Colorful paper lanterns, mesmerizing taiko drums, and scrumptious, egg roll esque lumpia will all be on hand at the Pacific Rim Street Festival in Old Sacramento this Sunday The festival, now in its 20th year, displays the richness and diversity of many Asian and Pacific Rim cultures. There will be music from India, Korea and China, dancers from Bali and Thailand and a wide variety of Asian and Pacific Islander arts and crafts to enjoy. Food vendors will be on hand to tempt you with Hawaiian BBQ, Indian naan and delicious chinese favorites from festival founder Frank Fat’s restaurant. The festival is held throughout Old Sacramento, and every street will offer another way to explore the

Nagato Sukiyaki's recipe for success is simple. The restaurant has over 100 years cumulative cooking experience and has been around for 42 years. Because of these two simple ingredients, Nagato's regulars continue to return. Nagato Sukiyaki is owned by Fumie and Yoshio Kawano, and is now managed by their son, Don Kawano, 38. The Japanese restaurant, on the corner of Fulton and El Camino Avenues, has a menu with both traditional Japanese kitchen-prepared items and sushi. Nagato didn't start with an exclusively Japanese menu. When they opened in 1970, they started with two menus – one with American food and the other with Japanese. The American menu included items such as hash browns, hamb

Kru Restaurant located in downtown Sacramento is one of the most gossiped about Japanese restaurants. Receiving an astonishing four star on yelp, many customer flocks to this restaurant for their dose of the Japanese cuisine. I visited this restaurant to see what all the hype was about. Working at two Japanese restaurants I have a very high expectation of Japanese food. I work at Nishiki in downtown, and Mikuni in Elk Grove. I grew up eating Japanese food often so I wondered if the food was as delicious as described in reviews. When I saw the place from the outside it looked pretty small. Once I walked in, it was as small as it seemed. To my surprise there weren’t too many customers and

Mikuni Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar will celebrate a quarter century in business May 15, and co-owner Taro Arai said that after the touch-and-go nature of the first five years, the business has come a long way. “The first five years, the more we worked, the more money we lost,” he said. “I still cannot believe it’s been 25 years. We’re so lucky to have all the support we’ve had.” Now with nine restaurants in the greater Sacramento area, Arai said the business will be expanding in 2012, and while more brick-and-mortar restaurants are likely in store, the next thing people will see is a food truck. There is no set timeline for rolling out the food truck yet, but Arai said he and his

Trying a new dish or exotic cuisine for dinner doesn’t have to mean a trip out to a restaurant. In the greater Sacramento area, many grocery stores and small, often family-owned shops offer all the authentic, hard-to-find ingredients needed to make anything from Italian to Japanese to Mediterranean foods for dinner. The Sacramento Press hit the streets to round up some of these ethnic grocery stores here in the city. Sampino’s Towne Foods 1607 F St. 441-2372 Hours: Monday through Friday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Sampino’s Towne Foods carries the essential items needed to make an authentic Italian dinner at home as well as foods made from family recipes accumulated t

Programming a film festival is an odd and varied process. Some events go out and pro-actively seek the best films that they can find, in an extensive search process – and we see this approach in such local great events as the Sacramento Jewish, French, Japanese, and Gay and Lesbian Film Fests. Other events are submission-based: A call for films is distributed, and filmmakers from a given area submit their works in the hopes of making it to the top of the pile. This latter approach, perhaps best exemplified on a grand scale by the Sundance Film Festival, is also used (on a more modest level) by the Sacramento Film & Music Festival and that given area is the entire world. This year, films

Snow cones are a seasonal favorite of the Osaka-Ya pastry shop and market, but it’s taken more than snow cones to keep the shop in business for almost 100 years. A vestige of Sacramento’s former Japantown, which sat in the area around L, N, Third and Fourth streets, Osaka-Ya still provides traditional Japanese sweets, hot food and other edibles near the corner of 10th and V streets downtown. “My mom and dad took over this business in 1963,” said owner Linda Nakatani. “A friend gave them the recipe for the snow cone syrup, and they used a hand-crank snow cone machine to shave the ice.” Her father installed a motor, and the snow cones have been a summer favorite at the business ever since

On Sunday, author of “Sacramento’s Southside Park” and board member of the Sacramento Old City Association (SOCA) William Burg led a walking tour of Southside Park and the surrounding area. “The tours stemmed from Jane’s Walk USA, a national organization that began in 2007 using neighborhood walking tours as a way to help people get in touch with their environment,” said Kay Knepprath, event coordinator and fellow board member of SOCA. This is the event’s second year in Sacramento. The tour of Southside Park was one in a series of five tours that occurred throughout Sacramento on Saturday and Sunday. While the morning was a bit gray and chilly, a group of about 20 gathered together just

Construction delays have slowed the reopening of Zen Sushi at 15th and I streets, but owner Jason Hom said remodeling work should be completed within a few weeks. “We’re 80 percent done with the interior, and we’re painting the outside today,” he said Monday. “I am hoping we can reopen in two weeks.” The restaurant closed in early December for a remodel whose main feature is a new bar and an upgrade to a full liquor license, Hom said. The 3,200-square-foot space has been in operation as Zen Sushi since 2007, and Hom said he expects the remodeled restaurant to hold about 60-70 patrons, about the same as it did before the remodel. Bar specials will be offered, but the details have yet to

