The Fresno Paradox

Where to find fresh food in “America’s Garden”

Fresno has more franchise restaurants per capita than any other town in America. At least, that’s a frequently reported rumor. The moment Wro andI pulled off the freeway and on to Fresno’s Shaw Avenue, we accepted the rumor as gospel. We suddenly encountered what looked like every fast food chain in the entire world, all lined up on Shaw like targets in a carnival game.

I even discovered an old friend that I thought had died decades ago. I have a soft spot for odd balls, so how could I not love Der Wienerschnitzel (DW), a cute little chain restaurant that has never served a single order of “wiener schnitizel” and uses the incorrect German article in its name (it should be “das“)? DW stores disappeared from most of America long ago. It’s easy to spot former franchises that have been converted for other businesses because they maintain the unique DW style, with steeply pitched roofs. Wro and I both adore DW's cute little mascot dog who always runs away from people who want to eat him. So I was overjoyed to see DW alive and well on Shaw Avenue. Sensibly enough, they now sell little plastic mascot doggies that attach to your car's radio aerial.

I bought the store’s entire litter, to save them from being eaten.

Fresno shares a lot of similarities with Des Moines. Both towns sit in the middle of miraculous abundance - for Fresno it's the hot, fertile Central Joaquin Valley where a full 25% of the nation’s fresh produce is raised. Yet, since the middle of the last century, most of that fertility has been re-employed. Instead of competing to produce the best peaches, asparaguses, pistachios, et cetera, most Central Valley farms now concentrate on producing huge quantities of foods that are capable of traveling long distances without spoiling. Wro calls that “mirage food” because it’s designed to look better than it tastes.

We both wondered why some places value food quality and others only seem to care about quantity. Why isn’t Fresno more like Napa, where another belt of climatically desirable soil is mostly directed toward producing the best possible quality foods and wines? We were already burned out on fast food. It was time to get off Shaw.

Trelio - worth the drive, from anywhere

A trio of guys named Shackleford are trying to reverse this Fresno paradox. Father Jim and sons Michael and Chris run a restaurant in Old Town Clovis, Fresno’s biggest suburb, that shows off the produce of the Central Valley’s very best niche farmers. The Shacklefords work their butts off trying to only use food that was harvested within 24 hours of being prepared for a diner’s plate. Jim shops at local farms and farmers markets all day while Chris and Michael work in their consulting businesses. Then at night, Chris manages Trelio where Michael is the chef.

“We’re blessed in that we can operate the restaurant without worrying about its immediate profitability. We do well enough in our consulting businesses that the restaurant is a form of advertisement, a business expense that demonstrates just how good things can be,” he admitted.
These guys know it’s hard to build a client base in Fresno. When we asked a dozen locals for restaurant tips, only one mentioned Trelio. In fact, some franchises got more touts. Yet if you ask serious foodies in San Francisco or Los Angeles, or even in Chicago and New York, about restaurants in Fresno, Trelio will be the only name that you might hear. Reviews of Trelio on chowhound.com and egullet.org gushed with the fervor of people who have just seen the light. Chris explained this.

“Food-wise, Fresno is a paradox, surrounded by so much agricultural abundance, yet it’s hard to find anything truly fresh and local to eat. Just like the farm land, the restaurant culture here has been converted to industrial purposes. We have found a local niche of foodies, mostly transplants from LA and San Francisco. But we think we can build a tradition here based on comfort food. Food today is so industrialized that the chances of someone tasting that special food, the one that becomes an epiphany and changes their lives, is slim,” he said.

“We want to bring back a Central Valley cuisine. We could not do what we do here in San Francisco or Los Angeles. We’d be too far away from the farms to shop fresh every day. We’d be dependent upon deliveries and cooler space. Here, we can really do “fresh & local” in a meaningful way. One that can produce epiphanies,” Chris waxed.

To illustrate the absurdity of Central Valley food systems, Chris pointed out that even though most of the pistachios in the USA are grown around Fresno, he had been unable to find any freshly harvested pistachios to use in Trelio’s kitchen.

“For whatever reason, all the Central Valley pistachios make a 1500 mile trip to St. Louis for processing and packaging. Then they make a 1500 mile return trip to be sold as Central Valley pistachios.,” he explained.

Mike & Wro

The Shacklefords, who personally gutted and rebuilt their restaurant by hand, continually re-educate themselves. Chris haunts the best restaurants on the West Coast, many of which are his clients. While he likes to visit The French Laundry and Gary Danko, Mike prefers the ethnic joints and neighborhood dives. Mike told us that his first summer job was at Burger King. The following summer, he couldn’t find an opening at Burger King or Dominoes in Santa Barbara, so he looked in the classified ads and found that they needed help at a three star Italian restaurant.

