Dining opportunities for anglers on the road are always changing. Lately, there has been an explosion in the number of brew pubs in Nevada City and Grass Valley featuring on-site brewing and food offerings, some with innovative and refreshing menus. In addition, while old favorite destinations elsewhere have closed, a new venue looks extremely promising.
Brew Pubs in Nevada City–Grass Valley
The Nevada City–Grass Valley area is a waypoint and portal to a lot of great fishing. Anglers might think of an overnight stay or head directly up the mountain toward Scotts Flat Reservoir, Fuller Lake, Rucker Lake, Grouse Ridge with its many lakes, including Bowman Lake and Faucherie Lake, as well as on to Lake Tahoe and the Truckee system. Additional choices include heading north on Highway 49 toward Downieville and the North Fork of the Yuba, the Lakes Basin, and as far as Graeagle, Lake Davis, and Frenchman Reservoir.
We have been waiting for the upgrading, renaming, and reopening of the historic Five Mile House near Nevada City, which sat vacant for several years. The location’s history as a roadhouse goes back to the late mid-nineteenth century, when it was a stagecoach stop and, rumor has it, a brothel. The newly opened Ol’ Republic Roadhouse sits above Five Mile Grade out of Nevada City at the turnoff from Highway 20 to Scotts Flat Reservoir, a Sierra gem that has smallmouth fishing and is somewhat off the radar of recreation seekers.
The Five Mile House was bought by the Ol’ Republic Brewery in Nevada City. The brewery has been a huge and welcome success, but it didn’t serve food, and the Pho King Good Food truck that showed up on weekends no longer comes up from Auburn. The brewery is still in Nevada City and supplies beer to their new venture, which combines local-made craft beers with interesting food, live music, and a cozy mountain ambience. The place is now called the Ol’ Republic Roadhouse.
As a person who cherishes good food, I am always looking for interesting menus that combine kitchen creativity, new tastes, and visual appeal with special settings and ambience (very important). At The Ol’ Republic Roadhouse in January there was over a foot of snow and ice, and the ambience was there. We are waiting for spring to allow meals on a back patio surrounded by forest.
I don’t consume bread the way I did as a ravenous teenager, but a quality meal at any price point starts there, whether with table bread or in the form of sandwich and bun components. The Ol’ Republic Roadhouse is proud of their bakery and offers eight breads to go, including a sour wheat batard, roadhouse rye batard, purple barley ciabatta, and a French baguette. We pick up a ciabatta on the way to Tahoe. Expertise with flour carries over to a thin-crust pizza selection including ricotta, walnut pesto, arugula, speck, and lemon pizzas. You also may find Parmesan cream, spicy pork sausage, Fresno pepper, and roasted squash pizzas. Offerings may change daily.
My favorite sausage-in-a-bun offering was a bratwurst (pork sausage) with white pepper and marjoram, served with sauerkraut in a fresh pretzel bun. Go easy on the mustard so as not to knock down the aromatic flavors and juices of the sausage as they marry with the fresh bun. The bartender offered tastes of two in-house lower-alcohol ales. Both paired well. I added a side of fire-charred broccolini with lemon zest, garlic, and chili. My “dwag” came with fresh in-house potato chips.
The menu includes a variety of tempting items: a Japanese rice bowl, raw oysters on the half shell, New York streak, and tacos with orange-braised pork, arbol chili, chipotle crema, and pickled vegetables. It’s all very tasty, but I wish there were more low-fat offerings. We fish Scotts Flat often in the spring. There’s no home cooking those nights, and at the Ol’ Republic Roadhouse, there’s always room to park a boat trailer safely.
The Ol’ Republic Roadhouse is just the newest addition to the local brewpub scene. Nevada City’s Three Forks Bakery and Brewing Company started the brew pub movement there and is very popular with locals. They, too, offer wood-fired thin-crust pizza in an on-site brewery and an interesting menu with healthy choices — in itself unique for bar food. Three Forks emphasizes farm-to-fork cuisine, and most ingredients are locally sourced and have organic origins. Their thin-crust pizzas rank at the top of the local pyramid and include a winter squash and oyster mushroom pizza and a braised lamb calzone.
They also generously support conservation-minded nonprofits such as the South Yuba River Citizens League and the Bear Yuba Land Trust — the first focusing on river health and the historic salmon run, the other on the preservation of special agriculture lands, forest watersheds, and river health, which relates directly to fishery viability, along with public access in the form of trails. And many of these craft breweries are following Sierra Nevada in Chico and are making a Resilience Butte County Proud IPA with a part of the proceeds going to Camp Fire victim funds.
