Chef Joe Pruner opens first solo Italian restaurant in East Sacramento

Bocce Ristorante is moving into the former V. Miller Meats space at 4801 Folsom Blvd., Suite 2, and the opening carries extra weight because it is Joe Pruner’s first solo restaurant after more than two decades in some of the region’s best-known kitchens. The East Sacramento project is aiming for a mid-July debut if final electrical clearance gets through the city process, with a fire inspection still part of the finish line.

Pruner gave neighbors an early look at the concept with a pop-up on June 7 at Origami Asian Grill. The menu is built around fresh and extruded pastas, plus pizza, sandwiches and seasonal vegetable sides, with prepared takeaway dishes and cook-at-home items folded in as part of the business. That mix points to a restaurant that wants to function as both a sit-down dinner spot and a practical neighborhood stop.

The format matters. Bocce is not being pitched as a formal white-tablecloth room, even with Pruner’s résumé behind it. He started in Sacramento as a teenager catering at The Kitchen, then worked at The Kitchen, Maven, Wayfare Tavern, Empress Tavern, OBO Italian Table & Bar, Allora, Woodlake Tavern and Bear Flag Farm. That history gives Bocce a chef with fine-dining discipline, but the menu and market-style extras suggest he is translating that background into something more casual and repeatable for East Sacramento.

The address also comes with local memory. V. Miller Meats operated there since 2015 before closing in 2025, and the farewell brought out a wave of neighborhood support. Customers showed up in force, and owner Eric Veldman Miller described a closing filled with hugs and tears. Bocce inherits a corner that already means something to the block, which raises the stakes for what opens next.

Pruner’s timing is also notable inside Sacramento’s farm-to-fork scene. Visit Sacramento named him one of four lead chefs for the 2026 Tower Bridge Dinner, alongside Kate Sutherland of Waterboy, Giancarlo Zapata of Chicha Peruvian Kitchen and Francisco Rivera of Hawks Public House. The annual dinner has been held on the Tower Bridge since 2013, and the 2026 edition is scheduled for September 6. Local reporting says the event is expected to feed more than 800 diners.

For Pruner, Bocce looks like the point where years of working in other people’s kitchens turn into a place with his own name and his own instincts on the menu. If the remaining approvals land, East Sacramento gets a pasta-driven Italian restaurant shaped by a chef who has spent years earning the right to open one on his own.