This food looks good enough to frame, but the Sacramento museum would rather you enjoy eating it
Sacramento’s preeminent museum is about to get a lot tastier.
Majka Pizzeria & Bakery owners Alex Sherry and Chutharat Sae Tong will begin operating the Crocker Art Museum’s cafe on Oct. 18, the museum announced on social media last week.
It’s welcome news for art enthusiasts, as the Crocker Cafe has been closed since the pandemic. Fans of Majka, too, should be excited for an expanded menu that will include breakfast pastries, sandwiches and salads in addition to pizza.
Sherry and Sae Tong met while working at Berkeley’s venerable Cheese Board Collective and opened Majka, named for Sherry’s great-grandmother, at the corner of 15th and Q streets. Like the Cheese Board, Majka features one daily-rotating pizza with an emphasis on vegetarian toppings, and even has its own riff on the Berkeley pizzeria’s famous green hot sauce.
The owners and parents have been cognizant of the restaurant industry’s propensity for burnout, only keeping Majka open four days a week for 31 cumulative hours and hadn’t planned to expand. But they’re also big fans of the Crocker, Sherry said, and responded to the museum’s request for proposal with samples of what they might serve in the cafe. The Crocker called and offered them a contract the following morning.
“We think it’s a really great space and a really great part of the city of Sacramento — one of the best parts, in our opinion,” Sherry said. “We thought it was one of those opportunities where maybe the timing wasn’t perfect, but it was a good opportunity so we should do it anyway.”
The Majka-operated Crocker Cafe will serve scones, muffins and Camellia Coffee Roasters espresso drinks at 10 a.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The cafe will pivot to sandwiches (think ham and imported emmentaler on housemade focaccia) and seasonal salads (including grainy ones centered around quinoa, farro or einkorn) before closing around 3-3:30 p.m., except for Thursday, when the Crocker stays open later for special programming.
Sherry is also excited to introduce Sicilian-style pizza squares, which are a few inches thick and currently only served at Giovanni’s Old World New York Pizzeria in town. Majka’s signature chocolate chip cookies topped with sea salt will be available as well, along with a large assortment of soft drinks and beer and wine once the cafe receives its California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control license.
You don’t need to buy a Crocker admission ticket to access the cafe, found in the Teel Family Pavillion on the museum’s first floor. Sherry and Sae Tong will source the cafe’s produce from the Sunday farmers market in Southside Park, as they do for Majka.
“A lot of times, you go to places and the only place to eat is a cafeteria or airport food instead of real food,” Sherry said. “And so it’s really important to us that when people come to the Crocker, they’re getting a real meal with what we consider to be real food.”
What I’m Eating
North Natomas has become Sacramento’s de facto hub for South Asian food (don’t sleep on Folsom, either, if you’re out that way). While that most often manifests in Indian restaurants, there are a few Nepalese spots as well, including Himalaya Momo in Park Place 2 shopping center.
Bhojraj Phuyal’s 2-year-old restaurant specializes in momos, Nepalese and Tibetan dumplings that are also popular in India and Bhutan. As such, one should order the classic steamed momos ($10 for a six-piece appetizer set, or $14 for 10 dumplings). Available with chicken, vegetarian or vegan fillings, they’re twisted firm on top with a soft underbelly.
Really, though, most of our table’s favorite dish was the jhol momo ($17 for 10 pieces). Same dumplings, except this time they swam in a delicious, tangy tomato broth. I’ll add that we ordered these filled with chicken and the classics with stewed greens inside, and the poultry made a surprising amount of (positive) difference.
Himalaya Momo’s menu has several pages of familiar Indian dishes, including vegetarian favorites such as chole bhature ($10) or aloo gobi ($12). It’s rarer to find a restaurant that makes lamb sekuwa ($16), skewered chunks of meat coated in a spicy red marinade and cooked in a tandoori oven.
Himalaya Momo
Address: 4740 Natomas Blvd., Suite 150, Sacramento.
Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, 5-9 p.m. Monday.
Phone number: (916) 419-2121.
Website: https://www.clover.com/online-ordering/himalaya-momo-sacramento
Drinks: Chai, sodas and Himalayan coffee, with a California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control beer and wine license pending.
Vegetarian options: Many.
Noise level: Relatively quiet.
Openings & Closings
Tom’s Watch Bar opened Monday at 414 K St. in Downtown Commons. The 8,000-square foot mega-sports bar boasts 80 TVs and a large “video wall;” popular menu items include shaved prime rib and pickle-brined fried chicken.
Tacos 65 is a new, straightforward taqueria at the corner of 65th Street and Broadway in Tahoe Park. Order your vessel (taco, burrito, mulita or quesadilla) and pick from carne asado, pollo asado, mushrooms, adobada or chorizo as your filling.
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