My restaurant adventures in Sacramento

Background: I once lived in a suburban part of Los Angeles. It is hard not to think of the whole LA basin as anything but one city because everything looks the same. The cities blend together. I had moved to one of these cities and began, what came to be known by me and my girlfriend, as the TEN WORSE RESTAURANT TOUR. I had similar experiences in San Francisco, as well. So, why not share my critiques of Sacramento (my new home town). This doesn't mean that all the places I've been have been bad.

Late January, 2006-
"CELESTIN'S restaurant and voodou lounge" - cute spelling of voodoo and all. I dined with my partner on a Friday.
Celestin's has a full bar and patio. I saw sidewalk seating, behind low iron fencing, so I can't say if this is the patio (I did not check out back... next time I will be more thorough).
HELP STAFF/BAR STAFF
It was cold out and not many were sitting outside. There was friendly staff to greet us. The crowd was young and I believe I was the only over-50 person there. We sat at the bar as most tables were already filled at 7 pm. The bar help was attentive and my only complaint would be we had to wait for a while to get refills on drinks as the passing of an hour and a half meant more customers ordering drinks; it took a while to get the final tab, well after the time we wanted to leave and our drinks were empty.
DRINKS
I had the mojito - ok, I had two. There were excellent
My partner had a draft beer, Jamaican Red, which was good, then she had a sangria, which she also liked. I agree with her assessment.
FOOD
We felt the best thing for us would be appetizer and one of the many gumbos on the menu. We went with the house gumbo, a mix of shrimp, scallops, tilapia (whatever that is) chicken and kielbasa sausage. It was quite good, just spicy enough and I was happy that the scallops were big enough to tell they were scallops. The appetizers we chose were: sweet potato fries which were awesome, grio (marinated chunks of pork, served with an interesting sauce) which was tasty, and fritailles (a combo of grio, the fries, crispy fried plantains, and lamb fritters) which we enjoyed.
PRICE: Appetizers were all under $10 and ranged from $9.5 for the most expensive fritailles, to the $6 for the sweet potatoes. The house gumbo is their most expensive, at $16.50 (the other versions featuring only two of the meats in combination are $12 and $14). For the food, and the clean cheerful atmosphere, the people watching opportunity (for them and me), good drinks - more than I like to pay, but it is cheaper than getting an airport beer - I would say the expense was a good trade.
CELESTIN'S gets 3 "happys" on the Cranky scale . That would be 3 smiley faces, but I can't seem to make those in the blog :-) :-) :-) .