“I worked there for three years and then I went to culinary school in Vermont. After that I worked in New York City and New Orleans. So I came at cooking from a different perspective. First it was just a job. I learned that cooking was a 16 hour a day, on the feet, job before I fell in love with it. If I had come to the other way, loving it first, then I couldn’t have moved into the professional grind. As it is, I can’t see myself ever doing anything else,” Mike explained.

If I lived anywhere near Clovis, I wouldn’t be able to see myself eating anywhere else. And I came to Trelio a little wary. Gushing descriptions of restaurant dishes like the ones I read on chowhound.com, usually make me suspicious. After eating one dinner there, I now think that the Chowhound reviewers restrained themselves. Like them, I experienced my first Trelio epiphany on a salad course. Seriously, I don’t think this life-long city girl had ever tasted such fresh greens.

A Trelio chopped salad, with apples, prosciutto, avocado, jicama, boiled egg, Parmessano-Reggiano and truffle dressing was so good that Wro and I ordered two more salads. Our second salad was named for Tom Willey, an organic farmer from nearby Madera whose reputation looms in San Francisco - Alice Waters praises his produce and uses it at her famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Mike made a salad of Willey’s beets with chevre crème fraiche, toasted walnuts and a fig vinaigrette which made me aware of the religious significance of figs.
The best came third, however. Mike’s smoked duck breast carpaccio was served under arugula and baby lettuces who were far too young and fresh to be allowed out after dark, even in a nice middle class suburb like Clovis. They came wearing crumbled goat cheese, toasted walnuts and different fig vinaigrette.

Mike was clearly on a roll. We next ordered what turned out to be our favorite dish of the evening. Steelhead was cured in Meyer lemons and treated to a sous vide bath before being cooled and served with a coquettish little pyramid of crushed peas that had been luxuriating in fresh mint and marjoram.

That was accompanied by a potato-cucumber salad that should be a compulsory assignment for all students of summer picnics. A crème fraiche of freshly shaved horseradish accented that dish, which I should point out cost all of $10.

Next I moved on to one of the dishes that drove the Chowhound dialoguers into rapture - a Harris Ranch tri tip marinated in chimichurri. Wro kids me that I order such things just so that I can pronounce “chimichurri” which is a South American version of the Catalonian “allioli.” I first met it in the Czech Republic and it took me a week to get the pronunciation down - m’s and r’s can be challenging for Chinese speakers. Wro, who often thinks he’s Irish, reminded me that chimichurri is a corruption of “Jimmy McCurry,” an Irishman who invented this sauce in Argentina. So I am not the only one who has been confounded by its pronunciation.

Back to the dish at hand though. Tri tip, a triangular cut of beef from the bottom of the sirloin, is a Central Coast of California thing - it’s also called Santa Maria steak, for its home town. It’s high in flavor but challenging in texture, so in the USA it’s barely heard of outside California. I had an awesome version in a Brazilian steakhouse in Milwaukee two years ago and I pined for more afterwards, so Mike had me when he suggested South America by dropping the c-word. I was not disappointed. The tri-tip came with creamy polenta, some wonderful fava beans, fresh grilled asparagus and more of the same English peas that had made us swoon when we were romancing the steelhead course. Between entrees, Mike sent us a little course of baby tomatoes that had been steamed briefly and dusted with fennel pollen, which is the hottest new item of the year in the hottest kitchens, and deservedly so.Fennel pollen made the flavors of the tomatoes linger and alter in the back of my mouth.

That prepared us for Mike’s confit of Cloverdale Farm ( another local name worth dropping) rabbit leg. That was served with sautéed Swiss chard, baby carrots, English peas, oyster mushrooms and a mustard sauce reduced in Riesling. If this had been San Francisco, we probably could have ordered more dishes - Mike’s signature black truffle meat loaf tempted us both, as it comes with a side of his equally famous mac & (Mornay) cheese. But Trelio’s servings were about twice as large as what we expect in the Bay area. (Believe it or not, our most expensive entrée cost $27, our most expensive first plate cost $8.) And everything was so good.

Anything within raisin

Above all, Fresno is a raisin town. At Simonian Farms we learned that that 95% of all American raisins come from this area and that’s a lot of dried out grapes. (Raisin grapes take six weeks longer on the vine than table grapes or wine grapes.) The muscat raisin was first commercially grown in San Diego, but San Diego doesn’t have enough water for vineyards. So, raisin makers, many of whom were Armenian, moved to the Fresno area back in the 19th century. In 1876, William Thompson introduced the Lady de Coverly seedless grape, later known as the Thompson grape. Thin-skinned, seedless and sweet, they are still the best grape for making raisins over 140 years later. In this era of annual hybrid seed improvements, that’s astonishing.

