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It’s past midnight on a quiet stretch of Freeport Boulevard near Land Park, but there’s still action at Sacramento’s Star KTV Lounge. KTV stands for “karaoke television,” and screens suspended around the front room hint at the delights in the soundproofed private rooms in the back. Most play music videos featuring windswept young lovers and Chinese landscapes, the words scrolling across the bottom in multicolored characters. 

One screen advertises more carnal attractions (in the root sense): thick rice noodles draped in beef stew; pig ears sliced ribbon-thin and sugar-glazed; ducks and squabs roasted whole. The names of the dishes are superimposed on the images in Chinese and English, like lyrics, and it may be tempting to sing along.  

The 6-year-old karaoke bar and restaurant, which reopened in 2021 after extensive pandemic renovations, is one of the few places to get a meal past midnight in Sacramento. Late night is prime time at Star KTV, with surge pricing to match: The per-hour karaoke rate doubles from $24 to $48 for the smallest room from 7 p.m. until closing. But the extensive menu, stretching from orange chicken to soy-braised pork trotters, stays the same all the way from 11 a.m. until 2 the following morning. That makes it unusual in the capital city — though part of a growing class. 

Sacramento has always had its neon beacons for those whose jobs or lifestyles push their dinners into the dark, like the iconic Willie’s Burgers on Broadway, a hangout spot for line cooks and legislators on deadline since 1991. When the pandemic put a plug on nightlife, some of the spots that fed that world either whittled down their hours or closed outright. There are few Sacramentans who aren’t mourning at least one, tied to memories of the nameless but necessary meals that nourish sleepless nights. 

In the past few years, though, options have been respawning on the grid and surrounding areas. Their colorful, contagiously optimistic atmosphere echoes the mood of Sacramento nightlife’s post-pandemic resurgence.

Opportunities in the night

Many mythic late-night eateries originated as de facto canteens for workers on graveyard shifts and end up being adopted by the nightlife crowd — 24-hour diners in New York, cha chaan tengs in Hong Kong. But the latest crop in Sacramento seems designed with partygoers in mind. 

This includes Jet’s American Grill & Bar, which opened in 2021. It bills itself as “Sacramento’s #1 late night restaurant” and is the only place in Midtown where you can get a cheesesteak at 2 a.m. The dining room is lit with blue, pink and green mood lighting, glowing like a tanning bed into the dark street. 

“Late night is huge for us,” says owner Jet Bonanno, who started his business as a renegade “ghost kitchen” out of his parents’ house in 2020. “People come in late, and then they end up enjoying our food a lot, and then they come back during a more regular hour, say 5 or 6 p.m.”

The restaurant joins in on Midtown’s burgeoning party vibes with themed nights, weekly “Jazz at Jet’s” sessions on Thursdays, and DJ takeovers, including one in partnership with the GoldenSky country music festival last July. The goal is to be “a hub where people can feel like it’s their home base when they go out on the town, whether they start here, end here, or spend the whole night at Jet’s,” Bonanno says. “It’s just a place where everyone can feel welcome.” 

These restaurateurs see the opportunity in the night, says Tina Lee-Vogt, manager of the City of Sacramento’s Office of Nighttime Economy. She took on the role when the office launched two years ago. Since then, “I can’t even tell you the number of people who, when they found out I got this job, said, ‘What can you do about finding a place to eat late at night, because everything’s closed?’” Lee-Vogt says. 

Restaurants located near entertainment and sports events are especially well-placed to benefit from the nighttime economy, Lee-Vogt says — and with the easing of the application process for limited entertainment permits, which allow small businesses to host live entertainment, more restaurants will be within a walking radius of an event. She is working with the Sacramento chapter of the California Restaurant Association to help restaurants see the benefit in staying open late. 

Staffing restaurants has been a challenge since the pandemic, but Lee-Vogt says that restaurants can join the late-night economy without keeping full service at all hours. The downtown restaurant Pizza Rock, for example, had table service during the day and became a counter-service slice shop late at night. Pizza Rock closed in 2021, but in August its former space was taken over by BPM, a Korean-ish fusion spot that’s open until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. The name, a pun on “beats per minute,” stands for burgers, pizza and more; some come topped with kimchi or bulgogi.

“That’s a really great location, and it really served a good need, because really late at night, it was a good way to kind of decompress folks,” Lee-Vogt says. “They were going from clubbing to having some pizza, cooling it down a bit, and then they could go home. So I’m hoping they (BPM) bring that same vibe in that district.” 

Another round

Late-night dining and nightlife have a symbiotic relationship, so much so that the borders between the two can blur. Take Pocha House, which was both one of the city’s buzziest restaurant openings and most-hyped nightlife scenes when married co-owners Judy Han and Daniel Ngo opened it last year. 

The name is an homage to Korea’s pojangmacha, “tent bars” that serve drinks and snacks to pair with them, often until dawn. Pocha House doesn’t make it that late, but it’s open 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. from Wednesday to Sunday, with the street food-inspired menu (Korean fried chicken, bulgogi-loaded fries, noodles amped up with kimchi and spam) available until midnight. It also hosts DJ takeovers and resident parties every Friday and Saturday, some in partnership with the promoter group HOF. 

These are genuine dance parties, the kind that seemed impossible just a few years ago, the room packed with moving bodies at a proximity that was recently all but illegal. But the atmosphere most nights feels more wholesome than clubby, more joyous than dark. This might be a lingering symptom of post-pandemic release. The food might also have something to do with it. 

“A lot of the DJs that we’re working with were talking about how they thought it was so cool that we offer food all the way up until 12,” says Han. “It creates a little bit more of a laid back environment that we wanted, versus something like a club.” A good meal can also keep you dancing later into the night, she notes. 

“The unique part about Pocha is like, if it’s late night and you got off work and you just want to eat, it’s a place for you. If you just want to grab a drink and have a catch-up conversation with your friends, it’s also a place for you,” adds Ngo. 

And for those who want a quieter place to eat untimely noodles, there’s still Star KTV, where the playlist is more HK pop ballads than NJ house. It’s just a few blocks south of Yummy Cafe, another erstwhile late-night spot — still serving Hong Kong-style comfort food like fried French toast and baked spaghetti, now until just 9 p.m.

There was just something special about lifting the duvet of melted cheese from a family-sized casserole of pasta at 2 a.m., with ‘80s Cantonese soap operas on the TV and a whispered lovers’ tiff from the couple at the next table. 

But another round of memories will be made at Sacramento’s newest generation of late-night restaurants, and the best way to keep them around is to go to them, reminds Lee-Voigt of the Office of Nighttime Economy. “A lot of times people forget that that’s what keeps them up — that is, actually people visiting them,” she says.

“So if you have a favorite spot, make sure that you frequent them and support them so that they can stay open and continue to serve our community.”  

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