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Today we head to Sacramento to Café Rolle for lunch. We stopped there for dessert once before.
Miles and Ora live half way to Sacramento so they will be driving up separately and meet us at Café Rolle.
Gobo is headed to Lake Tahoe and Patti has other obligations so there will be three old timers leaving from Elsa's, Grandma, Elsa and me plus a new member, Marlene, who we have all called Linda since Grade School.
Grandma and Linda will ride in the back seatNow Grandma, Patti, Linda and I went to the same Grade School and have known each other from the first grade or so. Although obviously Grandma is much older than the rest of us.
Anyway the three ladies were high school cheer leaders along with some others. I thought that with Linda now joining the Lunch Bunch that I would post these scans from an old year book.
Grandma
Linda
PattiElsa is gonna ride shotgun and I am driving my little Toyota Corolla.
We leave Elsa's and head to Hwy 99. As we are headed up the road just north of Lodi is a general aviation airport that promotes sky diving. The parachutists all look like they are going to land in the middle of the highway.
After being delayed a few minutes because of an accident on the highway as we got into Sacramento, we arrive at Café Rolle. They are extremely busy. The Food Channel has recently been rerunning the episode of Diner, Drive-Ins and Dives that they were featured in.
Miles and Ora arrive a couple of minutes after us and we read over the menuIt turns out that we will have about a 45 minute wait, but with everyone being retired we have the patience. Plus the temperature has not gone over 90° yet.
While the girls wait on the patio Miles and I drive the four or so blocks to Reeds Gourmet Meat Co. It turns out that all retail orders are done ahead of time and then you go to the little office to pick up your meat order. Since we still will have a wait for our lunch table, I decide to go ahead and order four flat iron steaks, their minimum steak order is four steaks.Then we head back to the restaurant. After a bit more of a wait the waiter has put together a table for four and a table for two. It is a very small café and all of their tables are either two or four.
We had split a couple of appetizers of paté de foie gras, but I forgot to take a picture.
Miles' hot ham and cheese with a piece of my hot smoked salmon. The ham is more like a prosciutto.
Elsa and Ora had the roast beef sandwich
Grandma and Linda had the cold lamb sandwich
All the leftovers were on one side of the table, not my side. :-)
William Rollé smokes his own salmon
He also makes his own paté
The kitchen area is open to view
Besides putting making the sandwiches and salads, William also waits an occasional table
The girls trying to steal the little chefMiles and Ora have headed off to visit Miles sister who stays at her home in Sacramento for a few weeks each year. She will be returning to her home in Guam this coming Monday.
I drive back to the Meat Shop and pick up my four individually vacuumed sealed steaks.
Two of the four steaksNow it is over to Ettore's European Bakery.
Elsa and I had a Key Lime Tart while Grandma and Linda had cookies
They still use this ancient bread slicer
Elsa and I buy some bread to take home. I buy a baguette. This is the bakery where Café Rolle buys its sandwich baguettes.Heading back home I miss the turn to get onto Hwy 99 south, so we make one more stop at the Japanese bakery, Osakaya, where I get a half dozen pastries.
ps:
Around 7:30 PM I got hungry and pan grilled one of the steaks with fried onions, some peas and a bit of lightly toasted baguette. The steak was excellent.
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