A Capitol Recipe: Take Food, Add Power : Politics: Mixing the legislative process with food is a tradition in Sacramento, whose restaurants have seen deals cut and digested.

Sometimes in the state capital, what matters most is not what you know or even whom you know. It’s where you eat.

Take the case of Sen. Joseph B. Montoya, the Democrat from Whittier on trial in federal court on political corruption charges. Montoya was captured on videotape taking a $3,000 check from an undercover FBI agent at a restaurant near the Capitol.

Montoya has denied any wrongdoing. But whether he is convicted, the senator’s breakfast may become the most famous granola and yogurt ever eaten in California. It was no coincidence, however, that the feds’ camera caught him with his mouth full.

While California schoolchildren may be taught that government happens in the open at public hearings under the Capitol dome, legislators, lobbyists and journalists familiar with Sacramento know better. Most business of real import is conducted elsewhere, often at one of about half a dozen eateries strategically located around the Capitol.

Washington has long been famous for its power restaurants. And Hollywood is replete with locations where deals are cut over California cuisine. Sacramento, while not considered on the culinary cutting edge, has its own circuit of political grazing spots.

The current version of this game does not compare to the way it was played 20 years ago, when lobbyists regularly picked up the tab for all the food and liquor a legislator could eat and drink. That was the era of “Moosemilk,” a weekly gathering named for a particularly potent cocktail, where assemblymen, senators and lobbyists got together to socialize and talk about everything but legislation.

Such practices were criticized as unethical, and it eventually faded in the face of the Political Reform Act of 1974, which prohibited lobbyists from spending more than $10 per month on a legislator. The act is credited, or blamed, with ending the comradeship that once existed among lawmakers of both parties and the lobbying corps.

But the power meal--albeit probably a healthier one--remains a Sacramento institution.

“There are basically two types of power meals,” said Bill Morris, owner of Pennisi’s, the Italian cafe at which Montoya’s transaction was taped. “One is just an extension of your regular office business. The other is for spectators. It is about seeing and being seen, being in the right place at the right time. The power of others rubs off on you.”

Morris said he is careful to not talk politics with his customers, and he wants people of all persuasions to feel comfortable in his cafe. But most Sacramento establishments have their regulars, and some restaurants are all but forbidden for one group or another.

One of the more exclusive power lunches in town has to be the regular Tuesday gatherings of the Lungren family, the politically active clan of Long Beach Republicans that has been almost completely transplanted to Sacramento. The lunches at Dawson’s, a pricey restaurant at the new Hyatt Regency Hotel, include former Rep. Dan Lungren, now a candidate for attorney general; his brother and political adviser, Brian; another brother, John, a state official, and their father, Jack, who was former President Richard M. Nixon’s personal physician.

Dawson’s and a second restaurant at the Hyatt are popular with Republicans but off limits to Democrats because the hotel is picketed daily by labor unions upset that the hotel’s employees work without a contract.

Unaware of the boycott, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce planned last summer to hold a breakfast for legislators at the Hyatt. But the business group had to switch the affair hastily to the Capitol’s basement cafeteria after learning that no Democrats would cross the picket lines to attend the reception.

A similar but less rigid Democratic boycott was laid on Paragary’s Bar and Oven after it became known as the hangout for the “Gang of Five,” a group of Democratic rebels who challenged the leadership of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

Perhaps overestimating the gang’s staying power, Paragary’s owners tried to capitalize by installing a plaque at the front desk proclaiming the restaurant the “birthplace” of the fledgling dissident movement. They even enlisted a public relations firm to get the word out. None of this endeared the place to Brown’s loyalists.

But since the rebellion against Brown collapsed and the Gang of Five disintegrated, Paragary’s has been welcomed back to the fold. When the Speaker recently gave several of the former rebels influential committee assignments, an apparent signal that they had been fully rehabilitated, Michael Galizio, Brown’s top aide, was asked what the action really meant.

“It means we can go to Paragary’s again,” he replied.

Perhaps the most famous Sacramento meeting place is Frank Fat’s, which for more than 50 years has served Chinese cuisine in a dark, crowded, smoke-filled atmosphere that has made it a favorite of capital deal-makers and tourists alike. Fat’s also frequently caters affairs at the Capitol, and the proprietor, Wing Fat, has been honored and toasted by the Legislature.

“Wing Fat knows everybody who has been elected, who used to be elected, who just got elected or is running for office,” said Assemblyman Mike Roos, a Los Angeles Democrat. “So immediate service seems to be available for anyone who fits that description.”

In 1987, a deal that was part of a controversial, landmark agreement to overhaul the state’s civil liability laws was outlined on a white linen napkin during dinner in a back booth at Fat’s. The legislation, hatched by a few lawmakers and a host of special-interest lawyers and lobbyists, was rushed through the Legislature in a few hours without a single amendment. Although consumer groups cited the private meeting as a nefarious example of back-room influence peddling, the infamous napkin now hangs framed in the restaurant’s foyer.

Another long-time hangout is Posey’s Cottage, a prime rib joint a block south of the Capitol. Posey’s, home of what was once the all-male Derby Club, was a regular lunchtime stomping ground where you could find many lawmakers several times a week. But the restaurant, unlike Frank Fat’s, did not fare well with the legislator-lobbyist trade in the aftermath of Proposition 9, the Political Reform Act, and now caters mostly to bureaucrats from nearby state office buildings.

Roos prefers Biba’s, a newer, upscale Italian restaurant about a five-minute drive from the Capitol in a hip section of downtown Sacramento that is home to many young singles, artists and gays. He eats there with Democratic Assemblyman John Burton of San Francisco--a Moosemilk veteran--several times a week.

Burton said he is partial to Biba’s because the food is lighter than the fare at other area restaurants and he can get in and out in a reasonable amount of time. Like others in the Legislature, Burton--who served an earlier tour in the Assembly from 1965 until 1974--said he has become less social in recent years.

“I like to just eat dinner and go home,” he said. “You go to Frank Fat’s and you eat and hang around and B.S., and you’re there all night. Since I stopped drinking, I don’t like to spend a lot of time there.”

As for Pennisi’s, it has gained in notoriety since Montoya’s trial began.

Sacramento television stations have done live “stand-ups” from in front of the restaurant, and a radio station staged a promotion during which it handed out envelopes of money at Pennisi’s and small boxes of detergent to “launder” it. Owner Morris said the fame has not brought more customers but has generated excitement and a little bit of intrigue for the cafe’s regulars.

Montoya’s case has frayed the nerves of many lawmakers, and the Legislature seems destined to enact some new ethics laws in an attempt to restore its tattered image. But Speaker Brown, who likes to boast that the FBI’s corruption probe targeted him yet came up empty, is not above joking about his colleague’s predicament. Spotted at Pennisi’s on a recent lunch hour, Brown leaned over and said with a broad grin: “I asked for the Montoya table.”

The restaurant remains as popular as ever among Capitol denizens for casual dining, but those in the know would never go there to discuss a sensitive topic like a bribe: the tables are so close together that your neighbor can hear, or videotape, your entire conversation.