The Dine One Six

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
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
 
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email us at max@dineonesix.com or neill@dineonesix.com

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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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com

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
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com

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!
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
 
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com

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!
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email us at max@dineonesix.com
 
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

Masullo pizza chef Shannon McElroy

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 talk about how Shannon went from culinary school, to bartending and then back to the kitchen at Masullo, one of Sacramento’s 50 best restaurants. We also talk about him opening The Federalist and why he chose to leave.  
 
Masullo website
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
 
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com

Karen Bond and the story of Bondolio olive oil

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 love. 
 
More than 15 years later Bondolio produces some of the most sought after and award winning olive oil in the region. It’s even used by two of the Bay Area’s most famous restaurants (listen to find out who!) 
 
Karen and Malcolm do all this while also running the medical technology company, Cedaron, in Davis which they founded in 1990. 
 
Listen to hear all about their fascinating journey to making super fresh Italian inspired olive oil. 
 
Links: 
Bondolio website
Video:  Olive harvest at Bondolio
How olive oil is made (similar to Bondolio process)
Angel flights charity
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
 
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com

Bobby Coyote and Mark Casale of Dos Coyotes

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 story of trying to open his first location. Everything went wrong, from his contractor having to stop work because he was in deep with the IRS, pipes bursting on the roof during the final inspection and the whole place almost burning down during an impromptu soft opening. 
Mark grew up making fresh bread and pasta with his Sicilian grandmother and ended up working in fine dining spots in Napa and Sacramento before taking the opportunity to work with Bobby to create fresh, seasonal specials and a menu that could be replicated across several locations. 
Links: 
Dos Coyotes website
Dos Coyotes Instagram
Dos Coyotes Facebook
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com

What it’s like to be a server with Neill Little

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 friends with co-workers and guests.
We also talk about how apparently, the grocery store you were raised on, is the one you stay loyal to the rest of your life.
This is a great conversation about restaurant work and a great introduction to Neill who will also be joining me on the podcast as a co-host in some upcoming episodes.
 
Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com
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Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at max@dineonesix.com