Takeout of Sacramento: O Cafe delivers pastries, Wild Rooster has healthier Mexican fare

Scones sell, even during a pandemic.

O Cafe Bakery and Bistro is a French-American restaurant in Fair Oaks. Before in-house dining ended, they were doing a brisk business serving breakfast, lunch and brunch. They also offered an assortment of baked goods: croissants, rolls, tarts and cakes.

Things got a little rocky when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order first took effect. They lost breakfast and lunch business. Christophe Jusseaume is both owner and pastry chef at O Cafe. He considers his eight employees family, but even so, he was forced to furlough three of them.

But then business started to pick up pretty quickly in the eclair department. People wanted their baked goods. These days, business is pretty much the the same as it was just before the pandemic shut down normal life. The difference is pastries now account for about 70 percent of revenue, up from 40 percent before.

And it was enough to bring all the furloughed employees back to work.

O Cafe is still serving breakfast and lunch via takeout, curbside pickup and through the DoorDash delivery service.

The cuisine is a mix of French and American. Breakfast options include pain perdu (French toast with berry salad, yogurt, granola and maple syrup) or the “galette le trad.” A galette is a savory buckwheat crepe traditional to French Brittany. The galette le trad is made with egg, gruyere and prosciutto. Their best-seller is the “galette le frenchie.” It can be eaten for both breakfast and lunch, and it’s made with onion confit, mushroom, bacon, sour cream and gruyere.

The cuisine, like the chef, is part French and part American.

Jusseaume grew up in Tours, France. He showed an early affinity for the culinary arts. As a child, he used to go snail hunting after rainstorms, bringing baskets of escargot home for dinner.

Jusseaume knew he wanted to be a baker when he was just 11 years old, when he had a job cleaning trays for the local bakery. One day, the baker told him to start coming in earlier. He’d seen potential in Jusseaume. It was time for him to learn to make bread.

It was the start of a career. Jusseaume attended culinary school in France before eventually moving to the United States.

“I fell in love with California,” he said. “The people, the kindness. ... It was magic.”

Over the years, Jusseaume worked at bakeries in the Bay Area and Sacramento, including Freeport Bakery.

In January of 2018, Jusseaume opened up O Cafe in the heart of Old Fair Oaks. “It’s a great village. I love it,” he said. And things have gone well, even now.

“I’m blessed that I’m still open and have my staff around me, encouraging me. ... I’m very thankful for that,” he said.

Wild Rooster Bistro

Around the corner from O Cafe is the Wild Rooster Bistro, a Mexican restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Wild Rooster is still open for takeout, curbside and delivery through DoorDash. But it hasn’t been easy. Customers can call in their orders or place them online through DoorDash or Grabull.

The restaurant was started by three friends, Salvador Sanchez, Rocio Fierro and Lorena M. Van Rein. All three are from Jalisco, Mexico, although they met in the United States. They talked for years about starting some kind of business together.

A few years back, they finally decided to give it a go. They wanted to do more than just start their own Mexican restaurant. They wanted to share the food they grew up eating, the recipes passed down by their grandparents.

Each of the three owners contributed items to the menu. French toast isn’t a traditional Mexican dish, but Van Rein’s mother used to make it for breakfast, so it’s on the menu.

Chile relleno is a classic dish, but back in Mexico, the parents all made it differently. Van Rein’s grandmother used to put tuna in her chili relleno. “Whatever was left over, you put inside of the chile relleno.”

The Wild Rooster’s recipe for chile relleno is inspired by Sanchez’ mother. She didn’t deep fry the chile relleno or dip it in egg batter. Instead, she baked it in the oven. Clean, simple. “No egg, no nothing,” said Sanchez — the egg just soaks up the oil.

But the Wild Rooster doesn’t always stick to grandma’s old recipes. For one thing, it’s not that easy. Recipes were passed down, not written down. “The grandmothers were different, they didn’t measure anything,” said Van Rein. They just added some of this and some of that, and somehow it all worked out.

At the Wild Rooster, they’re also more health-conscious than previous generations. They serve a large selection of vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free dishes. They use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, so that any item can be made vegan upon request. Some items, like the vegan “steak” tacos, are made using a soy-based meat alternative.

Since the shutdown, the Wild Rooster has started offering a $30 family special. The meal feeds four people and includes rice, beans, tortillas, salsa, pico de gallo, chips, and your choice of chicken, carnitas or vegan fajitas.

“We’ve lost maybe 50 percent of our business,” said Van Rein. She doesn’t know if the restaurant will make it through this; it all depends on how long the shutdown lasts.

“But we’re still open for food to-go,” Van Rein said. “We can’t seat anybody in here. But we are still here.”