Blackbird Kitchen and Bar
1015 9th Street – Sacramento

Words by Adam Saake | Photos by Nicholas Wray

The first week of April saw the opening of the frequently discussed and much anticipated Blackbird Kitchen and Bar. Owner and Chef Carina Lampkin nested inside the 1015 9th Street location, where she and company set to work on changing the downtown space into a tastefully designed restaurant and bar with a laidback, European feel. Stairs lead up to the second-floor mezzanine, which overlooks the front half of the restaurant, giving guests a bird’s eye view. Upon my visit, the 7 o’clock hour brought a setting sun that tore through the glass front doors and illuminated the bar, the top of which is a gorgeous plank of solid redwood. To put it bluntly, this bird is pretty. And Lampkin accomplished this by putting her DIY attitude to work with little capital.

“I had a vision of taking this dilapidated building and transforming it into something beautiful. I didn’t have a lot of money. So it was me, and my friends and my mom chipping paint and learning how to plaster,” says Lampkin.

The concept for Blackbird began on a bicycle trip from San Francisco, where Lampkin was living and cooking at the time, to Los Angeles. The bike trip was her pilgrimage to overcome the personal trauma of losing one of her close friends in a car accident in 2006. Lampkin was in that same car, and the accident put her in a coma for 30 days.

“When I woke up, the song was going through my head,” remembers Lampkin.

This was the first of other signs that Lampkin felt was her friend trying to communicate with her. Her mother recounts hearing a crow cawing loudly during her memorial service when her loved ones were speaking of her infectious laugh.

“She felt that her spirit was in that crow,” says Lampkin.

And so on that bike trip, with time to think and talk, the idea was hatched by her friend.

“My friend Christian said to me, ‘Carina, you love helping people so much. Why don’t you move to Sacramento and open a business with your family?’ So that’s what I did,” says Lampkin.

Now let’s talk seafood. When you hear the name Blackbird, it’s not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind, but Lampkin wasn’t about to call the place the Clam Shack. However, there are clams on the menu. Applewood-smoked clams, to be exact, in a seafood chowder that is absolutely divine. It’s one of those things where you look over your shoulder to make sure no one is watching you lick the bottom of the bowl clean. Resident wine buff Tyler Stacy paired this with a Domaine Delaye Chardonnay that nicely complemented the rich chowder. It’s great for business that Stacy is on board at Blackbird. He’s a young, up and coming guy in the local wine scene, and he knows his stuff. When you dine at Blackbird, he’ll steer you in the right direction with pairings. And with him around, glassware will be proper, no doubt.

There are many memorable dishes on the small, 15-item menu that Lampkin and Chef de Cuisine Kevin O’Connor (you may remember him when we covered his Tree House Dinners) have assembled. The menu is sort of an homage to San Francisco’s Bar Crudo, where Lampkin worked under the talented Mike Selvera, her “favorite chef.” His approach to menu size, raw bar and ambiance certainly was an influence when setting the groundwork for Blackbird, and that’s a very good thing.

“Mike Selvera was never competitive in the kitchen, was always cool and never mad if you forgot something on an order. Jameson came out around 8 o’clock every night as we were listening to punk rock music,” recalls Lampkin.

Lampkin borrowed some of her best menu items, slightly tweaked of course, from Bar Crudo including the aforementioned chowder. The Maine lobster and roasted beet salad with burrata cheese, Banyuls vinaigrette and upland crest was bright, stunning and delicious. Stacy supplied a beautiful German Pinot/Trollinger, and I was happy as a clam. The raw bar, which is tucked a bit further back in the restaurant, has seating for guests to get right up close to the shucking action. Choose from Miyagi, Beausoleil, Kumamoto or Shigoku oysters on the half shell and stuff yourself silly during happy hour when the Miyagis are $1 apiece. And when it comes to oysters, there isn’t much to say about the chef’s preparation unless we’re talking sauces. It’s just about quality and freshness, and Blackbird’s oysters have just that. Stacy knocked it out of the park with a bright and mineral-y Muscadet from Gilbert Chon to sip while I slurped.

Other options from the raw bar are a nod to Japanese cuisine like the Kona Kampachi with citrus, cucumber, Thai aromatics and purple shiso; or the Arctic Char with housemade kimchi (awesome), honey-soy reduction, micro cilantro and black lava salt. All of these dishes were beautifully plated and garnished by O’Connor, and the colors and creativity are singing on this menu. This creative energy is something that Lampkin made sure that her general manager Dona Bridges sought out when selecting the staff.

