FOLSOM, Calif. —
The Lincoln-based Fourk Kitchen is opening another location in Folsom by the end of spring.
Fourk Kitchen, centered around the number four, has four employees, offers a $49 four-course dinner service featuring a different menu every month, and is only open four days a week. The restaurant, which will be located at 1177 Riley St., is reservation only, limiting its seating to approximately 30 guests each evening.
“Opening a location in Folsom made sense for us because approximately 10 to 15 percent of our current guests come all the way to our Lincoln location from the Folsom area," Fourk Kitchen's owner Paul Jansen said. "I love the area of Folsom as there is a lot of new growth in the area."
With a restaurant offering such a unique concept, one would imagine the owner is a veteran of the industry. Jansen is a veteran, but not in the hospitality industry.
Jansen is a 24-year military veteran of U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. He did not have any restaurant experience or culinary training prior to embarking on his culinary career.
“I just started by using the recipes I used to serve my friends and family,” Jansen said.
When Jansen began thinking about the concept behind Fourk Kitchen, he knew he wanted to offer his guests a welcoming, casual, and unique prix fixe dining experience.
“Instead of prix fixe dining experiences being a once or twice a year special occasion event where you’re spending hundreds of dollars, my goal was to make it a monthly date night for our guests," Jansen said.
If you're unfamiliar, a prix fixe menu is a type of menu that offers a multi-course meal for a fixed price. With the concept in mind, Jansen opened his first Fourk Kitchen restaurant in Lincoln in 2019.
“Our first location in Lincoln was overwhelmingly successful,” Jansen said. “Because people gravitated towards Fourk’s unique concept, we decided to open a second location in Reno and now a third location in Folsom."
Within the past three years, Jansen's vision has come to life as his restaurants' comfortable and intimate nature causes approximately 70% of its guests to book at Fourk for date nights month after month.
"We create this intimate atmosphere from the second guests walk through our doors," Jansen said. "The four-course dinner service begins by myself or one of the operations managers introducing ourselves, providing history about Fourk Kitchen, discussing the items on the menu, introducing our team and sharing the history of the artwork throughout the restaurant."
Fourk Kitchen encourages guests to visit their Facebook for more updates regarding the opening of their Folsom location.
