As promised, our collective picks for some of the categories in this year’s Readers Choice awards. Make sure to vote online today or tomorrow. I had the date wrong last week, voting ends tomorrow. In addition to the below, we would appreciate your votes for Best blog, Best blogger (pick your favorite), and Best Sacramento Web site.

Food & Drink
Best restaurant: Maritime Seafood & Grill
Best soups: la bonne soupe
Best Thai: Thai Cottage
Best Wine Bar: 58 degrees & Holding
Best small plates: Formoli’s Bistro
Best BBQ: Big Joe’s BBQ (if you dolts vote for Texas West I’m going to come over to your house and give you a spice rub where the sun don’t shine (if you know what I mean))

Continue reading “Our picks for 2008 News & Review Readers’ Choice” »

CoolDMZ wouldn’t be earning CoolDMZ’s pay if CoolDMZ wasn’t a contrarian on the Corti Brothers situation. I’m having trouble mustering a lot of sympathy for the Cortis after reading the Bee’s follow-up story today. I suppose I liked Corti Bros as much as the next guy, though my patronage of things that can be described as “upscale” is seldom to never. (Unless Nordstrom Rack counts as upscale?)

I’m not shocked that Heather Fargo called Darrell Corti and offered the city’s help in finding a new location. Would that help entail explaining how a month to month lease works? All I keep reading is that Corti fans will go wherever he decides to move, even if it is out of town. I hope there are some patrons who are be pissed that a 60 year old company allowed themselves to operate on a wing and a prayer for 20 years despite knowing how loyal their fans were. What if you live down the street, have been shopping there since 1970, and can’t drive?

Continue reading “More on the Corti move” »

The Bee reports today that the property that has housed Corti Brothers since 1970 will be leased to another tenant. CB has occupied the location since 1988 without a lease, so I suppose it is no surprise that the landlords opted to strike a deal that more than doubles the rent on the 20,000 square foot location from $12,000 to $24,000 a month. The new business will be Good Eats, a gourmet market and bistro. According to Mike Dunn at the Bee, CB will close the current location by October 15.

With their top quality selection of…. jeeze, just about anything you could want to eat or drink, I am a huge fan of CB. Since 1947, they have been on the short list of Sacramento’s best, and I hope that this continues long into the 21st Century. Let’s support Corti Brothers for as long as we can to help make that transition to a new store as quick as possible.

Everyone’s favorite hardware store is celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend.

Being in California, things that are “old” to us are usually strip malls that were built in the ’70s so it’s meaningful when a local business reaches the venerable century mark (especially one in Sacramento proper, as most of our region’s oldest businesses are in the Mother Lode towns like Placerville and Auburn.)

Sac-eats will be pleased to know that The Banjo Ramblers will be part of Saturday’s entertainment, in addition to the jazz bands of local high schools.

I personally will be there for the cotton candy and to get my face painted.

Since everyone seems to be itching for their bribe…. er.. economic stimulus check, I figured I would offer this bit of consumer protection.

The California Franchise Tax Board is warning taxpayers of two scams involving the tax board and identity theft. The first scam involves an e-mail “phishing” for taxpayer data. The e-mail masquerades as offering to check the status of your state income tax refund. Scams of this nature attempt to lure people into revealing personal and financial information, such as Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers, which may be used to steal that taxpayer’s identify. The second scam involves a phony letter informing the taxpayer his or her tax return may be audited. The letter refers the taxpayer to a fake FTB address in Georgia. Both the e-mail and the letter contain misspellings and grammatical errors.

Taxpayers who receive such a notice should contact FTB at 800.852.5711.

How’s that?

They stock the snack foods like crackers and packaged cookies directly across the aisle from their baby goods.

What’s that? You don’t like Wheat Thins with baby-fresh scent or the thought of diapers when scoping out the Double-Stuf Oreos?  Eww.  Neither do I.

This must be a thing for me, given previous posts on the whacked out way of organizing grocery stores.

This is at the Arden & Eastern location, so maybe they’ll have items in more appealing places later on following the remodel.

Much was made of the recent closing of California Fat’s this week, much more, in fact, than the closing of Brother Oliver’s earlier this year. Each establishment was just short of being iconic, but the suburban Oliver’s didn’t quite have the cultural cache that anything with the name Fat attached to it does.

It is, however, not just the locals who are having difficulties in our worsening economy. Within the last few months, we’ve seen the closing of Macaroni Grill on Alta Arden (now where am I going to get chicken parmagiana after seeing dissected bodies? Oh, that’s right, the bodies left town too. Alta Arden is like a ghost town now. Thank God for Chick Fil-A.), Wendy’s on Fair Oaks, and Pick Up Stix everywhere. I’m not saying that some of these national chains will be missed for their standout cuisine, but I’d rather have a chain or big box retailer than an empty storefront any day.

The thread about lack of good restaurants in Tahoe Park and our ongoing meme of “dead zones” — not to be confused with dead-to-me zones–reminded me of the dead zone that is the seeming former art deco theater building on Stockton and Broadway behind Subway, which just in the last few years has been home to 3 or 4 eating establishments that never saw the light of day. The current business hoping to reverse that trend is going to be called “Boon Boon.” I’ll let you read that name and think about it for a second. Ready? On the count of 10, what comes to mind?

Boom boom, right? Like, “I ate at that new Vietnamese restaurant on Broadway and twenty minutes later I had to make boom boom like rilly bad.”

However, in the interest of the Stockton corridor and good eateries for the greater Tahoe Park area I vow to try Boon Boon at least once. Assuming it does in fact not go the way of Po Boys, Quotes Bistro, and all the other failed restaurants that came before it…

Who else gets mistaken for employees in retail establishments or is frequently asked by fellow patrons for assistance?

I know not to wear red garments when going to Target, and anyone who wore a blue chambray shirt and khakis in the ’90s* could have been mistaken for a Blockbuster employee.

Tonight at Longs, I helped a young girl pick out just the right microwave popcorn and a woman select a glittery hair clip for a friend’s 11-year-old daughter’s birthday. I was approached by each of these people — maybe they admired my taste in diet soda (all Coca Cola products are five 12-packs for $12, plus CRV; no coupon required) and laundry detergent, so they trusted my judgment to make consumer decisions for them. I truly felt like a Maven in Malcolm Gladwell’s eyes.

Does this happen to anyone else on a regular basis?

*Note the proper position of the apostrophe. The apostrophe indicates where I left off something that was already there, namely “19.” The incorrect way would have been to write it as “90’s.” For more information please refer to Grammar Girl’s guide to dates. As you were.

As noted in a previous post, there are certain locations throughout the region that seem to be jinxed.  Even if the rest of the tenants in a shopping center thrive for years, there seems to be the one oddball space that is constantly changing.

Here is an update on two previously noted dead zone locations:

Fair Oaks Boulevard, just east of Watt, next to the Shell station
Previously a Baskin-Robbins, Double Rainbow, and a bevy of cell phone stores, this is now a Goodwill Xpress donation drop-off location.  With the “Xpress” spelling, I’m waiting for the word on if they accept all kinds of donations or only cast-off Xtreme sports gear.

Free-standing building in the parking lot of the really run-down looking center on Fulton just north of Hurley
It’s being demolished.   Consider it “dead” and not just part of the “dead zone.”