The Land Of Milk And Honey

“It is luxurious, somehow both rich and light, and it can implant memories, make people believe this was what they ate when they were an Italian child.” –Rick Kushman

Sacramento was embarking on a culinary renaissance by the 1970s, and its burgeoning dining and entertainment scene was fueled by the creativity and talent of figures like Darrell Corti, David Berkley, Joan Leineke, Lina Fat and Randy Paragary, to name a few. But the most ineffaceable stone on Sacramento’s culinary mosaic would be set by a charismatic, charming and authentic native of Bologna, Italy who had moved to Sacramento with her oncologist husband and their family in 1969.

By the mid to late seventies, Biba Caggiano was venturing into cooking to fulfil a longing for her own identity and her nostalgia for the tastes of her homeland. Lucky for her, William Snyder and Glen Forbes had opened the first William Glen store in 1963 in that most iconic of Sacramento places, the Town and Country Shopping Center in the neighborhood where Benvenuti had first laid down roots. Until its closing in 2010, William Glen specialized in providing everything from hand-dipped candles to interior design services. They also provided a venue for local chefs to teach cooking classes, where Biba began teaching northern Italian cooking drawn on the recipes of her native Bologna and Emilia-Romagna, which eventually would expand to classes taught in her own kitchen. Among her pupils were Benvenuti’s wife Nancy (already a fantastic cook in the style of her southern Italian roots), their daughters Nancy and Lynda and daughters-in-law Elaine and Martha.

Biba was born in 1936 and grew up in a big centuries-old apartment building on Piazza San Domenico in Bologna, one of the culinary centers of Italy. Bologna and the entire north-central region of Emilia-Romagna gave the world Parmigiano-Reggiano, prosciutto di Parma, balsamico di Modena, and they also gave the world Biba. She memorialized Bologna’s famous textured ragus in a lasagne that would be renowned among America’s elite chefs and personalities, among them Martha Stewart. From the publication of her first cookbook in 1981 titled Northern Italian Cooking, Biba’s career took off, prompting several more cookbooks and her own syndicated television show, Biba’s Italian kitchen, which ran for 10 years. For years, Biba and Vincent talked—joked, really—that she should open her own restaurant. By the mid-eighties, with a decade of teaching under her belt, Biba was ready.

One day, she saw workers doing interior work on the Old Tavern building at 28th and Capitol that dated back to the 1870s. It had been a distillery and a pub decades before (not to mention, reportedly a bordello back in the day), but presently it was mostly housing medical offices. Biba liked the building and the location—it was a 25-minute walk from her house—so she found the building owners and went to work on finding financial backing.

During the early years of the 80s, Sacramento’s nightclub scene was bustling behind the mercurial rise of its biggest purveyor of a good time, Randy Paragary. His establishments were playgrounds for Sacramento’s movers and shakers, its college students and its working class, all of whom could find their own vibe in various of Paragary’s haunts. But it was his remarkable evolution from bar-owner to restaurateur that would cement Paragary’s legacy and earn him a spot among the most influential restaurateurs in California history.

In 1983, Paragary was growing weary of the fickle nature of bar patrons. In a major reinvention of himself, not unlike that of early entrepreneurs Oates and Benvenuti, he largely divested himself of his drinking establishments and made a gamble on food as being the more consistent driver of patrons. But he wasn’t about to gamble without some shrewd thoughtfulness and proven precedent.

By 1980, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse and its head chef, Jeremiah Tower, had already invented the California cuisine which Paragary would introduce to Sacramento: a combination of French and Italian techniques and presentation with fresh local ingredient-focused flavors. Waters was a long-time fan of Tommaso’s Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s North Beach, which had installed the West Coast’s first wood-fired pizza oven when it opened in 1935.

Using the same brick oven designer Waters had used to design the oven at Chez Panisse, Paragary transformed Lord Beaverbrook’s at 28th & N Streets into what would be the prototype for the wood-fired eateries which now dominate Sacramento’s haute cuisine landscape. So popular were his namesake eatery’s interpretations of this California-style pizza, that for many years they were the go-to concessions sold at Sacramento Kings basketball games. Paragary’s was an overnight success, and two years following its debut, the man who would become known as the “Host of the Town” attempted to parlay his success. Lord Beaverbrook’s North, the Arden-Arcade sister bar, which had been a favorite watering hole for Sacramento’s trendy suburbanites, was reborn as an Italian restaurant.

As Paragary recalled it, “In 1985 I was developing an Italian restaurant on Fair Oaks Boulevard and Biba approached me and asked me if I would be interested in her being my partner in this Italian restaurant, and, I declined, you know she didn’t have any restaurant experience, and I opened as a restaurant called Zito’s where Zinfandel Grille is now.” Ironically, right around a year earlier, Paragary had introduced some new entrees to his Paragary’s menu that were inspired by Caggiano. Alas, as he went on to conclude: “Zito’s had a couple year history, and Biba went on to team up with Joe Benvenuti to open Biba’s here on Capitol Avenue, and here it is 40 years later, so that was my biggest mistake.”

Sacramento’s most highly acclaimed restaurant opened on August 6, 1986 and reigned as Sacramento’s finest until Biba’s passing in 2019.

It was a public success almost from the first day. Biba was making pasta out at a station in the dining room, showing the town there was such a thing as fresh pasta. “She showed that Italian cooking could be presented with the same sort of intricacy and flair that we’d seen in French food,” says Mike Dunne, the longtime Sacramento Bee food critic. “The food was complex, layered with intrigue, and had all sorts of flavors unfolding.” And it wasn’t long before word spread well beyond the Capital City. Gourmet magazine hailed the restaurant in the late 1980s. “The highest compliment I can give Biba is that when we dined there, shortly after returning from Italy, we thought we had never come home,” gushed Caroline Bates, the magazine’s veteran food critic. Those were also the days Biba had to convince some customers that her food was real Italian, and they should try it the way she cooked it. Her fresh pasta, then as now, usually soothed any bruised egos. If it didn’t, Biba still wasn’t budging. “I had all this heritage on my shoulders,” she says. “If you don’t stick with what you are, then you are nowhere.”

At her grand opening, Benvenuti seemingly out of nowhere produced a harmonica and performed “Tarantella Napoletano” to a delighted crowd of what would become long-standing patrons. Not long after, people were coming from all over California (not for the harmonica). Best-selling author John Lescroart, and artists Wayne Thiebaud and Fred Dalkey were early regulars. The long lineup of NBA players and coaches who have dined at Biba include Magic Johnson, who went into the kitchen to shake hands with the employees, and Charles Barkley, who on one of his visits, bought a bottle of Cristal champagne for a couple at a nearby table who had just gotten engaged. 

Benvenuti, much the same as his hands-off role with the Kings, remained as much on the sidelines as possible save for the many family birthday dinners and business lunches he would host there. His favorite day of the week to dine was Friday when Biba made her world-famous Lasagne. “Why did I do it? She’s been in the cooking business a long time,” he said (in an interview with the Sacramento Bee) in casual reference to his belief in Biba’s ability to carry the project off. In classically humble fashion, he posed “I doubt if we’ll make a lot of money, but I don’t think we’ll lose it either. I’m in the building business, so this is just another venture to me.” He shook his head and shrugged. “I never thought I’d be in the restaurant business, but then again I never thought I’d be in the basketball business either.”