The Foraging Angler: More NorCal Faves

Chatty Kathy Chatty Kathy
Chatty Kathy’s in Burney: great burgers and chili.

This issue’s column covers a number of eateries from Burney to Chester and along the Interstate 5 corridor in Northern California. I’ve held off listing them until I had a good sense of their quality. You know my standards: great locally owned and operated restaurants that serve great food. It also helps if they’re near some great fishing locations.

Chatty Kathy’s, Burney

I have driven past Chatty Kathy’s in Burney for years on my way to Hat Creek, the Fall River, and Baum Lake, but I never stopped in. That changed last summer. When a friend from Chico sent me a text that read, “Have you tried Chatty Kathy’s in Burney?” I laughed and took a picture of me sitting at a table there, and my reply to him was, “Yes.”

I was there during the high school’s lunch hour. It was crowded with students, as well as with fly fishers and locals, all enjoying the food. But I have visited a couple more times with the same good results — great food all the way around. I fell in love with their regular cheeseburger with fries: simple, cooked perfectly medium rare, with fresh, cold, crispy veggies atop the pepper jack cheese. This burger fills you up. I order it with Tater Tots. Kirsten loves the chicken sandwich, and I like it, too. It’s made with chicken fingers. It’s topped with cheese of your choice, fresh tomato, and a leaf of lettuce. She orders it with the Tater Tots, too.

This place has more than burgers and chicken sandwiches. They produce an awesome, somewhat spicy beef chili. It is a thick Southwestern chili with chunks of fresh green Hatch chilies. During the cool months of the spring and fall, this is the ticket. You can get it in a cup, bowl, or even poured over Tater Tots or French fries. Anyway you order it, you will not be disappointed.

Chatty Kathy’s, 38127 Highway 299 East, Burney. Phone: (530) 335-2152; website, https://restaurantguru.com/Chat-

ty-Kathys-Burney-4. Open seven days a week, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Check with the restaurant for winter hours.

The Roost Café, Chico

The Roost is one of the newer breakfast and lunch places that have appeared in Chico in the last couple of years. This one has it going on. Linda Juanarena, the owner, comes from a long line of restaurant owners. Her family was the owner of the famous Pat & Larry’s that was a Chico institution from the 1950s to the early 1990s. The restaurant is right in downtown Chico, and I know what you’re thinking — no parking. You’re wrong, though. I have been there at all times during their open hours and have found parking on either side of Main Street without any issues.

The Roost Café
The Roost Café in Chico is a good spot for anglers seeking an early breakfast.

A nice aspect of this little breakfast joint is that it is open early (it’s decorated with a rooster — get it?), so you can eat and then take Highway 32 toward Deer Creek and Lake Almanor or head west toward the Sacramento River. It’s in a convenient location in Chico to have a great meal, then head out to the fishing opportunities. The food just makes you feel welcome, and it makes me feel like I am home. I fell in love with the roasted asparagus ham Benedict. I love it when a restaurant tells you that after 11:00 a.m., you can’t get any of the Benedict dishes, because after that, they throw away the hollandaise sauce they make fresh every morning. It is the mark of a well-operated kitchen. The hollandaise sauce is smooth, velvety, sweet, but with a hint of tart. It is perfect. That is why I keep coming back. This dish has it all: hot, fresh veggies, sauce, and well-toasted English muffin. It is served with hash browns or fruit. I keep it light with this dish and go for the freshly cut fruit.

Kirsten usually orders their eggs and bacon, sided with a bowl of fruit. She likes their thick-cut bacon. She once asked the waitress the source of the bacon. It turns out they get it from the Chico Locker, which is owned by the Dewey family, a longtime Chico family. The locker has processed many animals for me over the years. The Roost gets the bacon in the slab and cuts the slices themselves. In fact, every ingredient is fresh, locally sourced, and only used while it is fresh. You can’t beat that.

The Roost Café, 817 Main Street, Chico. Phone: (530) 892-1281; website, https://www.toasttab.com/roost-cafe/v3. Open seven days a week, 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The Highlands Ranch Resort, Mill Creek

The Highlands Ranch Resort is located at the foot of Mount Lassen in the Childs Meadows. It’s a combination of a high-end resort with standard room lodging plus amenities for RVers, and it has a great restaurant and bar. It is located right on Mill Creek, a local mountain freestone creek, a 35-minute drive to Lake Almanor and an hour drive from Manzanita Lake.

This place is right on Highway 36, and Kirsten and I can stop there going to and from Lake Almanor. We are also fortunate that we can run up to the restaurant during the winter, in between snowstorms.

Highlands Ranch Resort
Expect fine dining at the Highlands Ranch Resort, on Highway 36 in Mill Creek.

There are a couple of ways to enjoy this great place. You can sit at the bar and order bar food or from the restaurant menu, or you can sit in the a high-vaulted, mountain-themed dining room. The last couple of times that we have been at the Highlands for dinner, I’ve ordered the lamb shank. It is hard to find good lamb at any restaurant these days, and when I find a place that serves lamb, I am in. They serve the lamb with garlic whipped potatoes, asparagus, and an herb espagnole sauce — it’s a French Basque entrée. I order a nice Vodka Press with this dish. Kirsten sticks with the ribeye steak.

The steaks at the Highlands are hand cut and cooked to your taste. The steak sides are the same garlic whipped potatoes and fresh seasonal garden veggies. Kirsten also orders a serving of the chef ’s sautéed mushrooms to top her steak.

We haven’t had the chance to eat lunch there. I have been told that across the highway at the Highlands RV store, they have a flat-top grill and make some great hamburgers.

