacramento from San Francisco in 1939.

The Hotel Woodland began as an ambitious, upscale property that opened in 1928, designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. John Wayne and Gene Autry were among the hotel’s guests, while boxer Jack Dempsey was once the guest of honor at a dinner there. After being purchased and lovingly restored by locals in the 1990s, today the property serves as housing for low-income residents.

Launched in 1960, the 30-lane Cordova Lanes was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and housed the popular San Francisco-based Zim’s restaurant chain. Leaning into the then national trend of trying to attract more women to bowling, the new recreational facility included a nursery that was open until 11 p.m. nightly. And according to The Sacramento Union, “Mary Hoyt, the nation’s leading left-handed bowler, and Marge McDaniels, 1960 national women’s singles champion” appeared during the grand opening weekend, when all female patrons received free orchids. The beloved bowling alley closed in 2000.

Sacramento Tomato Juice launched in Sacramento in 1931 and became so popular that by 1952, one million cases of the juice were sold annually in New York alone. In 1968, Bercut-Richards sold the brand to Borden, which then sold it to California Canners and Growers of San Francisco in 1980. Soon after, The New York Times  food critic Mimi Sheraton wrote about what she coined “the Sacramento Tomato Juice Caper,” in which she uncovered the switch from the “velvety juice made from whole Sacramento tomatoes to juice made from concentrate to reduce shipping costs. “What is a plus for cost accountants is, as usual,” she opined, “a minus for consumers.” Sacramento Tomato Juice was eventually sold to Indiana’s Red Gold, Inc., which uses tomatoes grown in the Midwest.

“The bowler’s dream of magnificence has become a reality,” touted a July 1942 ad for the grand opening of the Art Deco-style Alhambra Bowl at the corner of Alhambra Boulevard and Capitol Avenue. The opening night’s guest list included Hank Marino, one of the top five bowlers of the 20th century, according to Bowlers Journal International. In 1984, the building burned down two years after its doors closed for the last time. In a column years later, legendary Sacramento Bee  sports columnist Bill Conlin wrote about how the bowling alley’s bar was once “a regular port of call” for a particular professional athlete as he traveled between his homes in Atherton and Lake Tahoe: baseball legend Ty Cobb.