The Dine One Six

Eddie Torres formerly of The Kitchen

Eddie Torres learned the power of food connecting families at an early age when he would have Sunday dinners with more than 20 members of his extended family, most of whom lived in the same apartment complex. But it wasn’t until the great recession, which buckled the car industry where he was working, that he decided to go to culinary school. 
After school he bounced around town until making his way to Ella pretty quickly, starting at the bottom and working his way up to the line. Then, he heard from his boss that Kelly McCown was taking over at The Kitchen and looking to build his team. Eddie tried out and ended up working at The Kitchen for 6 years, working his way up to sous chef.
Eddie talks about the intensity, the craft, the precision and the joy that it took to work at one of Sacramento’s most prestigious restaurants. 
Today he  is back working with his good friend Ben Roberts who owns Pizza Supreme Being helping put out some of the best pizza in Sacramento, while he works on his own concept of a Puerto Rican inspired restaurant. 
Photo courtesy of @jamiecardenasphotographer
Eddie’s instagram
 
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Dennis Sydnor from Renegade Dining

Dennis Sydnor first fell in love with cooking in his family home, smelling bbq and parker house rolls that his dad made. Then when he got his first kitchen job back in Cleveland at 17 he realized that his ability to cook impressed the girls and gave him some juice as the new kid in town. 
Soon he moved to the front of the house and fell in love with hospitality and being front and center watching people experience what he knew would become lifelong memories. Eventually, he longed to get back into the kitchen and moved back to Sacramento and went to culinary school to prove he was serious about getting behind the line. 
He has worked all over town including Grange, Red Rabbit, JB’s Lounge, Smokey Oaks, 1022 and even Golden One Center before setting out on his own during COVID doing pop ups and catering under the name Renegade Dining while also serving the students at a beauty school in Natomas. 
We get into his whole past and his hope for the future, as well as his amazing experience as the winner of an episode of Cutthroat Kitchen on Food Network which you’ll have to see to believe. And now you can on the Discovery+ app!
Follow Dennis on Instagram @dennissydnorjr and Renegade Dining @renegade_dining 
Dennis’ episode of Cutthroat Kitchen is on Discovery Plus in season 13 titled “Mission Impastable”
 
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email us at max@dineonesix.com or neill@dineonesix.com

Sac City Brews Chef/Owner Rebecca Campbell

Max and Neill sit down with Rebecca Campbell, owner and chef of Sac City Brews in Tahoe Park. 
They talk about Rebecca’s unconventional and even accidental move to running a kitchen. It’s not often you find someone with two Masters degrees running a kitchen, but she has taken her background in community development to create an amazing spot for the neighborhood of Tahoe Park and frankly for all of Sacramento. 
She talks about how growing up on a small farm in the foothills gave her an appreciation for the small farmers she works with today and how it took her years to realize that she is actually not just analytically minded but also a very creative person and it shows in her food. 
And we talk a lot about the creative twists on classics like: tater tots, nachos, wings, paninis and more.  
Visit Sac City Brews website and Instagram 
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Greg Desmangles of Urban Roots

Greg Desmangles got his start as so many do, in the dish pit of a family owned restaurant. But from his first weekend working on his feet all day bussing tables and washing dishes during beer week, Greg knew he wanted to be in a kitchen. 
Greg went on to stage at Taylor's kitchen soaking up all he could before going back to his uncle's restaurant Pangaea Beir Cafe and working prep.
Today Greg has helped the family business grow to four restaurants, including Pangaea, Urban Roots Brewing and Smokehouse, Bawk! and  Cerveceria at The Shack.
Greg oversees all four operations and he tells Max and Neill how he got deep into the world of BBQ and hopes to plant a flag as nationally recognized BBQ spot right here in Sacramento.
 
Resources from episode:
Greg's Instagram
Bawk
Pangaea Beir Cafe
Urban Roots
Cerveceria at The Shack
 
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Listen to Bondolio episode about olive oil

Julie Cassotta - cheesemonger

Today we talk about the wild world of cheese! How does blue mold bloom? Does what the animal eats change the taste of cheese? Strange food combinations to eat with cheese, headless spiders that create a rind on cheese. All these questions and odd facts are answered and discussed with our guest Julie Cassotta. 
 
Julie is a Certified Cheese Professional and one of only eight people with that certification in Sacramento. That means she knows her stuff when it comes to cheese. 
 
