Notes from the road
I’m just finishing a glass of hard cider at the Rubicon Brewing Company here in Sacramento, and taking advantage of their free wifi network. What brings me to Sacramento, you may ask? My car! Ha! Yes, I had a beer before this. Ahem.
Seriously, while I’ve been to the metro area here a few times, I haven’t actually explored much of the place-I’ve been around the western suburbs where Theodous lives, and once I made it to Arden Fair to visit a sushi place (“Taro’s by Mikuni,” the showcase kitchen of a local chain that playswithfood recommended), but it occurred to me that I’ve never been downtown.
So, I ended up parking at the Downtown Plaza-which is, as it turns out, an outdoor Westfield Shopping Center (they are inescapable)-and wandered around that area, and a bit more of the city, and part of Old Town Sacramento. “Old Sac” (I swear, that’s what it seems the locals call it) is a district that’s several blocks long along the waterfront. It is preserved as a historic area, so it has a very “Old West” feel, and is full of authentic old west souvenir stands and tee-shirt shops and bars.
Even though I poke fun at it, there’s a lot of stuff here in Sacramento, and it’s a fairly pretty area. Unlike the western subdivisions, there are a lot of trees here, particularly evergreens and firs; the neighborhood I’m in now, creatively dubbed “Midtown,” reminds me-just a little-of some of the areas I saw in Portland, particularly the area where Stumptown Coffee Roasters is.
I had a moderately light dinner of a mixed green salad and hot wings. They were some of the oddest hot wings I’ve had-the sauce had more of an Oriental kick to it, with a definite ginger taste to it and a bit of chunkiness I also associate with Oriental chili sauces. But it was still really good, and some of the hottest I’ve had (at least that’s still edible). With it I had an amber ale-good, if not remarkable-and now I’m finishing a hard apple cider, which is quite good. They have a hard pomegranate cider, too, which I was curious about but decided against.
As it is, though, it’s about quarter to eight and I’ve decided to go hunt for dessert on my way out of town.