One of the best events I get invited to each year by Visit Sacramento is the Tower Bridge Dinner menu tasting, which took place August 6 this year. I’ve been lucky to attend the dinner twice as a guest, and it’s as fabulous as you might imagine. To think that the organizers convinced the cities of West Sacramento and Sacramento in 2013 to shut down the golden Tower Bridge, which 75,000 cars drive over daily, for one evening so 800 well-dressed people can dine! It is quite unusual — and fabulous.

This year’s dinner, which will be held Sunday, Sept. 6, has an international flair, courtesy of the four chefs who created the menu. Typically, each chef who designs a course explains to the media how he or she came to prepare it. This was left out of the program at the unveiling earlier this month held at The Central Kitchen, which prepares 45,000 meals for students in the Sacramento City Unified School District each day. But I asked the chefs to explain their inspirations. Chef Joe Pruner, who told me his new restaurant Bocce is about to open in East Sacramento, was the spokesman for the group.

“The menu overall was inspired by two things. One is all the farmer immigrants who came and worked the fields and made them what they are today, and the second is the rivers running through Sacramento — Sacramento and American. They kind of give life to all of us, all the produce that we use in all of our restaurants,” Pruner says. 

The first course was designed by Chef Giancarlo Zapata of Chicha Peruvian Kitchen and dubbed “Current of Origins,” hearkening back to the river theme. It featured an albacore tuna tataki, lightly seared around the edges and tasting like a miniature tuna steak. The vegetable chips, which members of the media munched on during the unveiling, paired nicely with the red pepper dipping sauce.

“We took inspiration in South America, Japan, Italy, Portugal, Philippines, China, Vietnam, Mexico and South America,” Pruner says. “We picked a couple cultures to highlight, and then we put some things, some ingredients and techniques that we like to use into that dish as well. So the goal is to create a nice cohesive menu where we’re represented, and we’re representing everyone who came before us and worked the fields and gave life to the region.” 

The second course, prepared by Chef Francisco Rivera of Hawks Public House, was called “Current of Heritage” and borrowed from Portuguese and Italian traditions. The main component was a mushroom and ricotta rotolo, or mushrooms fashioned into a roll around ricotta cheese. It reminded me of the thinly sliced eggplant rollups, or rollatini, that I used to eat at Italian restaurants on the East Coast, accompanied by a tomato ragu sauce. The Tower Bridge Dinner version was also paired with a ragu sauce, this one made with Portuguese linguica sausage.

Rounding out the menu with the fourth course, called “Current of Legacy,” which leaned on Hispanic and Mexican traditions.  Created by Chef Kate Sutherland of Waterboy, it featured roasted pork belly chile verde and braised heirloom beans. The crispy pork belly was a fan favorite of the media crowd (while my favorite was the tuna). 

After the chefs described the dishes, the media was invited to taste them. It was lovely to be enjoying gourmet food at 11 a.m. on a Monday morning.

Folsom debuts Rainbow Bridge dinner

If there’s another bridge almost as iconic as the Tower Bridge in the Sacramento region, it is Folsom’s Rainbow Bridge, so named because the cement and steel structure built in 1919 arcs like a rainbow. It crosses over Lake Natoma and acts like a sentry to the entrance of Folsom Prison just down the shoreline. (Wire fences block off Lake Natoma near the prison so kayakers and paddlers can’t get near.)

The dinner is in honor of the City of Folsom celebrating its 80-year anniversary. Yes, that’s confusing, because Folsom has been around since California’s Gold Rush in the 1850s, but it didn’t incorporate until 1946. The multi-course dinner will be held Sept. 13 and concludes with a 10-minute drone show with 250 drones to note America’s 250th birthday as the finale. The tickets, sold in pairs for $700, went on sale in a lottery system earlier this month, which is now closed.

Sky River celebrates its 4th anniversary by expanding

Sky River Casino celebrated its fourth anniversary by hosting a six-course wine pairing at its SR Prime Steakhouse. Led by Mufeed Ali, chef de cuisine, and Peter DiCorti, executive chef, the menu included grilled lamb chop with a chimichurri sauce paired with a 2021 Justin Isosceles red blend; salmon tartare on a squid ink cracker partnered with a 2022 Trefethen riesling; a tender wagyu ribeye with crispy polenta accompanied by a 2021 Quilt cabernet sauvignon, and more.

The casino recently broke ground on a hotel resort expansion that will include a 300-room luxury hotel, a full-service day spa and salon, an outdoor pool and about 30,000 square feet of meeting, event and entertainment space. 

AI boot camp

I signed up for an AI boot camp put on by the Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Sac State. I want to be clear Comstock’s does not allow writers to use AI to write their stories, but I always want to keep up with technology and trends. 

The workshop was run by Averro, a staffings and solutions firm. There were about 40 of us, broken up into teams or pairs, and we were tasked with creating a unique food truck. Partner Chris and I used Claude to create an affordable food truck for students — and poof, the application produced The Hangry Hornet, complete with a fun hornet logo. 

We then used another AI tool, Gamma, to refine the image and create a menu. From there, we used Lovable, which refined our product further by building our website, giving us a business and marketing plan plus photos for our menu, which included such items as the hornet burrito, sting tacos and Delta breeze aqua fresca.

CREW Women of Influence luncheon

Last Wednesday I attended the Women of Influence luncheon put on by CREW Sacramento, Commercial Real Estate Women. They had a panel discussion with five women who talked about how they got into commercial real estate, their challenges and their advice for other businesswomen. It was interesting to hear from women on different career paths from mine and made me think conversations like these might be interesting to Comstock’s readers. 

If you have a story idea or a topic you’d like Comstock’s to cover, or an event you’d like us to know about, please email me at jfarah@comstocksmag.com.

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