Cornflower Creamery, which had billed itself as a "farm-to-scoop" ice cream experience, closed on Friday.

Located at 1013 L Street, the eatery that offered coffee, grab and go lunches and featured great paintings of cows in addition to ice cream, was open for just a little under a year.

Here's what they posted on Facebook this morning:

We are immensely grateful for our customers and patrons!

We have had to close our L Street location due to low traffic and the failure to renegotiate our lease with the City. We are looking for: another location, investors, partners, etc. to help us take our business to the next level at various pop up locations around Sacramento.

I give my team 5 Stars for their commitment, enthusiasm, and awesome customer service.

I work a block from there and enjoyed their ice cream occasionally. I'll miss the place during my monthly splurge for an afternoon sweet treat.

Mimi's Cafe, the restaurant that offers "French-inspired American comfort food" has added a Honey Lavender Grilled Pork Chop as a seasonal specials menu starting Monday, Sept. 19, one of the 175+ recipes submitted by guests as part of a contest.

The lead judge was Ellise Pierce, author of “COWGIRL CHEF: Texas Cooking with a French Accent” and CowgirlChef.com, and she helped select the recipe by Michael Watz of Evanston, Illinois, who won a trip for two to France.

Here's how Mimi's describes the dish:

Center-cut pork chop lightly glazed with honey, herbs de Provence and lavender and paired it with a mixed green salad with green apples, cranberries, goat cheese, toasted walnuts and roasted potato croutons tossed with balsamic dressing.

I was give the opportunity to preview the dish last week. I hadn't been to a Mimi's in over a decade, and jumped at the chance to revisit the restaurant. Now that I have a baby, it's the type of restaurant that I may find myself eating at more often. (Full disclosure: The dish and the rest of my meal were comped by Mimi's Cafe.)

September is a celebration for all things Farm to Fork in Sacramento. While the vast majority of us can't afford/score tickets to the exclusive and expensive Tower Bridge dinner, we can all participate in Farm to Fork Restaurant Weeks where local restaurants create a special farm to fork dish or menu.

The event lasts through Sept. 25 and benefits the Food Literacy Center, a very worthy charity that teaches healthy eating skills to local school children.

I was invited to try Grange's Dixon Lamb Ragout (a hankerchief pasta with heirloom peppers, fresh ricotta and extra virgin olive oil), with $2 of the $29 dollar price going to the Food Literacy Center.

Let me start with a disclosure. Grange comped my party the Dixon Lamb Ragout, and brought out several more appetizers for us to sample. With that said, I still spent $180 on a meal for two. Obviously, it wasn't cheap, but it turned out to be one of my top 3 meals thus far in 2016 in Sacramento. (If you're wondering, the other two were at Kru and at Skool.)

The Dixon Lamb Ragout was an excellent dish. The featured pasta is called a hankerchief pasta because it starts as a flat sheet and is folded over many times like a hankerchief. A generous portion, the dish featured nuanced and complex flavors topped with sweet peppers. I especially liked the contrast between the ricotta cheese and the savory sauce. I don't recall ever having this type of pasta. Definitely worth a try.

Here are some other dishes I loved:

Figs with avocado, nectarines, pickled onions and topped with EVOO.

This dish was comped, so I don't know what they would charge if you tried to order it, but based on the other salads on the menu, my guess is about $15. It is really the zenith of featuring local ingredients, preparing them skillfully and slightly and letting their natural flavors shine through. This dish embodies the Sacramento food ethos in 2016. It's a great appetizer.

With less than a month before the new Downtown arena opens, the Golden 1 center team recently brought many of the chefs and executives of the restaurants to meet with local bloggers. Here are some things I learned:

1. Participating Restaurants: Café Bernardo, Centro, Mikuni, Star Ginger, LowBrau, Petra Greek and Block Butcher Bar will be some of the local restaurants serving food to the ticketed visitors to the Golden 1 Center.
2. The Relationship between Restaurants and Golden 1: While the food of the local restaurants will be served, it’s not really another location for these restaurants. The Golden 1 Center contracts with Legends Hospitality (whom former Block Butcher Bar chef Michael Touhy now works for) to provide food at the facility. Legends has contracted with each of the local restaurants to lend their names, recipes and food preparation knowledge to downtown venue, but the employees customers will interact with are paid by Legends. In order to keep the experience as consistent as possible for diners who have been to the regular brick and mortar restaurant location, each stand will have a “brand ambassador” who is intimately knowledgeable about the restaurant, most likely a longtime employee.

Fairytale Town, the Sacramento gem located in Land Park, is celebrating its 57th Birthday by holding its annual Tales & Ales Brewfest Fundraiser on Saturday, Aug. 27.

