The family restaurant that helped make Sacramento “Farm-to-Fork Capital”
Three decades in, The Kitchen is still run by the same family that opened it in 1991 — now with a Michelin star.
In 1991, chefs Randall Selland and Nancy Zimmer opened The Kitchen Restaurant in Sacramento with their two children, Josh Nelson and Tamera Baker. More than three decades later, all four still run the business together — now a small restaurant group that includes Ella Dining Room and Bar, three Selland's Market Café locations, and OBO' Italian Table & Bar.
The Kitchen was among the earliest Sacramento restaurants to build its menu directly around relationships with local farmers, growers, and ranchers — a practice that's now closely associated with the city's self-branded identity as California's “Farm-to-Fork Capital.” Josh Nelson, who now serves as the group's CEO and CFO, played a direct role in helping launch that citywide branding effort alongside city tourism officials.
In 2019, The Kitchen became the first Sacramento restaurant to receive a Michelin star, part of the inaugural year the Michelin Guide covered the region. The recognition arrived nearly three decades after the restaurant first opened, and came as the broader Sacramento dining scene — including several other family-run institutions — earned wider recognition of its own.
The Selland family has described the restaurant group as, at its core, still a family operation — the same four people who started it in 1991 remain its owners and operators today.