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Hawaiian And More: What's Trending On Sacramento's Food Scene?

Unsure where Sacramento's in-the-know crowd is eating and drinking? It's easy to spot lines out the door, but some underlying trends are harder to see.

We took a data-driven look at the question, using Yelp to uncover which local businesses have been seeing especially high review volumes this month.

To find out who made the list, we looked at Sacramento businesses on Yelp by category and counted how many reviews each received. Rather than compare them based on the number of reviews alone, we calculated a percentage increase in reviews over the past month and tracked businesses that consistently increase their volume of reviews to identify statistically significant outliers compared to past performance.

Read on to see which spots are worth exploring, right now.

Ono Hawaiian BBQ

PHOTO: ABRAHAM P./YELP

Open since April, this Hawaiian spot, which offers seafood, barbecue and more, is trending compared to other businesses categorized as "Seafood" on Yelp.

Citywide, seafood spots saw a median 1.7 percent increase in new reviews over the past month, but Ono Hawaiian BBQ saw a noteworthy 204.8 percent increase, with a slight downward trend from a 4.5-star rating a month ago to four stars today.

Located at 2800 Del Paso Road, Suite 200 in RP - Sports Complex, Ono Hawaiian BBQ offers a wide variety of small and large plates. Look for Hawaiian barbecue chicken, chicken katsu, short ribs, crispy shrimp and much more. This spot also caters. Here's the website.

Yard House

PHOTO: YARD HOUSE/YELP

Downtown Sacramento's Yard House is also making waves. Open since October 2018 at 405 K St., Suite 100, the New American bar has seen a 9.2 percent bump in new reviews over the last month, compared to a median review increase of 1.5 percent for all businesses tagged "American (New)" on Yelp. Moreover, on a month-to-month basis, Yard House's review count increased by more than 180 percent.

There's more than one hotspot trending in Sacramento's New American category: Beast and Bounty has seen a 7.9 percent increase in reviews.

Yard House offers snacks, appetizers, soups, salads, steaks, seafood, street tacos, pizza, burgers and desserts. Over the past month, it's maintained a mixed 3.5-star rating among Yelpers. Explore the website here.

Echo & Rig

PHOTO: MARK L./YELP

Downtown Sacramento's Echo & Rig is the city's buzziest breakfast and brunch spot by the numbers.

The well-established steakhouse, bar and breakfast and brunch spot, which opened in the Kimpton Sawyer Hotel at 500 J St., Suite 150 in April 2018, increased its new review count by 7 percent over the past month, an outlier when compared to the median new review count of 1.4 percent for the Yelp category "Breakfast & Brunch." It outperformed the previous month by gaining 1.3 times more reviews than expected based on past performance.

Echo & Rig offers breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner menus, as well as dessert and bar fare. Stop in early and grab the farmer's market breakfast with two poached eggs, shitake mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, pee wee potatoes, gold beets, heirloom carrots, asparagus and goat cheese. Near dinnertime, look for options like jumbo tiger prawns in white wine lemon sauce served with artichokes, capers, cherry tomatoes and parsley. Check out the website here.

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