Jack's Urban Eats is a delicious urban treat

Sacramento—the city of trees, rivers and endless corner restaurants, bars and diners—rarely leaves a hungry man or famished woman with a feeling of regret and disappointment. Today, like most days after moving to Sacramento, was no exception.

Keep in mind though, I am a 6-foot-5-inch eating machine. I am usually a tough customer to please in terms of filling the old gullet. The only think longer than my legs, arms and torso is my appetite.

This is why, by seeming intuition, the last item on any menu vocalized from me to a waiter is a salad.

But there is the rare exception to my faithful perception, and today, for an earlier lunch, that exception was found in Jack’s Urban Eats.

Don’t be foolish though, this salad is not your typical lettuce with croutons and a dash of ranch. This salad is a salad suitable for longshoremen, cage fighters, and men raised in the wild by a pack of wolves. Why? Because the salad is drenched in tri-tip steak that is as savory as it is cow.

The western barbeque steak salad took the form of a painter’s palette; so many different fresh ingredients left an array of mixed colors in an unintentional, unorganized pattern.

Chipotle tri-tip, corn, tomato, carrots, jicama, and kidney and garbanzo beans on top of mixed greens drizzled with fresh dill dressing—every ingredient complimenting the next in a true form of a well thought out dish.

How silly of me, I forgot to mention the melt-in-your-mouth fried onion rings that top the already over-flowing salad.

It is not for the lighthearted or the traditional salad enthusiast.

For a side, I ordered the mashed potatoes with gravy. Delicious. Forming the mash into a bowl and pouring the gravy in the middle made for an intriguing dipping system I had yet to encounter.

My lunchtime cohort also indulged in some fresh greens in the shape of a Chinese chicken salad. After a couple of shared bites of my own, I can safely say this place has won me over with salads. I don’t know if I could ever spare a future visit without one. Although the sandwiches look amazing as well, I know what I want.

Salads are just under $10 a plate, but don’t let that fool you. They are big enough to serve two. However, I don’t mess around. I get one for myself.

Jack’s was a mixed scene of youngsters with thick ear plugs to apparent government workers in a suit and tie on lunch break. I’m pretty sure every employee behind the counter had at least one exposed tattoo. It made me feel like I was in my old working days at Urban Outfitters.

But with a great spot located on 20^th and Capitol, in the heart of midtown and only blocks away from the capitol building, a unique mix of government bureaucrats and potential Occupy Sacramento protestors made people watching just as entertaining as the food itself.

Jack’s Urban Eats gets two very big thumbs up from me. Spread the word and preach the gospel—Jack’s is worthy of any and all hype.

Cops v. Undead

With all the teeny-bopping, blood-sucking, and weird-interspecies-super-natural-romance dramas suffocating the theater and TV, it’s about time a new TV show is treating it appropriately for what it is—an unfortunate epidemic. Death Valley shows a new spin on what life would be like if this trend ever manifests into a reality.

Oh yeah, there are zombies too.

MTV’s new cop-mockumentory depicts the San Fernando Valley in a fallout of zombies, werewolves and “vamps” and the special police unit, the Undead Task Force, that enforces the valley’s adapted laws.

The cast is the five police officers and their captain that make up the UTF. The task force is made of genuinely sincere friends who constantly take shots at one another and handle their work in a crude, unsettling manner.

Whether the UTF is going door-to-door to make sure registered werewolves are detained during a fool moon or setting up a sting for men who use vampire prostitutes in a trade of “blood for sex,” The UTF uses practical police enforcement in not-so-practical scenarios.

The writing of Death Valley is witty enough to get away with referencing what the show is actually satirizing and adds some modesty when an officer references True Blood when questioned about the laws of interaction between vampires and zombies.

The cast does a great job of conveying their tough love for one another, and the back and forth between the six of them is natural and believable.

But Death Valley is more than just a buddy-cop mockumentory—it’s also a blind dive into a pop-culture phenomenon put in an original light that most can relate to.

An easy comparison to make would be Reno 911, which is what lead me to an early write-off of disinterest in the show’s early episodes. However, Death Valley has some elements going for it that Reno 911 never quite polished off, which ultimately pulled me in.

Death Valley is able to obtain a higher level of realness than Reno 911 was able to, which is strange considering the paranormal v. normal contexts of the shows. The writing and production level of the former give it a workable value of fantasy mixed with reality.

Imagine an episode of Cops filmed where the “Twilight” saga is set, mixed with the crude humor of Comedy Central’s Ugly America and a hint of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Bingo.

Despite its natural familiarity with Reno 911 and being aired on a network built on music and now survived on reality TV, Death Valley even fooled me into thinking it was just another seven-or-eight-episode-cancellation comedy that never catches on.

It’s not. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Death Valley has enough going for it to hold on to its credentials as the only in your face comedy capable of taking on the melodramatic trends of the faint skinned.

And on top of that, watching a couple of zombies getting mowed over by bored, on-duty cops is more than therapeutic.

So don’t be concerned on the future of the paranormal beauties that America's adolescence has obsessed itself with. The Undead Task Force has plans for extermination.