Julie creates gorgeous cheese and charcuterie boards year round under the name Cellar Door Platters and built her small business through social media to where she is a full-time cheesemonger. 
 
We also talk about stops she had at Block Butcher Bar, Whole Foods and Franquet.
 
Check out The Dine One Six on Instagram and our website
 
Episode resources: 
 
Check out her website to order your holiday cheese board! 
 
Julie’s Instagram
Here are all the cheeses we talked about!
 
-Smokey Blue from Rogue River Creamery
 
-Vacherin Mont d'Or 
 
-Jasper Hill Creamery in Vermont- Harbison
 
-Bailey Hazen Blue Jasper Hill creamery with dark chocolate
 
-Langres (cheese you pour champagne on)
 
-Mimollete (Halloween cheese)
-Coro foods salami

Chris Sinclair from Bodega

Chris Sinclair fell in love with cocktails when a salty San Francisco bartender schooled him on what a real martini was. Since that moment Chris has dedicated his life to teaching other aspiring bartenders and guests, wherever he has worked, the art of the craft cocktail. 
Chris is from New York but has made Sacramento his home having spent the last decade working at the likes of Red Rabbit, La Cosecha, Kasbah, Sail Inn, Jungle Bird and more. He is also the founding president of the Sacramento chapter of the U.S. Bartenders Guild. 
Chris loves good food, good drinks and a good time and he has a reverence for the feeling and emotions a good cocktail can create. Yet as you’ll hear, there is zero pretense to his love of booze and bartending. 
 
Note: This episode does contains some strong language and one NSFW story.
 
Bodega’s website
 
Good Bottle website
 
Good Bottle podcast
 
Sources discussed:
 
Camper English’s blog
 
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Jonathan Kerksieck of Cacio

Jonathan Kerksieck has been working in restaurants in Sacramento for 30 years. He got his start making pizza at original Pete’s out of high school. He considered culinary school but a conversation with Rick Mahan when he was working at Paragary's and set his course on learning to cook by working long hours in kitchens all over Sacramento. 
After all that training, head chef jobs, running hotel food programs and even doing food research and development, Jonathan met an old colleague who helped him open Cacio in the Pocket/Greenhaven neighborhood. 
Jonathan said it’s “like the Cheers” of the neighborhood, only Cheers wasn’t serving delicious Italian cuisine. 
Cacio website, Instagram, Facebook
Sac Bee top 50 restaurants
 
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Scott McCumber of Pangaea Beir Cafe

Scott McCumber has not had the traditional path to becoming a head chef here in Sacramento. Most chefs start young, finding the discipline and camaraderie in the kitchen intoxicating. Scott loves that about the kitchen too, but for him it was consecutive layoffs in his corporate sales career that led him to completely shift his life’s course. 
Scott took six months of severance pay and with his wife’s blessing went to work in a kitchen as a volunteer prep cook, and less than eight years later found himself heading up the well established Taylor’s Kitchen. 
Today Scott has taken over another Sacramento favorite, Pangaea Beir Cafe in Curtis Park. 
We talk to Scott about Pangaea’s famous burger, what he is bringing to the menu as they rebuild it post COVID and how he worked his way through some of Sacramento’s best known Restaurants including Hook and Ladder, Hawks Public House, The Grange and Camden Spit & Larder. 
 
Pangaea website and Instagram
 
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How to start a home vegetable garden

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 experience with urban farming to listeners.
Wondering what to plant this fall? When to water? How to have your garden be organic? What to do after your tomato plants have sucked all the nitrogen out of your soil? This is the episode for you!
 
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Sac Hot Chicken Battle

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 Misty Alafranji as well as one of the judges Benjy Egel from the Sacramento Bee. So kick back and listen to each chef explain their sandwiches, imagine eating them yourself and get ready to run out and try a sandwich from one of the winners as we give you the final results at the end of the episode!
 
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Links: 
Beers in Sac
Natomas Oktoberfest
City of Refuge Sacramento
 
Competitors:
Mumpy’s food truck
Naija Boys Tacos
Jets 
Tiger Bar
Skips Fish & Chicken
Hawks
Sac City Brews
Alaro Brewing Co.
Device Brewing Co. 
Pangea Bier Cafe
Bawk
Nash and Tender