“During the interview process, I asked if anyone’s a career restaurant person, that’s who we want to work with and please make sure that they also have a background in art. Because not only do I want this to be a restaurant, but I want it to be a creative powerhouse,” says Lampkin.

The winner from the raw bar was the Dayboat scallops dish that, before and after I had eaten it, servers and bartenders were asking me, “Have you tried the scallops yet?” It’s a good sign when your entire staff is raving about a dish. Presented on a green pea puree that was stellar all on its own, shaved asparagus, pink peppercorns and lemon oil and paired with a lovely German Riesling, the scallops were all they were cracked up to be. But to tell you the truth, even through dishes like the squid ink fettucine with grilled Monterey squid, dino kale, chorizo and preserved Meyer lemon, I saved just enough appetite for the main event: whole roasted Passmore Ranch trout. Passamore Ranch just has a killer product. The preparation of this dish makes me weak in the knees–I’m still remembering breaking into the skin as the steam rose from the perfectly cooked flesh. Sinful. Served with fava beans, spring onion, sous-vide fennel and sweet herbs, it’s all about the trout at Blackbird.

Just as Blackbird’s kitchen speaks volumes, as does its bar. Patrick O’Neill’s many years of bar experience have culminated here and his passion for the craft is evident when you order a drink from him. He’s got classics on the list like the Blood and Sand or the Moscow Mule (served in a bronze mug) and mixes up intrigue with the wildly colorful Purple Haze. The bar reminds me of a kitchen counter lined with glass jars filled with fresh herbs like mint, basil and rosemary; and citrus fruits like oranges, cumquats, lemons and limes. The liquor selection is a bartender’s playground, and the list is still changing and evolving. It’ll be nice to see what the Blackbird bar comes up with once they’re completely settled in.

Blackbird is a whole defined by its parts; a restaurant of young talents converging in one space and taking ownership, each of them a brush stroke in helping to paint the larger picture. Lampkin has taken them under her wing and is guiding them toward perfection by showing them that focusing on the details makes the difference.

“The difference between a great restaurant and an awesome restaurant is attention to detail,” says Lampkin.

Lampkin attributes her own success to what she calls “amazing grace.” She teaches her kitchen about meditation and the power that their thoughts or mood may have on the cooking.

“If you’re angry and you’re cooking, that anger goes into your food. Because when you have a thought, there’s an electrical release and that travels through your hand into the food. If you’re upset, that guest is going leave with anxiety in their stomach. But if you’re joyful and meditating happy thoughts, they’ll leave with that,” explains Lampkin.

You’ll be sure to leave Blackbird with happy thoughts.

Tree House Dinners are Truly a Movable Feast

Words by Adam Saake – Photos by Debbie Cunningham

The sun went low, and at a touch before seven, a light breeze swept over the Midtown Victorian porch, cooling guests from the belated summer heat. Small, natural artifacts of sticks, kumquats, found rocks and candles were scattered on overhangs and railings. On a table in the corner, a bottle of Sommariva Prosecco was submerged in an ice-packed watering can and flutes were filled at leisure while brown paper bags of popcorn with fresh dill were passed around. A total of seven guests, strangers, were quickly sharing stories and salutations over ceviche and cucumber. This was the beginning of chef Kevin O’Connor’s underground dinner he whimsically calls Tree House.

“The name Tree House came to me at 4 a.m.,” says O’Connor. “Tree House evokes juvenile thoughts and I aim to do the same with my style of cooking.”

O’Connor himself might be the only thing juvenile about what goes on at Tree House (which by the way is at a table in his dining room). The talented young chef of Ella, and most recently its sister restaurant, The Kitchen, is a mere 22 years old. A clean-cut red head who looks more relaxed in a cut-off Iron Maiden t-shirt than he does in a chef’s coat, this cooking star in the making worked his way from dishwasher up–sans culinary school. As a teen, he hopped around different restaurants like Masque and Bistro 33, but things took a sharper turn when he moved downtown and began cooking at Mason’s, now Cafeteria 15L.

“I helped open MiX and shortly after the opening I moved to the South of France for a few months,” says O’Connor. “After culinary enlightenment dans la sud, I came back home to Sac and joined Kelly McCown at Ella shortly after he came.”

It was this trip to the South of France that would later become the inspiration for his monthly underground dinners.