Long before Mikuni Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar existed, co-owner Taro Arai was an 11-year-old paperboy with big dreams. He saved $6,000 over five years to move his family from Japan to the United States. Arai wrote and published his first book, “Abundance: Finding the American Dream in a Japanese Kitchen,” in hopes that he will inspire other Japanese youths. The book is set to be released Wednesday and combines his family’s history with recipes for some of Mikuni's customers’ favorite dishes. “It’s not just a recipe book,” Arai said. “It has my life story in it.” The book’s 12 chapters tell different stages of Arai’s life and include recipes named to coincide with their themes.

Promising authentic and affordable Asian street food, Star Ginger will be coming to Sacramento in November. The restaurant is owned by Mai Pham, who also owns Lemon Grass restaurant and noodle bars in Sacramento and several other Star Ginger locations in university campuses including Stanford and Berkeley. “It’s the street foods of Asia,” Pham said. “They’re inexpensive and affordable comfort foods – bowls of noodles, rice, ramen noodle soup and yakisobo, a Japanese chow mein.” The restaurant, to be located in the former Togo’s sandwich shop at the corner of Alhambra and Folsom boulevards, will also include pad Thai, salad rolls, pho soup and south Indian curries. “The majority of the

It wasn’t hard to find the Japanese bazaar’s location. Once within a few blocks of the Buddhist Church of downtown Sacramento, one could simply follow the mouthwatering aroma of teriyaki chicken rising from the barbecues. A tent canopy lined with lanterns was stretched over the Buddhist church’s parking lot. This makeshift construction presented a nomadic food court of delicious proportions. Booths with games and food lined the area’s perimeter as rows of tables and chairs filled in the center. A stage sat prominently in the large outdoor area in view of hundreds of spectating diners. Hundreds more made there way slowly through crowds of hungry people, drawn out to the bazaar by their app

An event so big that it’s in the phone book? Believe it. The Japanese Food and Cultural Bazaar has been up and running for 64 years. Those three score and four years have provided plenty of time for great recipes to be shared through the generations and are now made available for your tasting pleasure this weekend from noon - 9 p.m. at the Sacramento Buddhist Church, at 2401 Riverside Blvd. Steve Kawano has been involved in the event for the last 13 years and now acts as chairman. Since his youth he has had the opportunity to sample the great variety of food available at the bazaar and confessed that the “teriyaki beef sandwich is to die for.” What began as Japanese-Americans gathering

 The Sacramento Japanese Film Festival closed its run of Japanese cinema Sunday with Tetsuya Nakashima’s “Memories of Matsuko,” a brilliant and terrible film that told the life story of a woman named Matsuko, played by Miki Nakatani, destined for sadness and exile. The film acted as a sort of melting pot of genres, the cinematography being reminiscent of Japanese big-budget cinema and also a touch of Baz Lurhmann thrown in for color and majesty. “Memories” opens with a young man named Sho, played by Eita, talking about the nature of life and the struggles and dreams of individuals. Spasmodic words flash across the screen throughout the movie, eerily stamping key words like ‘dream,’ ‘love

This fall the Crocker Art Museum will host a daylong festival of contemporary films by female directors exploring the roles of Japanese and Japanese American women. Held to coincide with the Crocker’s exhibit of contemporary ceramics by Japanese women, Soaring Voices, the festival will include four film screenings at the Guild Theater, located at 2828 35th Street, on Saturday, October 17. Local filmmakers, artists and scholars will introduce and offer insight on each film. “Soaring Voices tells the story of Japanese women breaking into the male-only ceramic world, and these films expand on that story by looking at the position of women in Japanese society as a whole,” commented Christian

"Kanpai!" You may hear a few attendees joyously exclaim this Japanese phrase, equivalent to the English "Cheers!" at the fifth annual Northern California Premium Sake Fest. The event kicks off Wednesday at The Sheraton Grand. North American Food Distributions — importer and wholesale distributor for Asian food retailers — hand-selected over 100 of the finest sake, shochu and Japanese beers to be presented and tasted for this event. "Shochu is a distilled spirit," said Judy Inaba, event manager for North American Food Distributions Inc. "It is an old-style beverage, very popular in Japan." The drink can be mixed with different juices, much like vodka, for a desired taste, Inaba said. Ea

High energy and fun brought Old Sacramento to life at the Second Annual Sacramento World Music and Dance Festival.  The two-day festival kicked off Saturday at the Benvenuti Performing Arts Center, which featured Angentine tango champions Miriam and Leonardo.  Festivities continued Sunday in Old Sacramento. Both days were a celebration of international cultures through ethnic dancing, musical performances, historical storytelling and traditional reenactments of stories and folktales from all over the world. Despite the sweltering Sacramento heat, close to 5,000 attendees managed to stay cool under the shade of large tents and trees, and with the aid of popsicles and cold drinks sold by s