Editor’s note: This is the second installment of our new Seat at the Bar series, in which the anonymous Seat at the Bar Diner visits local restaurants, takes a seat for one at the bar and reports honestly on the atmosphere and experience. 

I enter Adamo’s nondescript storefront on P Street and am greeted by a pleasant-looking gray-haired man in a blue checkered shirt bearing a big smile and a menu. “A seat at the bar, please,” I say. 

I walk into a small, dimly-lit room lined with brick walls. It’s early. I’m dining around 5:30 p.m. on a Friday before the weekend rush starts. I just wrapped up an incredibly busy month at work and want to treat myself. There’s a family of seven on the left huddled around a long butcher block wooden table and a few couples at the two-tops set up along the wall behind the bar.

As someone who has spent a lot of time on the East Coast, I haven’t found many Italian restaurants in Sacramento that recall my fond memories from the New York area. That means a family run, red-and-white checkered tablecloth room with chianti bottles dripping with candle wax as decor. 

Italian food can have different meanings for different people. Authentic Italian means the fresh ingredients used from various regions in Italy. It can be seafood fresh from the ocean in Sicily, golden olive oil from Tuscany or juicy lemons for gelato or limoncello from the Amalfi coast. For me growing up in the Northeast, cozy Italian restaurants were everywhere, much like taquerias are ubiquitous in California. Italian families cooked meals made with simple recipes handed down from their grandparents and ancestors, whether it was ziti covered with tomato sauce or chewy cavatelli pasta tossed with broccoli, garlic and olive oil.

I chose Adamo’s because it was recommended by local chefs. I pull up to the bar where a friendly female bartender named Alizae says “Do you want to hear the spiel?” I say yes, and she tells me how Andamo’s makes all their pasta from scratch in-house, and several of the wines they serve are from their own vineyards in Lucca, Italy, 40 miles west of Florence. I think to myself: I’ll take both.

For starters, there’s cacio de pepe arancini — risotto balls blended with pecorino cheese — fried octopus served with crispy grilled potatoes, and cherry peppers stuffed with goat cheese. There are three salads, including a Caesar, a Sicilian citrus and fennel and the house salad made up of mixed greens, preserved tomatoes and pickled red onion tossed with a red wine vinaigrette.

There are seven entrees, including chicken alfredo, four cheese ravioli, gnocchi, salmon piccata, shrimp scampi and carbonara. I go with what’s been my usual choice for the past several years — a bolognese with house-made fettuccine, beef, mirepoix and the mandatory San Marzano tomatoes. I recently tried to make my own bolognese for the first time and failed miserably. No matter how small I chopped the carrots, onion and celery, or slowly stirred in the canned San Marzano tomatoes, it ended up tasting like plain tomato-y sauce.

The owner John Adamo, the greeter in the blue checkered shirt, comes over to talk to me and calls me by my first name, which he memorized from when I walked in. He wants to know what I ordered and I told him my problem in making bolognese. Turns out he didn’t grow up in New York City like many Italian cooks. He’s from southern California, but his family is from Naples, Italy (and had a restaurant in the Bronx). He currently owns Adamo’s with his daughter Chiara.

The bolognese comes out rich and flavorful, coating the fresh fettuccine with each bite. I smother it with parmesan cheese and take a stab at the meatballs, tender and juicy. I take my time as no one is jockeying to get to the bar just yet. Soon, a couple takes the last two remaining seats.

John checks on me again. I discovered the Italian wine I was drinking wasn’t from his vineyard. Adamo wanted to make that right, so he poured me a glass of L’Agnesa, Tenuta Adamo from the family estate. It’s a sangiovese and merlot blend with spicy undertones. 

“I bought it just before COVID hit and said ‘What have I done? Did I make a mistake?’” Adamo says of the winery with a laugh. His family has owned the building at 21st and P streets for over 15 years, and Adamo’s has operated there since 2014.

By the end of my dinner, I’m relaxed and satisfied. I smile as I leave the bar, seeing it’s full of women in their 20s and 30s enjoying wine and Italian food, just like me. Outside, the grandmother who was tending to her grandchildren tells me: “It’s my first time here. It was delicious.”

Diner’s note: Adamo’s offers pasta making classes. Check their website. They also recently opened a pizza shop called Dodici Pizzeria on 12th Street in Sacramento.

Correction April 30, 2026: A previous version of this article suggested that Adamo’s opened just before the pandemic. It has been open since 2014.

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