A husband-and-wife team with roots stretching back to a Fair Oaks Italian restaurant in the early 1990s has opened a pizzeria in the East Sacramento storefront once occupied by Café Capricho, bringing three distinct styles of Roman-inspired dough to the Folsom Boulevard dining strip. Fabulist Pizza opened its doors on July 21 at 3269 Folsom Boulevard, filling a space that had served the neighborhood for more than 15 years before its previous tenant closed.
The pizzeria is owned and operated by Andrew Tescher and Stacey Johnson, a couple who bring a combined 60 years of culinary and hospitality experience to the venture, according to WhatNow. The pair first met in the early 1990s while opening a Piatti Italian Restaurant location in Fair Oaks, and Tescher has spent more than 35 years working in commercial kitchens, per the same outlet. Their new shop's exterior awning captures the ambition behind the name: it reads Fabulist Pizza, Bread, and Other Things, with Fabulist itself meaning storyteller, a nod the owners chose to reflect their own long culinary journey.
CBS News affiliate coverage from Good Day Sacramento recently described CBS News Fabulist as a farm-to-face Roman pizzeria, with reporter Molly Riel visiting the Sacramento shop and sampling its pizza on camera. That segment adds a fresh media spotlight to a business that had already been building buzz among local food circles since word of the opening first spread earlier this year.
From Pandemic Pop-Up to Permanent Storefront
Before settling into a brick-and-mortar space, Tescher and Johnson spent six years running Side Hustle Pizza as a pop-up, starting in 2019 and expanding into regular artisan bread baking during the pandemic, the shop notes on its own site. Tescher reportedly sharpened his focus on bread baking around 2025, laying groundwork for the more ambitious scratch program now anchoring the Folsom Boulevard menu. The transition from mobile pop-up to permanent shop was aided by Sacramento's Alchemist Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit whose Alchemist Kitchen incubator program provides business training, mentorship, and technical resources to local food microbusinesses, according to WhatNow. The organization runs a 12-week Microenterprise Academy alongside its incubator work, giving small operators like Fabulist a structured path toward opening a physical location.
Three Crust Styles Anchor the Menu
Fabulist's menu centers on three distinct pizza styles: an oval sheet-pan pala romana, a thin-and-crisp round pie called the nonno, and a Detroit-influenced Sactown Square, according to the Sacramento Bee. The kitchen rounds out that lineup with scratch-made artisan breads, compound butters, sandwiches, and salads, and its bread program leans on specialized fermentation processes, the Bee reports. The shop was designed primarily for takeout service with limited indoor seating, per WhatNow, positioning it as a grab-and-go stop as much as a sit-down destination.
Fabulist also runs as a cashless business with a strict no-tipping policy, meaning customers are never prompted for gratuities at checkout, according to a thread on Reddit's r/SacramentoFoodies. That model reflects a broader shift among fast-casual restaurants aiming for more predictable staff wages, the same discussion notes.
Stepping Into Café Capricho's Old Space
The 3269 Folsom Boulevard address was home to Café Capricho for more than 15 years before it permanently closed on January 16, 2026, after its founding owners decided to retire. That restaurant had opened in 2010 serving Mexican-American fare, per WhatNow, making its departure a notable void along a commercial strip long associated with casual Italian and neighborhood dining. Fabulist's arrival gives the block a new anchor tenant just months after the closure.
Beyond the counter, the owners designed the shop to double as a community hub, hosting small gatherings, displaying work by local artists, and taking part in neighborhood art events such as Second Saturdays, the long-running art walk held across Sacramento. That ambition places Fabulist within a dense East Sacramento dining corridor on Folsom Boulevard, just a short walk from established staples like OBO' Italian Table & Bar, according to information compiled on Toast.
The opening adds another regional pizza concept to a Sacramento scene that has already welcomed Detroit-style dough at Frico on Broadway and seen upheaval among East Sac's existing pizza spots, including a landlord-driven redevelopment threat facing OneSpeed Pizza earlier this year and a recent concept swap at Tiny Lot Pizza & Grill on Alhambra Boulevard. With three crust styles, a card-only checkout, and an open door for local artists, Fabulist is betting that a storyteller's approach to pizza can carve out its own niche on a crowded strip.