“Tree House began after I moved home from France. Every Sunday for a month and a half I would make dinner for my host family and their friends while I was in France,” O’Connor remembers. “These dinners were coursed out and showcased my creativity that was flowing while I was exploring food Mecca. I used produce from the farm, the town market, neighboring farms, hunting, foraging, and wine from their winery.”

The Tree House dinners are something to that effect, except O’Connor doesn’t have France or a farm–in spirit, sure, but he did have the winery this time. Craig Haarmeyer of Revolution Wines supplied all the wine pairings for the latest dinner, including the current vintage of their award-winning port.

Guests were leisurely enticed inside to sit at the table, well lubricated with Prosecco and conversation and ready for what O’Connor had up his sleeve. Once seated the night began with an amuse bouche, a small introductory appetizer that literally translates to “mouth amuser,” which consisted of prosciutto, pan-fried quail egg and a house-made hollandaise sauce. It was served simple and elegant in a Chinese ceramic soup spoon. Down the hatch. This single bite immediately excited the table and was a clear window into O’Connor’s cooking philosophy; one in which breakfast was clearly fair game for his introduction. Revolution’s Verdelho port, a sweeter white, paired beautifully, and we were on our way.

O’Connor’s plates have a touch of seriousness mixed with a pinch of brilliance and are lathered thick with humor. He grinned as he described courses like the pistachio encrusted foie gras with roasted peaches, calling his concoction “a foie gras candy bar.” His time in France came out in this dish too. He explained to the table one of the first and most memorable meals he had that was simply a bowl of pistachios, some peaches and a bit of foie gras. This was his translation–and what made each course so fantastic. He cooks off the pure joy of his memories with a little help from random musings.

“I’m inspired by the strangest things sometimes. A walk by the river, a 2 a.m. junk food binge, my food-filled childhood,” says O’Connor.

That “food-filled childhood” that O’Connor attributes to his father introduced a standout dish that was a play on mustard chicken. O’Connor’s father would make him a comforting plate of mustard chicken with a panko crust when he was a kid. To do honor, the most visually attractive plate of the evening arrived. Chicken rillettes with a half-moon toast was presented on a square, gray stone slab, dusted with an orderly stripe of honey mustard pretzels and garnished with a circle of pepper and mustard flowers. Rillettes is like a pate where the meat is slowly cooked in fat, duck fat in this case, and then is cooled and served like a spread. O’Connor “marinated the chicken, cured it for a day and braised it for about four hours,” to give it the texture and consistency he desired. This plate stood out the most and really showcased O’Connor’s creativity and technical execution.

An eight-hour sous-vide pork belly with barbeque beans, compressed watermelon and a salad of pickled watermelon rind (an ode to summer, perhaps) was followed by a simple offering of local goat’s milk cheese, Bing cherries and thyme flowers. Simple and to the point; elegant and delicious. Each course offered a new idea, an interesting thought or an adventurous leap to take (O’Connor encouraged guests to suck the brains from a fried prawn head during one course). The Tree House dinner finished with a mind blowing dessert course of cinnamon sugar toast, maple blueberries and a cereal milk anglaise for dipping that was inside of a hollowed-out egg shell. Guests enjoyed port to pair and moments of silence swept over the table as plates were literally licked clean.

A satisfied Tree House assembly took refuge on the porch, enticed by 15-year aged Glenlivet scotch being poured from a transparent globe decanter. O’Connor emerged from the house, sans chef coat and ready to be part of the conversation. His left arm is tattooed with a crude chef hat, crossbones and knives with the mantra, “Cook to Live, Live to Cook.” “It’s being covered soon,” he said. But, there’s no hiding his passion for food and for the people he cooks it for. And as hidden as the underground dinners might seem, there is a Facebook page and O’Connor has special wording that keeps him out of trouble–for now.

“We aren’t a real underground restaurant…we are a ‘private dining cooperative’ where like-minded foodies pitch in for dinner that happens to be at a residence,” says O’Connor.

Where he takes these dinners is up in the air for now, but there’s talk of catering, pop-up events and cocktails in alleyways. Ideas are flowing and O’Connor’s love of Sacramento will keep him right here for those adventures.

“I’m inspired by the people that say Sacramento sucks and by the people that have faith in it becoming a food city at the same time. I want to start forming a Sacramento cuisine,” says O’Connor.

One Tree House at a time.

Tree House dinners happen once month at an undisclosed location in Midtown. For information on how to register, visit Facebook.com/treehousesacramento or Treehousesacramento.blogspot.com