Chinese Town With a Dash of Italian : Al’s Place has a Locke on the best power lunches in the Sacramento Delta.

I figured that on a drizzly Wednesday in February, there would be no problem slipping into Al’s Place for lunch.

I was wrong.

By 11:30 a.m., the crowd had already spilled onto the plank sidewalks outside this old-time saloon and steakhouse in Locke, the only survivor of the wooden villages built by Chinese laborers who came to California in the 1800s to work the gold fields and, later, the railroads.

Locke huddles below a wide levee on the Sacramento River, about 30 miles south of the capital. It is only three blocks long and maybe three blocks deep, with a population that has dwindled to 60.

But this scrap of yesteryear is a curious draw in the California Delta, a watery web of sloughs and islands where the state’s longest rivers--the Sacramento and the San Joaquin--meet to flow westward to San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate.

The Chinese built the first levees, using shovels and wheelbarrows to reclaim the marshland. After machines replaced the work force, many laborers stayed to farm the land that they helped save. Some of their descendants still live in Locke and its more prosperous neighbor, Walnut Grove.

In the 1920s, Locke was wide open: fan-tan parlors, opium dens, girls. On a wintry morning in the 1990s, it can seem closed: a cluster of dark, stained walls and overhanging balconies that creak with age and lean on each other for support.

Ropes bang in the wind. Cats cry and prowl.

Yet there is a clearing behind the hamlet that is posted: “Parking lot for Locke patrons only.”

Every space was taken on the Wednesday of my visit, a condition more common on weekends or in the lazy heat of summer when pleasure boaters take to these waterways.

A young Chinese merchant at Yuen Chong General Merchandise Co. sold me a Coke and explained what was going on over at Al’s.

“It’s the liver feed,” he said with a smile. “I’ve already been over to get a plate. They do it once a year and the farmers come from all over.”

Like Locke’s other businesses, the Yuen Chong market displays Chinese calligraphy beside English signs. It is across from the Chinese Acupressure Clinic--”Closed until further notice”--and just steps from the River Road Art Gallery, which is open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from March to December. In the summer months, the gallery also opens on Thursday.

But the success story of Locke has long been Al’s, which was founded in 1934 by an Italian named Al Adami who died in the 1960s. For decades, Sacramento lobbyists and legislators have headed down the river road for robust food and folderol. From the earliest days, and with Al’s blessing, the place was called Al the Wop’s, a name that has been recently restored to the sign out front.

Traditionally, the waitresses have had one question: “How do you want your steak?” It comes with abundant trimmings, including pasta. That’s still true for dinner, although at lunch there’s now an option of chicken or a cheeseburger.

On the day of the annual liver feed, the blue-jeans-and-farm-cap crowd parted long enough for me to have a nostalgic peek inside. My last visit had been a dozen years ago, when I was vacationing on a houseboat tied up to tall willows along Snodgrass Slough.

The old ceiling fans were spinning as slowly as I remembered.

A mounted moosehead still ruled over the mahogany bar. Tattered business cards and dollar bills were tacked to the walls and high ceiling, reminders of past bets and done deals.

I left the smoky aroma of liver and onions and walked to the main road atop the levee. The Locke China Imports shop was closed that day, as was the Locke Garden Chinese restaurant. A Chinese girl of 7 or 8 waved shyly from a porch. An older Chinese woman, wrapped in black, seemed to fade into the wall.

Across the road is the Sacramento River and, on it, a different world. Gleaming motor vessels and sailboats were docked at a spiffy marina that stretches the length of the town. Freshly painted signs for “Yacht Sales and Repairs” seemed incongruous, high above the shanties of Locke.

No major highways cross this California Delta; travelers in a hurry avoid its ponderous drawbridges and tiny cable ferries, finding no charm in names such as Lost Slough and Disappointment Slough.

But those with time for a holiday can revel in the clanks and groans of an old swing bridge, the whoosh of ducks flying over island cornfields, the taste of blackberries that grow in thick tangles along misty banks and, on most days of the year, a fine steak from the grill at Al’s.