Other great brew pubs have opened in the Nevada City–Grass Valley area, as well. The newly opened 1849 Brewery, located in the back of the historic Nevada Union Newspaper Building in Grass Valley has an awesome covered outdoor freestanding wood-burning pizza oven. This establishment has high ceilings and an open industrial look, live music, and a pool table. The 1849 burger looks good, as do the cauliflower wings and the handrolled thin-crust pizzas. This is not where you will find Chucky Cheese, Domino’s, or Straw Hat fat bombs constructed on cardboardlike sheets.
Grass Valley Brewing has an interesting beer selection and sumptuous food. You can order a “Ham Stand” sausage plate at $18, charcuterie and cheese, a roasted pork belly banh mi sandwich, a fried chicken sandwich, or buttermilk fried chicken, as well as enticing deserts. All these establishments remain open late — fabulous for coming off the river after 9:00 p.m. with a ravenous appetite.
If you haven’t had enough action, hit the Mine Shaft Saloon in Nevada City or the Nevada Club in downtown Grass Valley. When you’ve had too much action, they will call a cab for you, and you might just trade tales with a grizzled miner from out of the past
Lost and Found
Restaurants have the highest mortality rates of any business, even more so in resort and recreation areas. They come and go for many reasons, most often lack of customers during the off season, unimaginative food, the lack of reliable help, and location. On Highway 20, just a few miles up from the popular angling access on the lower Yuba tailwater fishery, we recently lost Scallywags, which was close to several angling destinations.
At the same time, we gained a realdeal Italian deli and wood-fired pizza place that just happens to be next door to the Reel Anglers Fly Shop in Grass Valley. La Gastronomia offers lasagna, meatballs, soup and salad, and desert, in addition to pizza and sandwiches, all made from scratch. Call ahead, and after you get an accurate fishing report and pick up the hot local flies at the fly shop, leave with dinner ready to go.
La Gastronomia uses fine imported meats and cheeses, which raises the bar in all offerings. The wood-fired pizza oven draws patrons in. The seasoning process for the oven took days. Dough is made daily using a three-flour blend and is available for takeout and home use — enough for a pizza is $2.99. The regular offerings include but are not limited to quatro formagio and Calabrese pizzas, as well as vegan and ham calzones. Sandwiches stray beautifully from those tired menu offerings found in many establishments and are made with the freshest of breads and with imported deli meats that we don’t often see.
A bonus is take-out orders of lasagna that will feed a herd and the pièce-de-résistance, tiramisu. I took classes on making this signature dish at the now-defunct Culinary Academy, and I can vouch that this is the real deal, made with ladyfingers, mascarpone, and a dusting of finely ground coffee, not a chocolate pudding with a spray-canned whip cream. Sometimes we take home the lasagna and tiramisu for a dinner with minimum preparation, whether for two or a large group. Just add a campfire, salad, garlic bread, and some malbec.
If You Go . . .
Ol’ Republic Roadhouse, 18851 State Highway 20, Nevada City, CA 95959. Phone: (530) 470-8745; https://olrepublicroadhouse.com. Open 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily.
Three Forks Bakery and Brewing Company, 211 Commercial Street, Nevada City, CA 95959. Phone: (530) 472-8933; http://www.threeforksnc.com. Open Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.; Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.; Saturday, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.; Sunday, 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.
1849 Brewery, 468 Sutton Way, Grass Valley, CA 9594. Phone: (530) 4771849; https://www.1849brewingco.com. Open Tuesday to Thursday, 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m.; Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Closed Monday.
Grass Valley Brewing, 141 East Main Street, Grass Valley, CA95945. Phone: (530) 271-2739; https://www.gvbrew.com. Open Sunday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Kitchen hours: Sunday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (limited menu, 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.).
The Mine Shaft Saloon, 222 Broad Street, Nevada City, CA 95959. Phone: (530) 265-6310 http://mineshaftsaloon.com.
The Nevada Club, 108 West Main Street, Grass Valley, CA 95945. Phone: (530) 274-0947; on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Nevada-Club-155974021116220.
La Gastronomia, 760 South Auburn Street, Suite G, Grass Valley, CA 95945. Open Thursday through Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Wednesday, 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. — Pasta Night! Closed Monday and Tuesday. Phone, (530)7986021; http://www.lagastronomia.us.
Watershed at the Owl
The Owl was a restaurant for many years in an historic storefront on the main commercial row in downtown Grass Valley. I dropped by for a ribeye steak four years ago while in town on business. The meal… let’s just say it was disappointing. The Owl closed a year or two ago,
and new owners have upgraded both the space and the menu, and changed the name to Watershed at the Owl, reflecting their focus on locally-sourced meat and produce. I recently dined there, and was so intrigued I went back the next night. Each dish usually has a twist in ingredients that elevates it beyond the mainstream. If you’re fishing locally, they’re open until midnight on weekends (10 p.m. on weekdays). Website: www.watershedattheowl.com.
— Richard Anderson
