Jumpstart Cafe

Ditto Amy’s review. Junior staffers come here for lunch and legislators do come here for some low key coffee meetings in the back room’s obscurity.
A bit of background: During the 1980’s the feds ran a sting operation where they offered payoffs to pass legislation to create a phony shrimp processing plant — the operation became known as «shrimpgate.» 14 legislators were indicted, many people lost their careers, and the legislature’s reputation never fully recovered. The owner of Jumpstart was a staffer at the time (thanks for the correction Wendy!) and he became an FBI informant — now he owns Jumpstart and, in the era of term limits, all is forgiven and Jumpstart has its own claim to fame in Sacramento politics.

This is where you go if you are a Capitol Staffer or a midlevel policy analyst and you need to eat something for lunch and no one is treating you to Esquire or that Aged Meats place across 11^th by the creepy oil lobbyists. They have wireless. The scones are brilliant (and fattening.) They make very nice salads and the soups can be souper. The coffee? Works for me! har har.
UPDATED: looks like Jumpstart has closed. Apparently the Phan family (La Bou) is going to take over the space. It’s a nice space, the kitchen is really big and there is a lot of storage. Unfortunately, it’s about as big as it can get for seating.
Sad that it’s gone. Glad Coffeeworks is still kicking.