Hidden in plain sight, a tiny kitchen sits on a busy Curtis Park street. Called Good Things to Eat, the storefront produces amazing scratch-cooked meals.
It’s not exactly a restaurant, but mother-daughter team Delcy and Elinor Steffy create delightful, satisfying meals. I want more of it.
Let me set the stage. Picture a hot October night on Franklin Boulevard. There’s a line out the door at Gunther’s Ice Cream. Flavor of the month is pumpkin.
Locals crisscross the street rushing to a yoga session or AA meeting. The smell of pizza flows from Hop Gardens, a quiet spot that sells some of the best pizza in town. It’s Tuesday, two pizzas for $30. The place hums.
My destination is a storefront one block down from the hubbub. Delcy Steffy has worked here for the last two years.
“When this space came available, I knew it was just what I wanted,” she tells me. “For what we wanted to do, being in a diverse neighborhood where people were willing to try things, it made total sense.”
What she and daughter Elinor want to do is cook nourishing, soulful, real food. Her vision was to make her kitchen an alternative to meal kits people ship to their homes. She could take the local, seasonal bounty of food and provide successful meal setups for the neighborhood.
What happened instead? Customers entered her wonderfully chaotic kitchen and wanted their food hot and ready to go.
Good Things to Eat is not a restaurant in the traditional sense. Yes, you can eat there. There’s one table on the sidewalk with a couple of chairs. But the kitchen is designed for diners to pick up meals and go home.
In Steffy’s kitchen, spices spill from racks, pots bubble on the stove and smells set your senses on alert. The kitchen reminds some of their nana or nona, their abuelita or yaya, baachan or halmoni.
Happy family vibes come from this kitchen, along with joyous pandemonium.
This night, I walk into Good Things and Delcy greets me with flour-dusted cheeks, as if from central casting. Flour on her cheeks!
The food is spectacular. Beef and Guinness pie. Strawberry and hazelnut salad. Chocolate chip cookies for good measure.
Some nights, you might find Moroccan chicken or Armenian kabob. Or American heartland staples or Polish comfort food. Weekend quiches are fantastic.
“Listen, I’m not into fusion,” Delcy says. “I don’t go for mashups or remixes. I prefer respectful covers.”
She means it. Her recipes are as likely to be from a friend’s grandmother’s cookbook as from her own travels. Everything is inspired by the seasons.
“We’re at the Oak Park farmers market frequently,” she says. “Not just serving food but picking up our ingredients for the next few days.”
You can taste the freshness in the cooking. You can taste the season.
“If you need some help over the holidays, give me a call,” she says. “My catering calendar this time of year can fill up fast.”
Good Things to Eat is at 2995 Franklin Blvd.; (916) 389-7900; goodthingssac.com.
Greg Sabin can be reached at saceats@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
