Dining Out: Brickside

My girlfriend Joy wasn’t all that excited when I suggested going to Brickside after work a few weeks back. She’s a Sacramento native, and as such, tend to think of Old Sac as a place where tourists pay too much for mediocre hamburgers. But I had some coupons through a service a friend had given me for Christmas, and we were running out of places on the list where we could spend them. So Brickside it was.

The first thing we noticed was, well, a lot of bricks. Bricks are more rare in California than most of the rest of the country—though don’t stand up that well to earthquakes—but I’ve always loved the exposed brick look when people build new uses into older buildings.

Brickside has an open, cozy industrial look, highlighted by a huge metal woodstove in one corner.

We started with the oriental chicken salad ($9). This is a common enough item, with chicken, carrots and cucumber whipped up in a sesame dressing over noodles and a bed of greens. But we especially liked the Brickside version, which came with a clean, tangy taste.

We followed that with tacos. They offer three types, with a trio of tacos with each order: chicken ($6), fish ($7) and shrimp ($8). They humored us by letting us get a variety pack for $7. The chicken taco is the most popular, and is quite spicy. I also liked the fish taco, partially because the white sauce with it wasn’t all dense and mayonnaise-y like it is many places.

We completely our chicken-centric meal with the half roasted chicken ($18). This came with an excellent potato and steamed vegetables. The best part was the herbed butter that suffused the chicken all the way through.

By this time we were getting pretty full, and much of the chicken went straight into boxes for the next day’s lunch. But I had to spend at least $50 for the coupon to kick in, so leftover be dammed, I went for desert. So I had the New York cheesecake suffused with chocolate ($7). This did not make it anywhere close to the leftover box.

Our waiter was particularly friendly and helpful, happily agreeing to several changes we asked for in our order. And Joy actually had a good dining experience in Old Sac. All in all, a productive evening.

Brickside 
106 J Street
916-476-6276
Sunday and Monday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.