As she stood above the Sacramento River at the Tower
Bridge Dinner in September 2019, plating a delicate
pasta torte under the watch of the legendary San Fran-
cisco chef Suzette Gresham, Molly Hawks suddenly
realized how far she had come.
Hawks had been chosen to lead the dinner with
three other local women chefs whose restaurants es-
pouse the farm-to-fork philosophy. “It pressed upon me
that this is a big, significant event in Sacramento, and
to be asked to be a part of that kind of makes you step
back and recognize your accomplishments,” she says.
It was a scene Hawks could hardly have hoped
for when she started her career as a chef and restau-
rateur more than a decade ago. Hawks opened her
eponymous Granite Bay restaurant with her husband,
Michael Fagnoni, in 2007, on the precipice of the Great
Recession. They shared the title of “chef-proprietor”
and eschewed the traditional boundary between
kitchen and front-of-the-house business. “The restau-
rant took off, and then we saw business levels plum-
met going into 2008,” she says.
In the penny-pinching years that followed, the
couple refused to compromise on their original vision
for the restaurant, which included gracious service,
foie gras and $36 filets of beef with potatoes. (A simi-
lar dish on today’s menu goes for $49.) “We opened the
restaurant with this menu style for a reason, because
we saw that there was a need in the community,” she
says. “That’s where we succeed, because that’s the
food we love.”
Instead of lowering the restaurant’s prices or level
of formality to attract more customers, Hawks and
Fagnoni made up for the lag in business by sticking to
a strict budget. “Those small, day-to-day decisions, we
put them under a microscope to make sure we were
being as conservative as possible with our spending
and cost control,” she says. In 2015, the couple opened
the more casual Hawks Provisions and Public House
in East Sacramento.
With two restaurants to run, Hawks now spends
more time in the office than the kitchen. Her daily tasks
include meeting with both managers, who she hopes
to mentor as leaders in their own right. “We try to be as
hands-on and involved as we can, while allowing them
the space to grow,” she says. “If they have an idea, I
want them to bring it to the table.”
No jobs are off the table for Hawks, though. She still
dusts off the skills she learned at the California Culi-
nary Academy in San Francisco for catering jobs, and
she isn’t above running out to buy masking tape or flour
if supplies dwindle. “That’s one of the things I still love
about this business, those day-to-day responsibilities,”
she says. “They change every day.”
FOOD & DINING
Molly Hawks
Chef and owner / Hawks and
Hawks Provisions and Public House
by Jennifer Fergesen
March 2020 | comstocksmag.com
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