My partner and I had the following text exchange (I’m the blue bubbles).
For a tiny little town there seem to be a lot of options.
Anyone have anything particularly good (or bad) to say about anything up that way?
I will, of course, update with whatever the surprise is.
So, we ended up at Alloro Cucina in Grass Valley. More here:
Tl;dr- an excellent choice for very good Italian fare.
The surprise, incidentally, turned out to be a showing of The Phantom of the Opera with a newly composed live score by the group The Invincible Czars. I’ve also seen them perform scores for screenings of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, The Cabinet of Dr. Califari, and Nosferatu.
They’re currently touring the North America. If they’re coming to your town, treat yourself. It really adds to the atmosphere of these older films.
Didn’t see this or I would have suggested Three Forks in Nevada City, after a drink at the Golden Era Cocktail Bar.
Treks out into the foothills are a pretty common weekend day trip for folks in the general Sacramento/NE ‘bay adjacent’ folks, so any other recs are more than welcome.
I’ve found a number of really good spots when traveling to new places just by searching here, so threads centered on a location with multiple entries are great, no matter if the timing is still relevant to the original post.
The partner will absolutely want to know about the cocktails. 
Sushi in the Raw for sure. The original owners sold it after a 20 year run, but it retains most of the same dishes and is unique take on sushi for California; we were there just 3 weeks ago.
And I agree with @Glencora’s suggestion of cocktails at Golden Era.
I recently did a weekend trip to Downieville on Rte 49. I thought it would have better eats. There are 4 places in town, there’s one mexican place, and others are pizza and burger places. Of them, the Mexican place might be the best, as they seemed to have interesting specials (eg, won ton soup with lots of fun veg). The pizza and burger places were all quite servicable if not actively good, but there’s only so many burgers and pizza a human can eat. Something like “mountain food” except for Boomtown Lounge, which seemed to take their food a little more seriously, like a very nice BBQ pizza.
I talked a bit to the airbnb owner, he recommended a 40 minute each way drive to Sardine Lake Resort. I did stop by there for a sunset glass of wine, it’s a great setting, and a menu of a non-burgers-and-pizza place.
OTOH, if you get an airbnb, you’ll get a grill, it’s a thing there. The place is rife with young mountain bikers. Picking up a steak and trimmings along route (before you really hit the mountains) will probably get you a better meal at least one night.
That I haven’t seen in a Mexican place before…
