AM18: Dad’s Kitchen

Today for Lunch I was joined by my brother, his wife, their son and my grandma at Dad’s Kitchen.  This popular Sacramento restaurant has been featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and fairly recently now has a second location on Sunset and Hazel in Fair Oaks (which is the one we went to).

We arrived at about noon and were seated immediately despite it being somewhat busy.  They have a nice sized patio which had big shades drawn to keep out the blazing sun.  This early in the day it was probably very nice out there.  We were just inside in a medium-sized room with lots of seating.  They have a bar, though I did not get much of a look at it, or the rest of the place.  It is very casual dining.  Lots of neon beer signs and posters make up the decorations.

Being the weekend we were given the brunch menu. It consisted of 1/3 breakfast options, 1/3 sandwiches and 1/3 burgers.  It all sounded pretty good.  I chose the Chicken Fried Steak & Eggs (topped with house-made gravy and served with home fries and a biscuit)[$14].  Between all of us we pretty much covered all the options which I’ll get to below.

To drink I ordered the Chocolate Shake Porter from Boulder, which was served on nitro [$6].  They have an impressive whiskey list as well (Beer List / Whiskey List).  The beer followed waters and a soda by a minute or so and was velvety-smooth.  I’ve had this before in a bottle and it’s pretty tasty.  We ordered our food just after that and it came in a little under 15 minutes.

My brother got the Cowboy Burger (8 oz patty with pepper jack cheese, bacon, house-made BBQ sauce, and crispy onions served on an artisan bun)[$13] and upgraded the fries to blue cheese habanero for $1.  It looked great, cooked medium rare.  He said the fries had great flavor and didn’t have excessive heat from the habanero.

My sister-in-law ordered the Hot Blonde sandwich (Grilled organic chicken, Swiss cheese, spinach, avocado, cucumbers, tomato, roasted red onion, garlic spread, brown mustard, and Pepper Plant sauce, panini pressed on sliced sourdough and served with sea salted fries).  Since she was sharing this with my 2 year old nephew, our server offered to bring the pepper plant sauce on the side.  Good idea, because I took a whiff of the sauce and it was very peppery.

My grandma ordered the Dad’s BLT (Bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo, panini pressed on sliced sourdough and served with sea salted fries)[$9].  This looked fantastic.  It has an option for avocado.  I might return to check that out.

My plate was pretty interesting visually.  The steak was kind of curled up in a weird way that I’ve never seen before.  The home fries, which I asked for done crisp, were perfect.  Some were very dark, which is A-OK to me, I really like them crispy.  There were bits of onion mixed in there as well.  The eggs came out more over-easy than the over-medium I requested.  That’s unfortunately very common anywhere and it’s something I’ve come to expect and live with.

The biscuit was massive and very unique looking.  It had lots of craggy surface area which was great to scoop up egg, gravy, butter or the awesome (maybe house-made) strawberry jam.  I could have used a bit more though because the biscuit was huge.  As for the steak itself, it was pretty good.  The fried batter was extremely crisp and started coming apart in pieces as I cut.  It had a very peculiar flavor to it that was something I’ve not come across before with chicken fried steak. Thinking it might have been a bit of chili powder.  I was not super crazy about it, and I would prefer a more traditional batter.

In the end I enjoyed my dish, but I was kind of jealous of everyone else’s orders.  I can say that I will be back, but I’ll stick to burgers and sandwiches next time.  The Dad’s Burger in particular is calling my name (8 oz patty encrusted with 2 oz of bleu cheese crumbles and 2 oz of chopped up bacon)!

Website: http://ilovedadskitchen.com