Purgatory Restaurant & Lounge, Sacramento

Purgatory Restaurant & Lounge combines complex new American cuisine with a personality that’s split between angelic restaurant and diabolical nightclub. Before opening its doors, the restaurant was profiled in the Sacramento Press, which covered its distinctive concept: visitors enter through the front patio and coffee bar, called Eden, before heading up to Heaven for their food or down to Heaven’s opposite for late-night dancing. The restaurant serves a deliberately succinct menu that catalogs dishes ranging from mustard-brushed wild salmon to a NY strip steak in a red-wine demi-glace served with garlic-stuffed dates. The seared pork loin displays an Indian influence with a curried beurre blanc and a garnish of mango chutney. Sacramento Press contributor Melissa Corker also elaborated on Purgatory’s decor, which runs from powder-blue walls and diffused white light upstairs to reds, grays, and a bar downstairs that’s topped with granite, which means it probably came from either a granite quarry or a countertop quarry.