By Mauricio Segura
Photo: Golden Bay Times Graphics Dept.
Sacramento’s Tower Bridge Dinner did what it always does on Sunday night: it shut down a state highway, set a mile-long table in the teeth of a golden landmark, and reminded everyone why this city calls itself America’s farm-to-fork capital. Launched in 2013 by Visit Sacramento with chef standard-bearers Patrick Mulvaney and Randall Selland, the dinner has grown into the region’s most visible food ritual, a staged love letter to the valley’s fields, ranches, and the people who make them sing. This year’s edition, presented by Sutter Health, was the 12th, and it unfolded exactly where it belongs on State Route 275 between downtown Sacramento and West Sacramento after the bridge was closed to traffic at 10 a.m. and held until late evening.
The what is simple and audacious: hundreds of guests seated family-style at linened tables stretching the span, with a menu sourced from the surrounding counties and cooked by a rotating roster of the region’s best. The why goes beyond spectacle. Visit Sacramento built the dinner as both a civic showcase and a funding engine for the free public food events that follow each September. This year, those include the newly merged Farm to Fork at Terra Madre Americas, a multi-day convergence bringing global food leaders to the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center. Money raised at the dinner also supports scholarships for the children of migrant farmworkers through Sacramento State’s College Assistance Migrant Program, a cause organizers have emphasized as central to the event’s purpose.
If you’re keeping score on who was there, it wasn’t short on notables. The long tables drew civic and campus leadership Sacramento State President Luke Wood, UC Davis Chancellor Gary May, Cal Expo CEO Tom Martinez, and Sacramento’s fire chief among them alongside chefs, farmers, sponsors, and the lucky public ticket holders who survived the annual lottery and blink-and-you-miss-it sellout. That sellout is not hype; tickets typically vanish within minutes of release. This year continued the trend, with the bridge thrumming at sunset with the clink of glassware and the sort of cross-table conversation you only get when everyone’s eating the same thing at the same time.
The food told a story that stretched across the Americas while staying rooted here. Lead chefs Bucky Bray of Nixtaco Folsom, Devin Dedier of Vacanza Romana, Jeana Marie Pecha of Omakase Por Favor, and N’Gina Guyton of the beloved, recently closed Jim-Denny’s built a genuinely collaborative menu rather than the traditional chef-per-course format. That meant an ash-crusted albacore opener with succotash and seaweed, a blue corn rabbit tamal layered with mole negro and mole blanco, and a finale of braised California bison on acorn polenta with wild rice and pickled blackberries a progression that nodded to Indigenous ingredients, Northern Mexican technique, and California’s pantry without straying into gimmickry. Appetizers and desserts came from a platoon of local pros; one standout bite was a duck-confit stuffed grape leaf with True Origin Foods rice and urfa-biber garlic yogurt. The curation was less about flexing and more about coherence, the sort of editing you only see when chefs actually share the sandbox.
History matters here, and Sacramento leans into it. The dinner began as a kind of civic dare could a city better known for policy memos than tasting menus pull off an alfresco gala that would make coastal media pay attention. Twelve years later, it’s a calling card. The bridge setting is more than a postcard; it’s a metaphor for the supply chain from field to plate, connecting growers in Yolo and Sutter counties to diners downtown. It’s also logistically hairy, which is part of the charm: detours snarl, passersby gawk, and the river winds past as if to say this is what a living food economy looks like when it’s not hidden in a back-of-house loading dock.
What about the dollars. Organizers tie proceeds to two buckets: scholarships for first-year Sacramento State students from migrant and seasonal farmworker families, and the free public programming that follows later in the month. While a final 2025 total wasn’t publicly disclosed by press time, local reports note that Visit Sacramento estimates roughly $100,000 has been raised for CAMP over the dozen years it has hosted the dinner, and the event helps underwrite the Terra Madre Americas programming that the general public can attend without paying a cent. In other words, the private party on the bridge helps fund the free party for the rest of the city.
For context, last year’s dinner drew nearly 900 guests and similar civic star power, reinforcing how the event has scaled while keeping its core intact. The 2024 menu introduced different proteins and personalities, but the formula stayed the same: showcase the region, feed people well, remind them where their food comes from, and seed the calendar for the street-level festival later in September. This year’s collaborative menu felt like a mature evolution fewer courses, more dialogue on the plate and a tighter expression of identity.
In the end, Tower Bridge Dinner is part theater, part fundraiser, part family reunion for a food scene that often works in the shadows of bigger coastal brands. Sacramento keeps inviting the world to dinner on a bridge, then using the glow to invest in the next generation of students, of chefs, of eaters. That’s not just a good night out; it’s a smart way to stitch a region together, one long table at a time.
