When the pandemic put a plug on nightlife, some of the spots that fed that world either whittled down their hours or closed outright. 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.

Comstock’s 2023 stories, designs, photographs and illustrations took home 20 awards in the California News Publishers Associations’ annual California Journalism Awards, held in-person in Los Angeles this year for the first time since the pandemic. Here are all our awards, with links to the winning content.

Comstock’s magazine has lived through more than three decades of milestones in the Capital Region. We dived into the stacks and reached out to local experts, including State Historian William Burg and City Historian Marcia Eymann, to highlight a few key moments we’ve made it through. 

As project solutions lead at Blue Zones, Joaquin Razo is working to bring the way of life of the world’s longest-lived communities to his home city.

Earlier this month, downtown Sacramento looked a little more like the Big Easy for the City of Trees Parade: one of the biggest Mardi Gras events west of the Mississippi. 

Born in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, to parents from Durango, Mexico, she says the military was the first place she felt like “your background, what you look like, what neighborhood you lived in” didn’t matter. 

From an in-depth interview with one of the region’s most influential multimillionaires to a lingering look at the region’s first Maltese food business, here are our most-read stories of the year. 

Over the course of summer and the first weeks of fall, over 60 varieties of peaches and nectarines pass through The Fruit Bowl, a 76-year-old produce stand on the rural outskirts of Stockton. 

The first sip of Pila Kava hits like a low dose of novocaine, numbness spreading across the surface of the tongue. This soon fades into a background hum as the flavors bloom. The first note is the earth and spice of the kava itself — the root of a pepper variety native to the South Pacific.

Oto oversees marketing and communications for both the CalAsian Chamber of Commerce, an organization representing Asian American and Pacific Islander-owned businesses around the state, and the Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce, which centers its efforts on the Capital Region.

Comstock’s 2022 stories, designs, photographs and illustrations won 12 California Journalism Awards, including seven in first place.

There are many clues that Stand Up Kabob, a Persian restaurant literally welded onto the side of a used car dealership on the outskirts of Davis, is no ordinary kebab shop. 

Betty Inada, a Japanese American jazz singer born in Sacramento in 1913, sought fame in Japan in a time when American screens and stages had little space for Asian women. 

When the restaurant opens in late spring, you will still be able to get a chili dog or a hamburger griddled to a dark sear on the flat top grill. But you can also order a hot dog called a “Catalina wine mixer”: chicken based and topped with kale, avocado and pungent garlic-anchovy mayonnaise. 

The coffee ceremony at Kind Bean Cafe and Ethiopian Cuisine unfolds like a sacrament, each tool imbued with significance like objects on an altar. The beans, roasted and ground throughout the day, steep in a jebena, an ebony-colored earthenware vessel developed more than 800 years ago.

As tribal administrator of the United Auburn Indian Community, Becky Johnson provides recommendations and implements decisions relating to programs such as the tribal school, social services, and cultural and historic preservation.

Maltese pastizzi comes in two classical forms, delineated by how the finely fissile pastry — laminated with both butter and lard — folds around its savory filling. Shell-shaped pastizzi, clamped tight like clams at low tide, conceal peas cooked to their melting point and spiced with a subtle curry that’s more English (Malta’s most recent colonizers) than Indian.

From Japanese, omakase translates roughly to “I leave it up to you.” It is a covenant in which the diner cedes all decision-making power to the chef.

With Good Things to Eat, Delcy and Elinor Steffy explore the cuisines of their heritage, including African American, Armenian, German, Hungarian and Jewish roots. 

While the storms have abated for now, the property damage they caused will remain far after the sun returns.

From exclusive interviews with local business leaders to a roundup of regional Mexican dishes, here are our most-read stories of the year.

In the span of a year, a single cow burps up 220 pounds of methane, a powerful driver of global warming. UC Davis scientists are experimenting with a red seaweed that can dramatically reduce the methane, but the solution has a few caveats.

