Editor’s note: This is the second installment of our new Seat
at the Bar series, in which the anonymous Seat at the Bar Diner
visits local restaurants, takes a seat for one at the bar and
reports honestly on the atmosphere and experience.
I enter Adamo’s nondescript storefront on P Street and am greeted
by a pleasant-looking gray-haired man in a blue checkered shirt
bearing a big smile and a menu. “A seat at the bar, please,” I
say.
I walk into a small, dimly-lit room lined with brick walls. It’s
early. I’m dining around 5:30 p.m. on a Friday before the weekend
rush starts. I just wrapped up an incredibly busy month at work
and want to treat myself. There’s a family of seven on the left
huddled around a long butcher block wooden table and a few
couples at the two-tops set up along the wall behind the bar.
As someone who has spent a lot of time on the East Coast, I
haven’t found many Italian restaurants in Sacramento that
recall my fond memories from the New York area. That
means a family run, red-and-white checkered tablecloth room
with chianti bottles dripping with candle wax as decor.
Italian food can have different meanings for
different people. Authentic Italian means the fresh
ingredients used from various regions in Italy. It can be seafood
fresh from the ocean in Sicily, golden olive oil from Tuscany or
juicy lemons for gelato or limoncello from the Amalfi coast. For
me growing up in the Northeast, cozy Italian restaurants were
everywhere, much like taquerias are ubiquitous in California.
Italian families cooked meals made with simple recipes handed
down from their grandparents and ancestors, whether it was ziti
covered with tomato sauce or chewy cavatelli pasta tossed with
broccoli, garlic and olive oil.
I chose Adamo’s because it was recommended by local chefs. I pull
up to the bar where a friendly female bartender named Alizae says
“Do you want to hear the spiel?” I say yes, and she tells me how
Andamo’s makes all their pasta from scratch in-house, and several
of the wines they serve are from their own vineyards in Lucca,
Italy, 40 miles west of Florence. I think to myself: I’ll take
both.
Adamo’s serves wines from the owners’ family estate in Italy,
including this Tuscan red.
Seeing no Chianti on the wine list, Alizae
helps me find something similar. She recommended a wine named
Thybris from Castello di Corbara in Italy, which is 100 percent
Sangiovese with notes of ripe red fruits, spices, coffee,
vanilla, plums and tobacco. She carefully polishes the wine glass
with a towel before she pours. I scan the menu.
For starters, there’s cacio de pepe arancini — risotto balls
blended with pecorino cheese — fried octopus served with crispy
grilled potatoes, and cherry peppers stuffed with goat cheese.
There are three salads, including a Caesar, a Sicilian citrus and
fennel and the house salad made up of mixed greens, preserved
tomatoes and pickled red onion tossed with a red wine
vinaigrette.
There are seven entrees, including chicken alfredo, four cheese
ravioli, gnocchi, salmon piccata, shrimp scampi and carbonara. I
go with what’s been my usual choice for the past several years —
a bolognese with house-made fettuccine, beef, mirepoix and the
mandatory San Marzano tomatoes. I recently tried to make my own
bolognese for the first time and failed miserably. No matter how
small I chopped the carrots, onion and celery, or slowly stirred
in the canned San Marzano tomatoes, it ended up tasting like
plain tomato-y sauce.
Though an Italian might disagree, the Seat at the Bar Diner likes
pasta bolognese with a side of meatballs.
As if this hearty dish wasn’t enough, Adamo’s
side dish of meatballs called to me, so I asked the bartender to
add them, too. I’m always interested in how different chefs make
their meatballs. On the East Coast, both my mother and friends
used ground veal mixed with ground beef. Here in California, it’s
hard to find ground veal or even ground pork. On the East Coast,
butchers package up ground beef and veal combos, knowing they’re
used for meatballs.
The owner John Adamo, the greeter in the blue checkered shirt,
comes over to talk to me and calls me by my first name, which he
memorized from when I walked in. He wants to know what I ordered
and I told him my problem in making bolognese. Turns out he
didn’t grow up in New York City like many Italian cooks. He’s
from southern California, but his family is from Naples, Italy
(and had a restaurant in the Bronx). He currently owns Adamo’s
with his daughter Chiara.
A house salad comes with the meal.
The house salad comes with the meal, so I
start poking at it as I glance around the restaurant, which is
starting to fill up. There’s a new table of six with three
generations, including a grandmother tending to her
grandchildren. It’s the same picture at the butcher block table.
The patriarch of the family sits at the head of the table while
his son in a baseball cap talks to his young son. Meanwhile, more
people join me at the bar. Two young women sit at the end,
ordering glasses of white wine and the risotto appetizer to
share. Two more women pull up on the other side.
The bolognese comes out rich and flavorful, coating the fresh
fettuccine with each bite. I smother it with parmesan cheese and
take a stab at the meatballs, tender and juicy. I take my time as
no one is jockeying to get to the bar just yet. Soon, a couple
takes the last two remaining seats.
John checks on me again. I discovered the Italian wine I was
drinking wasn’t from his vineyard. Adamo wanted to make that
right, so he poured me a glass of L’Agnesa, Tenuta Adamo from the
family estate. It’s a sangiovese and merlot blend with spicy
undertones.
“I bought it just before COVID hit and said ‘What have I done?
Did I make a mistake?’” Adamo says of the winery with a
laugh. His family has owned the building at 21st and P streets
for over 15 years, and Adamo’s has operated there since 2014.
By the end of my dinner, I’m relaxed and satisfied. I smile as I
leave the bar, seeing it’s full of women in their 20s and 30s
enjoying wine and Italian food, just like me. Outside, the
grandmother who was tending to her grandchildren tells me: “It’s
my first time here. It was delicious.”
Diner’s note: Adamo’s offers pasta making classes. Check
their website. They also recently opened a pizza shop called
Dodici Pizzeria on 12th Street in Sacramento.
Correction April 30, 2026: A previous version of this article
suggested that Adamo’s opened just before the pandemic. It
has been open since 2014.
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