The Highlands Ranch Resort, 41515 State Highway 36 East, Mill Creek. Phone:(530) 595-3388; website, www.highlands-ranchresort.com. Winter hours: November 1 to May 23, open Thursdays, 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Summer hours: May 24 to October 31, open seven days a week, 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Cravings, Chester

Many Chester locals go to Cravings, an upscale café that serves great food. Mark Antaramian, a fly-fishing guide at Lake Almanor, insisted I should try Cravings. I had been there before with my buddy John Hamiter and had the corned beef sandwich, but that was probably three years ago. Before we closed the cabin at the lake this year, Kirsten and our daughter Taylor and I made our way to Chester midweek to try Cravings again, and I’m sure glad we did.

Cravings isn’t hard to find — it’s located right across the street from the Holiday Market in downtown Chester. It is a stone’s throw away from the North Fork of the Feather River in Chester, too, and of course, from Hexagenia-filled Lake Almanor. It gets busy with folks soon after 8:00 a.m. as the locals start to file in, take their usual tables, and enjoy a great breakfast.

Cravings
Cravings is a popular upscale café in Chester.

I remembered their corned beef sandwich, so I ordered the corned beef hash and eggs. What a treat. Big chunks of corned beef with red potatoes and some white onion makes for a hearty hash. I order it with two eggs, over medium, with an English muffin, and my day is already complete.

Taylor’s standard order is eggs Benedict. I like it, too, but you have to ask for your English muffin to be toasted. They say untoasted is just how they do it, but I say toasted, baby! Kirsten orders bacon and eggs with a fruit bowl side. They have excellent thick bacon.

When I ran into Chester to get some hardware supplies to finish up winterizing the cabin, I stopped by Cravings again and got one of their corned beef sandwiches to go. Holy moly, it was as good as I remembered.

Cravings, 278 Main Street, Chester. Phone: (530) 258-2229; website, https://mms.lakealmanorarea.com/chester-lakealmanor/mp_CravingsLakeAlm. Open Thursday through Monday, 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

Boards Galore Deli and More, Willows

I am always looking for places around my area and for fly-fishers headed up and down Interstate 5. Willows is located right on I-5, and every now and then a new great eatery opens in my small hometown. Boards Galore Deli and More is near where I live, and I have fallen in love with it. This deli is in downtown Willows, which is basically just two or three city blocks long. I was talking to one of the locals, who told me that I needed to try the new place that opened in the old sandwich shop downtown. I was never impressed by the eateries that used to be there, but I pass it almost every day. I went in one day to order a sandwich and who did I find working the counter but my next-door neighbor’s teenage kid who does yard work for me. Then I realized that Ashley and Ernie Ceccon are the new owners. They live three houses away from me. You know I l ike locally owned mom-and-pop places, and it doesn’t get more locally owned than that. I ordered a sandwich to take back to my shop for lunch. It was just turkey and Swiss cheese on a sourdough roll with the typical veggies, but it was really good. My favorite sandwich now is the Big Bird. I order it on toasted sourdough bread. It’s loaded with freshly sliced turkey, Swiss cheese, and razor-thin sliced onions, plus pickles, lettuce, and thick-cut tomatoes. It is smothered with their homemade cranberry mustard sauce and mayonnaise. I just ate one for lunch while writing this. I got a big drip of sauce on my shirt, and you know that’s one mark of a good sandwich.

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Boards Galore Deli in Willows is easy to reach from I-5.

Kirsten’s favorite lunch from Boards Galore is their freshly chopped garden salad, a mixture of greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots that she couples with their tomato basil soup. Recently, she tried their toasted cheese sandwich with the soup. She brought the other half of the sandwich home with her. I warmed it up, and it was delicious. There are two different cheeses in it — American and Swiss, a great combination melted together.

They also make other homemade soups — clam chowder and chicken gumbo. Both are fantastic. The clam chowder rivals the best I have had on the coast, and the chicken gumbo has big chunks of okra. Great stuff!

Boards Galore Deli and More, 161 North Butte Street, Willows. Phone: (530) 330-7007; website, https://www.facebook.com/BoardsGaloreDeli. Open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Closed Sunday.

Sour Robs, Maxwell

My son Garrett gave me the heads up on this pizza parlor and burger joint in the small town of Maxwell. Most folks drive right by it on Interstate 5, headed to the lower Sacramento or headed home to the Bay Area. However, Maxwell is the gateway to East Park Reservoir, Stoney Creek, which is on the Heritage Trout list, and other westside fisheries.

Kirsten and I went down to take a longer look at this family owned and operated eatery. We started with the garlic beer-battered fries. I know — a heart attack in a basket, right?

sour-robs
The meals at Sour Robs in Maxwell will have you grinning.

They were grreeaat!, as Tony the Tiger would say. Crisp, hot, and with garlic butter poured over them. Wow. I ordered a basic burger, because I always try the basics the f irst time I go to a new place. Their standard quarter-pound burger is served on a sourdough bun with your choice of cheese and veggies. I got pepper jack cheese with all the veggies. The sauce is their homemade Rob’s Sauce, which is the usual mayonnaise, ketchup, and a little pickle relish, but I was surprised it had a little hint of tarragon in it. It was good sauce. I ordered the burger in a combination meal with another round of fries, not beer battered, just standard. It was a great burger. No complaints for this kid.Kirsten ordered a small “ Tame Chicken” pizza. It was very good. I finished it up at home later. In fact, I got the “You ate my pizza” look from Kirsten. Their dough is good and light, and this pie has a white sauce, with grilled chicken, bacon crumbles, and garlic. It is topped with fresh tomatoes and green onions. All in all, our first experience was positive, and we have been back for a second, third, fourth, and fifth round since. Every time we have ordered something different and have had the same results as the first experience: great, freshly made food.

Sour Robs, 320 Old Highway 99 West, Maxwell. Phone: (530) 438-2485; website, https://www.sourrobs.com. Open Thursday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

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