The Dine One Six

This week Max throws back to an episode of his college podcast where he talked to Nicole McDavid, the garden coordinator at the Capital Public Radio garden. McDavid tends to the large garden which produces roughly 2,000 pounds of produce per year to the Associated Students, Inc. food pantry and other food banks. McDavid does it all using organic gardening techniques and passes on her 10 years of e...

WARNING: Make sure you’re not hungry before listening to this episode This week we are back with an episode all about the Sac Hot Chicken battle that took place earlier this summer. We interviewed all the chefs, tried all the sandwiches and got reactions from people on site as about 1000 people came out and enjoyed spicy chicken sandwiches and beer and cider.  We also talked to the event organizer...

Shannon McElroy has one of the best restaurant jobs in town. He works 8 a.m. to 3 p.m everyday at one of the best, most respected pizzerias in town, making the pizza dough and the desserts. But Shannon’s career has spanned everything from high end restaurants in Napa, cooking pizzas in the redwood forests of Mendecino and serving surly customers in some of Sacramento’s “finest” dive bars.    We ta...

In 1986 Karen Bond and her husband Malcolm bought a 10 acre almond orchard in Winters to fulfill a dream of living in the country. At the time they never would have guessed that they would be selling prized olive oil made from trees imported from Italy.    After removing their almond trees, they were visiting Sicily where Karen tried freshly pressed olive oil for the first time and she fell in lov...

Today we welcome Bobby Coyote, owner of Dos Coyotes and his long-time executive chef Mark Casale. Dos Coyotes is unique in so many ways. It’s uniquely Sacramento, it blends Mexican, southwest and farm-to-fork California cuisine and it’s one of the original concepts to offer restaurant quality food that’s fresh, fast, ordered at a counter but “served on a cool plate.” Bobby tells the harrowing stor...

Neill Little has a been a server and bartender since he was 21. He's spent over a decade working at places in Sacramento including DeVere's, Empress Tap Room and Camden Spit and Larder. Neill and I talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of working as a server. Mostly, we talk about the good and how being a server allows you to connect with people, have great conversations and make lifelong frie...

In this episode Max throws back to an interview he did in the summer of 2020 with Shaun Holkko, a peer from Sac State who worked at In-N-Out burger for nearly three years. Max and Shaun get into all the In-N-Out lore including if you have to be religious to work there, what are all the secret menu items, how many patties can you put on one burger and of course...what's with the fries!? Links:  Sha...

Ray Ballestero is the co-owner of Alaro Craft Brewery along with his wife Annette. Alaro is located in the old Rubicon Brewing Co. location which was a Sacramento institution for almost 30 years.  Alaro is a labor of love and combines decades of experience in home brewing paired with Ray’s upbringing eating food influenced from his Spanish background. Combine that with his wife’s background as a c...

Today I talk with professional food photographer Taylor Gillespie, who runs Food in Focus here in Sacramento. Taylor comes from a family of entrepreneurs and food people. Her mom was a chef when she was younger and her grandparents started Sunrise Natural Foods. I love Taylor’s story because it is a story of a business that could only be created in the last 10 years. She built her business on Inst...

In part two of Chef Brad Cecchi we cover why he made the move back to Sacramento to open Canon, how they managed to survive the pandemic after being open only three years by helping start Family Meal Sacramento which became Great Plates delivery in California .  Cecchi owns and is the executive chef of Canon in East Sac, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand award and is widely considered one of the...

Brad Cecchi got his start in cooking by taking classes at American River College as a teenager, not because he loved cooking but because it seemed easy but he quickly found he had a knack for it. After placing second in a national cooking competition he found himself working in the kitchen at a five star resort in Colorado at age 18 and he never looked back.  Today Cecchi co-owns and is the execut...

Nestled along a levee, in the back of a large business park in West Sacramento is a company that is developing new technology and striving to mitigate the devastating effects of factory farming and provide a new protein source for a population set to hit 10 billion people over the next few decades.  The Better Meat Co. is using a proprietary microflora organism to create fermentation and quickly g...

Lee Pflugrath always dreamed of owning his own restaurant. He worked in kitchens his entire life starting at age 14. He worked his way up to being an executive chef at a high end restaurant in Napa in the 90’s. So how did he end up owning a humble yogurt shop in Davis?  It’s a long, funny story and Lee lays out all the details for us in today’s episode. We talk about what it was like to be a chef...

Tamra Ruxin is a roaster for the local land park roastery Two Seeds Coffee . She knows her coffee and has the credentials to prove it. In fact, Tamra is a certified Q Arabica coffee grader, a certification that is held by only a few hundred people in the U.S. and it means she can taste a cup of coffee and tell you almost anything about it.    We get into the difference between dark, medium and lig...

Andy Baranoff bakes bread and sells it on Instagram. He sells so much of it that he converted his laundry room into a cottage bakery, pumping out the smell of fresh bread into his South Land park neighborhood.     Like so many people who end up as chefs or bakers, Andy Barnoff got his start by helping his grandmother in the kitchen make all sorts of Russian pastries and dishes with enriched dough....

The Dine One Six podcast is focused on the Sacramento food scene along with the people and culture that make it special. The show features interviews with chefs, farmers, journalists and anyone else with a great Sacramento food story to tell. Hosted by Max Connor, an award winning journalist and podcaster as well a long time restaurant worker and dedicated home cook. Max will take you behind the s...