By Marybeth Bizjak; Visit Sacramento
“Favas and fiddleheads and ramps, oh my!
Sacramento restaurants dish up the best of the season’s agricultural bounty.”
HAWKS PUBLIC HOUSE
This is the second eatery from Michael Fagnoni and Molly Hawks, the husband-and- wife team known for their upscale Granite Bay restaurant, Hawks. Located in East Sacramento, it’s a bit more casual than its Granite Bay cousin. The floors are cement, the ceiling is covered in rustic shiplap, and the wood tables are naked. Servers wear jeans and aprons while Led Zeppelin plays on the sound system. Fagnoni and Hawks designed the food to be rustic, with a heavy concentration on Mediterranean flavors. The deceptively simple menu features dishes like steak tartare and rigatoni with pork ragù. But a deeper dive uncovers a distinctly uncasual level of execution. For the steak tartare, hand-cut Wagyu beef gets dressed with tiny shavings of egg yolk that’s been cured in salt and sugar. The rigatoni features house-made pasta tubes, fresh mozzarella and a delicately crunchy garnish of crushed croutons and fennel pollen. Not even the burger is phoned in. The beef is ground (twice) in the walk-in fridge so it stays cold and firm, and the burger is served on a house-made brioche bun with hand-cut french fries. Spring brings an exciting crop of seasonal produce that ends up in dishes like tombo tuna with snap peas and nettle puree, or a lamb T-bone with red beet spatzel and favas. Hawks and Fagnoni are popular fixtures on Sacramento’s season- al-and-local scene, and in 2019, Molly Hawks served as one of the lead chefs at the annual farm-to-fork gala dinner on Tower Bridge. 1525 Alhambra Blvd.; (916) 588-4440; hawkspublichouse.com
Link to full article: https://www.pageflipr.com/Sacramento-Visitors-Guide-spring.html