Old Soul Co.

House baking, and soups and quiches made from scratch

The food at this Old Soul Co. counter is made rather than bought in: pastries baked in house, soups and quiches from scratch, and salads and small plates filling out the middle of the day. That gives the cafe more weight than a pastry case with an espresso machine beside it.

The pastry case is the first thing most people order from, but the savoury side is the reason the room holds people past a quick cup. Coffee is still the anchor, since Old Soul is a craft coffee business before it is anything else. The company describes itself as a platform for local farmers, brewers and purveyors, and the local beer and wine on the list is part of the same idea rather than a bolt-on.

An all-glass room downtown

The downtown branch is the newest in the group and the brightest: all-glass windows, two outdoor patios, and furniture made to order by local wood and metalworkers. Seating is compact rather than sprawling, so the room fills and turns over instead of filling and staying full.

That suits the mix it draws in central Sacramento, where local workers, small business meetings and visitors moving through the civic and entertainment district all use the same tables. It reads equally well as a stop between meetings and as somewhere to sit with a laptop for an hour, and the mix of both is what fills the tables through the middle of the morning. The patios give the room a second pace when the inside is busy, and the locally made furniture ties the space to the producer-minded identity the brand talks about.

Ordering by daypart

In the morning, take a coffee and something from the house-baked pastry case. That is the simplest version of Old Soul and the one the counter is built for.

Around midday the quiche or a soup is the stronger order, both made from scratch and more substantial than a pastry stop suggests. Salads and small plates work when the visit is a meeting rather than a meal, and a local beer or a glass of wine shifts the same table toward the end of the working day. Breakfast and lunch are the two registers here, and everything else is a variation on them.