Oak Park Sacramento: A Food Neighborhood Guide

Oak Park Sacramento is a neighborhood south of Midtown that began as the city's first streetcar suburb and today is known for its Broadway corridor and varied food. Visit Sacramento says the area offers some of the best ethnic food in the city. Here is the history and a plan for walking it with an appetite.

Here is the neighborhood's past, what to look for along Broadway and how to keep notes as you eat.

How did Oak Park Sacramento begin?

Wikipedia describes Oak Park as Sacramento's first suburb. In the early 1900s it was a prosperous, culturally active neighborhood with its own 35th Street retail and entertainment district, tied to the State Fairgrounds. Four of the city's seven downtown streetcar lines ended there, and the Central Street Railway, founded in 1890, was meant to draw residents to the area. An amusement park operated there until a fire in 1920.

That streetcar past explains the layout: a walkable grid of small blocks that makes a food outing easy on foot. A streetcar suburb was designed so that people could ride in, shop, eat and ride home, which is a good model for a food outing today. Park once, walk the length of the corridor and see how many small businesses cluster within a few minutes of each other. The pattern of a main street with side streets running off it still shapes where people gather.

What was the neighborhood revival, and what did it cost?

Wikipedia says the Great Depression, redlining, freeway construction in the 1960s and crime in the 1980s and 1990s weakened the neighborhood. Since the early 2000s, investment has brought new jobs and businesses, and since about 2010 the area has gentrified and housing prices have risen sharply. It describes Broadway's revitalization as part of the early-2000s rebound.

Both parts of that story matter to a diner, and neither should be skipped. The restaurants and bakeries you see today came after a long period of disinvestment, and the people who stayed through it built much of what is here. When you walk the neighborhood, treat the food as part of a living community, not a trend.

What is the Broadway corridor like for ethnic food?

Wikipedia calls Broadway and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, formerly Sacramento Boulevard, the neighborhood's main thoroughfares. Visit Sacramento places the Broadway and Oak Park area between downtown and Midtown and Land Park, and describes it as offering some of the best ethnic food in the city, near the historic Old City Cemetery. Wikipedia also notes a recurring annual farmers market.

The practical advice is to walk Broadway slowly. Expect a mix of old buildings and new ones, and expect menus that range widely. Check each place's own information for hours before you go, since businesses here change.

How should you walk it on a food outing?

Choose a direction and decide on three stops: something for breakfast or coffee, a main meal and something sweet or small. Leave time between stops, because a walk is easier on a full stomach in short pieces, and the neighborhood reads better when you are not rushing between meals. If the weather is hot, plan the longest stretch for the morning and sit inside for the middle of the day. Visit Sacramento calls Midtown a trendy cultural hub with a high concentration of restaurants, so the two areas make a good pair on separate days.

Pay attention to the buildings as well as the menus, and to what sits next door to each place: a bakery beside a barbershop, a market beside a church. Older storefronts and the streetcar-era street pattern show you how the neighborhood worked a century ago. A short rest on a bench with a note in your phone makes the meal easier to remember. If you are with a group, agree where to meet if you split up for different food, which is one of the pleasures of a street with many choices.

How can Mosey help you keep notes on a walk?

Mosey is a food app for finding favorites by rating and sharing them. At each stop, open the app and rate the dish. A rating needs only the place and stars; a tag and a photo are optional extras. Tag the person next to you and each of you can rate the same plate.

Start a list called Broadway walk, add a note on each stop and send an invite link to a friend. Follow friends to see what they rated and saved, and use Friends' picks on the map for the next outing. The ratings and lists pages explain the steps, and the ranked lists fill with real places as ratings arrive.

Mosey backs neighborhood kitchens: free to list, affordable tools, no hidden fees.

What else should you read about Sacramento?

For other ways in, see the brunch guide and the farm-to-fork guide. The Sacramento tomato guide covers the city's canning story. See the Sacramento page, the California page and the US food guides.

On your next Oak Park afternoon, open the Mosey app and rate your first plate by name.