The highlight of the evening will be tastings from craft breweries from the greater Sacramento region. Attendees will be given a Red Solo Cup to sample tastes from:

• Alaskan Brewing Co.
• Hemly Cider, Heretic Brewing Co.
• Lagunitas Brewing Co.
• Mendocino Brewing Co.
• The Monk’s Cellar Brewery & Public House
• New Helvetia Brewing Co.
• Oak Park Brewing Co.
• Sactown Union Brewery
• Schilling Cider Co.
• Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
• Two Rivers Cider Co.

In addition, food and beverages will be available for purchase from four food trucks - Cecil's Taste, Flavor Face, Slightly Skewed and Cali Love.

The event is all ages and will also feature a live band and kids can enjoy complimentary lemonade and hands-on activities in the Lemonade Garden in Mr. McGregor’s Garden. 

Advance tickets can be purchased for $25, with VIP tickets going for $50 and children for $5.75. VIP can get into the park one hour early and have reserved seating. Tickets can be purchased at Fairytaletown.org.

Loyal Cowtown Eats readers can win a pair of tickets to this Saturday's event.

You can enter three different ways:

• On Twitter: Send the following message on Twitter. "I can't wait to try XXX at @FairytaleTown #TalesAndAles on Sat. Get your tix at http://www.fairytaletown.org/events/tales-ales-fundraiser/" Replace the XXX with whatever brewery that you're excited to sample.
• On Facebook: Comment on the Cowtown Eats Facebook Page (preferably, the post that links to this contest) and tell us what brewery you can't wait to try.
• Leave a comment below with which food or drink vendor you're excited to sample. PLEASE USE YOUR REAL NAME SO I KNOW WHO TO AWARD THE TICKETS TO.

All those who enter via any of these three means will by 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 24 will be entered to win the two tickets. A winner will be selected by random drawing. I'll contact you via whatever means you entered to get your real name, and the tickets will be there for you at will call on Saturday.

As for me, I'm looking forward to trying Sactown Union Brewery and finally checking out Slightly Skewed. I haven't had a chance to try that food truck yet.

** Congrats to the winner, Richard Chadwick!

Empress Tavern
1013 K Street, Lower
Sacramento, CA 95814
916-662-7694

Web site: http://empresstavern.com/

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/empress-tavern-sacramento

Happy Hour

Monday to Friday
4 to 6 p.m.

Jess Milbourn, the chef at the now closed but once much loved restaurant The Eatery, announced that his next project will be an ice cream shop in West Sac's Broderick neighborhood.

Here's the text of his announcement of Devil May Care Ice Cream via Twitter.

It's been ~2 years since I closed The Eatery. Had a chance to do a lot of thinking on what I wanted to do with the next chapter. After careful consideration of what would be the best path to follow I've decided to open an ice cream shop here in West Sacramento.

Understandingly I've been getting some confused feedback from people who miss The Eatery. Promise that's still on the agenda just not yet. Anyway, what you can expect is awesome ice cream, ice pops, & other frozen treats as we get going.

Anticipated opening date; soon. Sometime this summer/early fall. Looking forward to putting some smiles out there.

In a follow up conversation via Twitter Direct Message, he gave a couple other tidbits:

On The Eatery 2: "To be clear I still plan on opening another concept similar to The Eatery. Cost is the main issue. I haven't been able to find a location that was already built out as a restaurant in the area I wanted to be. In the future I'd love to build a restaurant from scratch, but I haven't been able to fundraise what I need for that."

On The Concept: "Ice Cream has been a hobby of mine for years and I've been toying with the idea of an ice cream business for some time. In the process of browsing for possible restaurant spaces I found a quaint little spot that I fell in love with. It was leased, but not occupied, at the time so I left my info with the landlord and he said he'd call if he had anything with similar space, cost, etc. As it happened the current tenant had to back out and allowed me to move in.

"The final decision was that I needed a business that allowed my daughter (Audrey, now 9 years old) to be part of, and enjoy the business. This was the only concept that my wife and daughter were excited about."

Jess has declined to provide the exact address of his new Ice Cream Parlor until he gets the keys to the new restaurant. I wish him good luck.

 * Update 7/31. Shop will be located at 322 3rd St., West Sac.

The Eatery, once located in West Sac's Bridgeport neighborhood (near Target and Nugget), closed in Aug. 2014. Since then, came close to opening a restaurant at West Sac's Vierra Farms and did a stint at Broderick.

Keep updated by following Devil May Care Ice Cream & Frozen Treats on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dmcicecream.