At Twisted Track Gallery in Sacramento, which recently emerged as a keystone of the thriving R Street art scene, one wall is devoted to a triptych of the feminine divine.

The Zuckerman family started a farming empire on a Stockton island. Over 100 years later, they’ve branched out to several new businesses but have stayed true to the crops that started it all. 

The West End Revival, a ticketed dinner organized by the Last Supper Society, evoked the people and businesses that were displaced to make way for the Capitol Mall Project — a cautionary tale for modern developers and city planners envisioning the future of Sacramento.

After the three-year pandemic hiatus, Our Street has grown into a tightly choreographed event that brings in visitors as far afield as the Bay Area. We asked Yellow Brick Group co-owner Shawn Kahan for his post-event takeaways.

Every morning, Caravan Uzbek Cuisine co-owner Farkhod Soatov wakes up early to make plov. The rice and meat dish, with roots in Persian pilaf, has changed little since the days of the Silk Road. 

Yolo County’s most photogenic crop is facing a barrage of challenges, including supply issues related to the war in Ukraine, global currency volatility and drought.  

Midtown Association’s Street Food Sacramento grant is helping to better represent the city’s diversity in the business district and the thriving Midtown Farmers Market.

Concessions prices are higher than they were at the last California State Fair in 2019, but fairgoers are still spending money on the summer indulgences they missed. 

With Vite Ramen, co-founder and CEO Tim Zheng set out to create a nutritious instant food product. He also manufactured it ethically and designed the recipe to be faithful to classic Japanese ramen styles.

Law manages a team of faculty and entrepreneurs-in-residence who create programming designed to make innovation and entrepreneurship more accessible for people from all of the Capital Region’s diverse communities. 

A celebration of inclusivity and diversity was on full display at the Sac Pride March, where local organizations and the businesses turned out to support the Sacramento LGBT Center and its community.

The competition’s inventions included a medical device that detects fetuses’ oxygen levels, a machine-learning tool that analyzes livestock health and a healthy take on boba milk tea.

After two quiet years, concerts and music festivals are thumping through the Capital Region once again. While the COVID-19 pandemic has not ended, many are ready to see live music at outdoor venues.

The California Honey Festival returns with vendors, music and neighborhood restaurants celebrating the state’s sweetest product.

Companies and researchers are finding ways to use mycelium, the vegetative body of fungi, to solve problems including plastic waste, greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotic residue in water supplies and more.  

We’ve rounded up some of our previous Art Exposed interviews with photographers to learn how local artists make a living out of drawing with light.

The Boulevard Park corner cafe serves Brazilian baked goods such as cheese bread and fried dumplings, as well as an assortment of sandwiches and beverages.

After five years of planning, Aggie Square has broken ground in Oak Park. We chat with Chancellor May about how the project’s partners are responding to concerns and what Aggie Square aims to bring to the region. 

The frozen meal company expands its operations following an increase in demand for delivered food options. 

As a woodworker and metal fabricator, Nancy Sayavong uses her training both for art and remodeling jobs. Her work is interested in the contrast between the romantic ideal of the home and its lived reality.

State government leaders take a break from making California laws to make California rolls for the Capitol Roller Competition, part of a recent summit for rice industry stakeholders.

Gloria Salazar is preparing to ride off into the sunset as she retires from a robust career in public transportation. 

Sarah Hemly is the president of Hemly Cider, an award-winning cider company that uses fruit from one of the oldest family-run orchards in the Capital Region.

The market-kitchen hybrid offers Afro-Caribbean favorites like jerk chicken, curry goat and oxtail.

Capital Region restaurant owners with mixed backgrounds are channeling their points of view into creative dishes.

PODCAST: Young restaurateurs in the Capital Region are rewriting the definition of authenticity.

After more than 20 years selling Korean specialty items, the owners of Smile Food Market opened Smile Market 2, which serves fresh dishes like spicy seafood noodles and sweet-and-sour pork.

We interviewed a local banking expert about how optimistic national trends are being reflected in the Capital Region.