Anniversary flowers in Sacramento

Sacramento calls itself America's Farm-to-Fork Capital, and it means it — which is why an anniversary here is usually booked around a table before anything else is decided. The dinner short list is concentrated and walkable: The Firehouse in the old brick engine house on Second Street in Old Sacramento, Frank Fat's on L Street, a block from the Capitol and serving since 1939, Mulvaney's B&L in the converted firehouse on 19th Street, Ella Dining Room and Bar on K Street, Localis on S Street, The Waterboy on Capitol Avenue, Empress Tavern in the basement space beneath the Crest Theatre on K Street, Grange off the lobby of The Citizen Hotel, Camden Spit and Larder on Capitol Mall, The Kitchen on Hurley Way in the Arden area, Canon in East Sacramento, Magpie in Midtown and Tower Cafe on Broadway across from the Tower Theatre. Here is the unglamorous truth about flowers and restaurants, and we would rather say it than sell you a failure: most Sacramento dining rooms will not accept a floral delivery for a table. Tables turn, there is nowhere to store an arrangement, and a bouquet on a two-top crowds the food. Call the restaurant yourself and ask; if they say no, the working alternatives are better anyway — deliver to the house that morning so it is waiting when you both leave, deliver to the hotel room, or have the bouquet handed to you before dinner so you carry it in.

Hotel delivery is the reliable version of the same idea, and downtown Sacramento has enough of it to work with. The Kimpton Sawyer sits at Downtown Commons beside Golden 1 Center; The Citizen Hotel occupies the 1926 California Fruit Building on J Street; the Sheraton Grand is attached to the convention center at 13th and J; the Hyatt Regency faces Capitol Park across L Street; Embassy Suites stands at the foot of Capitol Mall on the riverfront; the Delta King, a 1927 paddlewheel riverboat, is permanently moored on Front Street at the Old Sacramento waterfront and is the most distinctive room in the city to walk into with roses already on the bed; The Westin Sacramento sits on the river on Riverside Boulevard; Hilton Sacramento Arden West anchors the Point West cluster on Harvard Street; and Midtown keeps a handful of small inns, including Amber House and the Inn and Spa at Parkside on Sixth Street. Front desks will accept and hold, and most will place an arrangement in the room before check-in or at turndown, but three rules decide whether it happens: give the reservation name exactly as it was booked, give the check-in date, and expect that a hotel will not accept a delivery for a name it cannot find in the system. Some properties charge their own handling fee. Order for the afternoon before an evening check-in rather than the same hour.