CapRadio Staff
Randy Paragary, a pioneering Sacramento restaurant owner, died Saturday according to the Sacramento Bee. He was 74.
Paragrary opened his first Sacramento restaurant, The ParaPow Palace, in 1969. Since then, he started a number of businesses in the city — including Centro Cocina Mexicana, R15, Cafe Bernardo and his namesake Paragary's.
The businesses helped spur investment in the K Street and R Street cores and in the dining scene of his hometown. Paragary was a graduate of McClatchy High School, Sacramento State University and the McGeorge School of Law.
"He helped put Sacramento on the culinary map and relentlessly, bullishly invested in its future," Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg tweeted Saturday. "He will be sorely missed but his legacy is imprinted on our community."
His restaurants have helped develop a generation of Sacramento chefs, including B&L chef and owner Patrick Mulvaney, Waterboy chef and owner Rick Mahan, and Chris Nestor of House Kitchen & Bar.
“Before farm-to-fork really came into Sacramento, at [Randy’s] restaurants he was already doing that," Nestor told Sactown Magazine in 2015.
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