Pack your bags

Sometimes when you dine out, you want to feel fully rooted in the place you call home—a feeling that restaurants such as The Waterboy and Mulvaney’s Building & Loan serve up alongside their food. Sometimes, though, a little bit of displacement can be fun, a feeling that you could be in Any City, USA, dining out among a national and international crowd; a minivacation when none is on the horizon. No restaurant in Sacramento gives that feeling like Grange Restaurant & Bar.

On a recent night, one side of my cozy table is flanked by a couple conversing in guttural German, and on the other side there’s an unsophisticated-looking family speaking in deep Southern accents. They’re in town for a wedding—part of the fun here is the eavesdropping. Both parties seem to feel equally at home.

Because it’s a hotel restaurant, it pulls off the difficult feat of serving breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. It has to be all things to all people, which—for many hotels—results in a generic menu on which every dish trends toward the mediocre.

Grange is not immune to this pull, which is mostly reflected in the restaurant’s edgeless, modern décor, and you won’t find any “challenging” dishes on this menu. But what you will find is reasonably priced local and seasonal food that is surprisingly delicious.

The restaurant’s chef of one year, Oliver Ridgeway, has put together a menu in which he is taking creative risks with flavor combinations and fall-inspired dishes.

The Green Curry & Pumpkin Soup has a Southeast-Asian flair provided by a strong note of lime and gentle undertow of cumin. The smooth pumpkin is not the least bit sweet—it just adds depth of flavor—and a judicious sprinkle of roasted peanuts floats on top. Elsewhere on the menu, a spinach salad features a list of ingredients that could be considered boring coming from any other kitchen: blue-cheese dressing, bacon, onion. But here, the sharply cheesy buttermilk dressing clinging perfectly to each leaf and the woodsy pine nuts make it a salad to remember.

Sometimes the menu is creative to a fault: An entree of tuna makes for a jumble of clashing flavors; tomato-based sofrito and ham croquettes with barely seared tuna is just plain weird. The chef’s enthusiasm for classic flavorings such as sofrito and romesco is welcome, but the menu could benefit from streamlining: Some entrees contain up to six different components.

On another night, bartender Pete Tachibana serves as an even better social lubricant than his spot-on martinis. His easy conversation ensures that no solo traveler sits lonely at the bar. Grange serves the full menu at the bar, and this month, Ridgeway has taken the Sacramento Vegan Chef Challenge and done wonders within the constraint. The chickpea croquettes are ethereal, like a dream falafel. The charred broccoli rabe brings it down to Earth nicely, with a jolt of bitterness and smoke.

The brunch, which has a minimal wait even on a Sunday, puts most of the greasy, uninspired grid offerings to shame. The home fries are more like marvelously crispy Spanish patatas bravas. A grilled-ham-and-Gruyere sandwich is just buttery enough, and the Dijon mustard and house-made pickles cut through the richness like a knife. An egg-white frittata is much more than a bone thrown to the cholesterol-challenged; it’s a worthy dish in its own right.

Service proceeds at a leisurely pace, which provides time to fully enjoy each dish, and the servers are invariably skilled. One server said that on the weekdays, the dinner crowd is three-quarters hotel guests and one-quarter locals. On weekends, the ratio is flipped. Next time you wish you were anywhere but Sac, drop in for a weeknight dinner and pretend that you are.