Italian in Sacramento: 12 Local Favorites.

Paesanos at 1806 Capitol Ave holds a corner in Midtown with covered, heated outdoor seating that welcomes dogs. The dining room is big, loud, and active, and diners describe an old-town room that suits dates and groups alike.

Pizza is named most, including the Gorgonzola and the Sicilian, and the fried ravioli is a popular starter to share. Pasta dishes like the fettuccine arrostiti, spaghetti carbonara, pork fusilli, and pesto ravioli draw praise, with meatballs, tomato basil soup, and tiramisu on the side. Gluten-free pasta and a vegan pizza are on the menu.

Seating is first come, first served for most visits, so waits of twenty to forty-five minutes show up on busy Saturday nights. Parking is tight near the corner, and diners advise leaving time to find a space. Lunch visits and kids pizza orders are easy here.

Zinfandel Grille reads as the room built for the calendar as much as the menu: a meal before a game or a concert, or a weeknight dinner that needs to please a table of people with different appetites. The New American menu leans on the familiar without apology. Happy hour calamari sets the tone, fried to order and priced for a crowd easing into the evening rather than committing to a full dinner. The grilled salmon and the ribeye steak anchor the entree list, the kind of pairing that lets a table split between someone who wants something lighter and someone who wants red meat and a glass of red wine without either person compromising.

That range is the point. This is not a tasting menu room chasing a seasonal narrative; it is a kitchen built to execute a broad, steakhouse-adjacent menu consistently for groups on a schedule. The upscale price tag puts it in the pre-event and special-occasion tier rather than the everyday-counter tier, and the room's group-friendly reputation suggests it handles larger parties without the wait or the friction that smaller upscale rooms sometimes impose. Happy hour appears to be a real draw here, not an afterthought bolted onto a dinner menu; the calamari's repeat mention suggests it is the dish that gets ordered again once the table has already committed to staying for dinner.

Sacramento has no shortage of tasting-menu rooms doing seasonal, farm-driven cooking, and no shortage of neighborhood counters doing something narrower and cheaper. Zinfandel Grille sits in the middle distance: reliable, broad, priced for an occasion but not so precious that a table of six can't show up an hour before a Golden 1 Center show and still get fed and out the door on time. It is a room built for the calendar, not the season.

Masullo runs on a simple premise: fire good dough, keep the toppings honest, and let the room stay loud with families on a Tuesday. The Neapolitan pies anchor the menu, blistered and blessed with restraint rather than piled high, the kind of pizza that reads as a nod to tradition without needing to announce it. The American pizza sits alongside as the other lane, built for the table that wants something closer to the familiar cheese-and-pepperoni register, and having both on one menu says the kitchen isn't trying to convert anyone, just feed them well. The kale salad shows up again and again as the dish people order almost on reflex, a sign the kitchen treats a side as seriously as the main event, and it gives the room a lighter counterweight to all that char and crust.

Sacramento has no shortage of pizza rooms, but Masullo's niche is the celebration dinner that doesn't feel like a celebration dinner: the kind of place a family picks for a going-away meal or a last dinner before someone ships out, because the room is casual enough for kids and the food is good enough to mark the occasion. Pricing lands in the moderate range, which keeps it in reach for a Tuesday night as easily as a birthday. The pace suits groups and regulars alike, a spot built for return visits rather than one big night out. This is a neighborhood pizza room in the truest sense: reliable, unpretentious, built for repeat business rather than special-occasion-only status, even though it handles those occasions fine when they come.

Zelda's built its name on deep dish long before Sacramento had much of a pizza identity to speak of, and the format still does the heavy lifting here. The Margherita keeps the pan format honest with a simple base, while the Pepperoni is the one to beat if the goal is a straightforward test of the crust-to-cheese ratio that defines this style. The specialty pies are where the kitchen gets to stretch, and they're the reason regulars keep coming back instead of defaulting to the classics every time. This is deep dish in the Chicago mold, thick enough to require a fork for the first few bites, which sets it apart from the thin-crust and Neapolitan rooms that dominate most of the city's pizza conversation.

The room reads as a fixture rather than a trend, the kind of place that has changed hands over the years without losing the crowd that treats it as a standing plan. Service gets specific credit in the record for warmth under newer ownership, a detail worth noting for a restaurant that has presumably seen staff and management turn over more than once. The bar seating gets called out often enough to suggest solo visits work here just as well as a table for four, and that flexibility is part of why it lands on lists for dates, friend groups, and casual hangouts alike. Pricing sits in the moderate range, appropriate for a pan pizza that's built to be shared and to leave leftovers.

The corner it occupies in Sacramento's pizza landscape is less about being the most ambitious dough program in town and more about being the one people trust to be there, doing the same thing well, whenever the craving for a proper pan pie hits. It is a Midtown standby in the truest sense of the term.

Tony Baloney's Submarine Shops on College Oak Drive is a longtime neighborhood sub shop. Diners remember coming as children and now bring their own children. They describe a small dive where the staff seems to know everyone.

Pepper steak is the top seller, and diners treat it as the headline sandwich. Pastrami still earns its own praise. One diner called the pastrami the best in Sacramento, noting soft bread, tender flavorful meat and a taste of the house sauce offered on the side. Another remembered the crunch of the toasted roll from decades ago. The macaroni salad and the old school spaghetti draw their own fans, and the menu also lists pizza, meatball subs and cold cuts.

One diner found a large turkey sub pricey and light on toppings, so pastrami, pepper steak and meatball are the safer orders. Portions are large enough that diners take half home. Come for the pastrami and add the macaroni salad.