Sacramento is all over the latest seasonal drinks menu at Billy Ngo’s Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine in East Sacramento.
The Japanese restaurant’s beverage director, Jose Carrasco, has been putting together themed seasonal drinks menus since coming to Kru in 2022.
To kick off 2026, Carrasco and art partner Ben Della Rosa took a deep dive into some of the City of Trees’ iconic locations throughout history and created a signature cocktail menu in honor of them. This is Carrasco and Della Rosa’s 10th collaborative drinks menu at the upscale sushi restaurant.
Carrasco grew up in Woodland, which he said made Sacramento feel like “the big city” as a kid.
“What we always try to impart (in the menus) … is nostalgia,” he said. “We try to incorporate ourselves or food nostalgia or kind of what’s going on in our community, so that one really came full circle.”
Carrasco said he found that the menu was a good way for Sacramento residents and non-residents alike to learn bits about the California capital city’s history.
Previous limited-edition drinks menus have been themed after IKEA instruction manuals, TV Guide, Auto Trader magazine, a school yearbook and more. Carrasco worked with Della Rosa long before taking the helm of Kru’s bar, when he led beverages at The Roost and Empress Tavern.
The “Greetings From Sacramento” menu will be available through May, Carrasco said. The drinks team has planned specialty beverage menus through the end of 2026, but they will remain under wraps until they debut.
Kru beverage director Jose Carrasco has collaborated with area artist Ben Della Rosa on various themed cocktail menus for the Japanese eatery. Menus representing Sacramento historical spots, IKEA, TV Guide and other themes include highly decorative and instantly recognizable designs. Camila Pedrosa cpedrosa@sacbee.com Drinking down memory lane
Though Della Rosa’s menu designs tend to be highly illustrative and detailed, Carrasco said this is the first time the artist has included a works cited list at the back of his menu.
The duo spent months researching Sacramento’s history to gather inspiration for locations to include with short written blurbs on each of them, according to Carrasco.
“I learned so much,” he said.
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“Greetings From Sacramento” is split up into seven sections based on areas of the capital city — East Sacramento, midtown, downtown, West Sacramento, Arden Arcade and Pocket-Greenhaven. Each neighborhood has blurbs on three to five locations with 12 spots from around town made into themed cocktails.
“(Choosing beverages is) always the toughest part,” Carrasco said. “We always have a big list, and then we whittle it down.”
Certain cocktails, like the Sam’s Hof Brau ($15), were a must for Carrasco — he was eager to include a pickle ingredient in honor of the since-closed restaurant famous for its house-made pickles. Others played with fun garnishes, like the McKinley Park-inspired Rose Garden ($17).
Furthering the menu’s immersion, some of the cocktails are served in thematically apt cups. The tropical, rum-heavy Hard Rock Cafe ($17) comes in a hurricane glass sourced straight from the rock-n-roll chain restaurant, while the whisky-and-banana Vic’s ($17) features a waffle cone patterned cup.
As with all of Carrasco and Della Rosa’s menus, this cocktail menu run includes a charitable component. In partnership with Jack Daniel’s Whiskey and the Center for Land Based Learning, Kru will host a day of service in May at a local farm for community members to participate in. Details about the day of service will be released closer to the anticipated Memorial Day event, Carrasco said.
The Sacramento Bee’s Knees
Carrasco said one of the most popular drinks on the Greetings From Sacramento menu is “The Sacramento Bee,” ($18) a fruity riff on the classic Prohibition-era Bee’s Knees cocktail.
The beverage director was inspired to reminisce on the newspaper’s longtime former home after seeing what its lot looks like now.
“I always get that ‘big city paper’ (feeling) when I drive down Q Street,” Carrasco said. “Knowing what used to be there, and now it’s just this whole dirt lot, that’s kind of crazy.”
The Bee moved operations out of the 2100 Q St. building in 2021, and demolition on the former brewery-turned-newspaper-office began in August to make way for housing developments.
Carrasco swapped the cocktail’s typical gin base for a blank slate of vodka, adding Junmai sake for a contemporary Japanese connection. The drink references bees with sweet honey and herbal elderflower, while acidic lemon balances out the flavors. A last hit of sweet fruitiness comes from blueberries, which Carrasco said doubles as a nod to the Sacramento Kings with a natural purple hue.
Topping off the vibrant cocktail is a delicately placed print of Scoopy, The Bee’s vibrant mascot. The image is printed in edible ink onto a circle of potato starch paper, making every aspect of the drink safe to consume.
“I think the menu is really great because it’s kind of like a snapshot in time of Sacramento,” said Kru general manager Chloe Henry. “Everyone has a memory from Sacramento throughout the pages … it’s something that you can identify with, and your parent can identify with. So it’s—it’s been a lot of fun.”
Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine launched a new Sacramento-themed cocktail menu, titled “Greetings From Sacramento” early this year. The elaborate menu features 12 drinks representing historic icons across town, including a Sacramento Bee-inspired cocktail. Camila Pedrosa cpedrosa@sacbee.com
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Camila Pedrosa is a service journalism reporter at The Sacramento Bee. She previously worked as a summer reporting intern for The Bee and reported in Phoenix and Washington, D.C. She graduated from Arizona State University with a master’s degree in mass communication.