We also learned that these light-colored grapes turn their familiar dark color when sun-dried, but they turn golden when oven-dried and cured with sulfur. We tried both kinds and agreed the sulfur works magic. Simonian Farms maintains an historical store and antique museum that harkens its 1901 roots, when the first of four generations of Simonians began this operation as a small family farm. Most family farms have vanished from the Central Valley, so this place was a treat, actually over 120 varieties of treat. That’s how many fruits and vegetables the family grows and markets directly to consumers in their store. We shopped amongst old mannequins, porcelain signs, antiques bicycles and even a turn-of-the-century model train that steamed around overhead.

“Lord of Light” orchards

After filling our huge cooler with raisins, blood oranges (which cost $1 for an 8 pound bag), walnuts, strawberries (red all the way through) and figs, we headed back to Clovis to meet Bruno Luconi, an Argentina-born farmer who runs the Mokichi Okada Association’s (MOA) Oasis Garden. Bruno explained that Japanese philanthropist Mokichi Okada (1882-1955) was the founder of the Church of World Messianity, in which he is known as Meishū-sama ("Lord of Light"). Okada made a fortune in jewelry and, after an epiphany in 1926, he founded a new religion to spread the word.

The Mokichi Okada Association (MOA) was established in 1980 to continue his work "toward the creation of a new civilization without confining Okada's principles within a religious framework.” Bruno explained that MOA uses a three pronged plan toward that end - art, therapeutic healing and natural farming. He said the farm in Clovis was particularly challenging because the soil had been messed up by decades of horse ranching.
Bruno was growing 14 stone fruits, some of which we met on Trelio’s menu, with just natural nitrogen provided by legumes, chives and rye grass. MOA practices no crop rotation. Peaceful gardens dotted the orchards where MOA hosts a Stone Fruit Festival in June each year.

Knock-out punch

Fresno has two ethnic culinary traditions that predate the first fast food franchises by 80 years - Armenian and Basque. We tried desperately to find George’s, the best of the Armenian restaurants according to experts we asked, but failed. Driving and directions are not my strong suits and Wro was still pouting. However, across the street from the downtown AMTRAK station we found The Shepherd's Inn, touted as the best of three excellent Basque restaurants in town.

In the American West, Basque hotels were usually located close to railroad stations in order to welcome "Bascos" as soon as they got off the train. This place looks like 1900 - a hotel, bar and restaurant all attached with old trappings. I had had a long day mothering a gay bi-polar bear who was fuming about a ski bum boyfriend who had ditched him for “the other Squaw Valley.” I needed a picon and The Shepherd’s Inn is the perfect place for that.

Picon, or Picon Punch, is the Basque “national drink,” though it was actually invented in San Francisco by Basque immigrants. No two versions are quite alike, but basically it amounts to a brandy float on top a concoction of ice cold soda water in a glass that has been coated with Grenadine and Amer bitters.

The Shepherd Inn version prepared me for a Basque family style dinner, which means a waiter brought huge bowls of about eight different courses and encouraged us to eat way too much food.

We plowed through soup, salad, paella, potato salad, fried potatoes, garlic fried chicken, rib eye steaks, desserts and some other things I can’t remember.

The restaurant was packed with teachers attending a conference and conventioneers attending an Aloha party. Such is the star power of Picon Punch.

The Beach Boys paradox

As we cruised down Shaw Avenue that night, Wro began singing a Beach Boys song: “I’m getting bugged drivin’ up and down the same old strip, I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip. I get around, round, round, round, round I get around."

How does one really “get around” without leaving “the same old strip?” Is that part of the Fresno paradox? With seemingly every single brand name and franchise store in America here, Shaw Avenue makes one think about such things. We spent the evening at our pool at the Piccadilly Inn wishing we had more time to explore farms around Fresno that were trying to solve the other Fresno paradox. We resolved to return, preferably during fig harvest time.

“Mr. Pistachio”

Still bothered by Chris Shackleford’s story about poor pistachios having to truck all the way to St. Louis and back before they are allowed to go to market, we headed to nearby Madera to visit Braga Organic Farms.We wanted to ask Mike and Julie Braga about the wayward nuts.

The Bragas are true family farmers. Mike told us they have 5400 trees, 135 to an acre and that they have been certified organic since 2000. (Wro lost interest after hearing that they only have one male tree to each 125 female trees.) Mike also manages 600 acres of almonds, pistachios, prunes and grapes on Sherman Thomas Ranch, which has been organic since 1998, so he’s a Big Nut when it comes to organic farming around here. He sells his pistachios directly to Trader Joe’s, to an LA guy who makes pistachio butter and on line (address below).

He is also part of Tom Willey’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) package, which might well be the highest quality CSA in America. Mike said he is concentrating his pistachio marketing on the raw food genre.

“The USDA mandated pasteurization for US pistachios but not for imports,” he told us.

“How stupid is that?” Wro asked, knowing somehow that pasteurization reduces germination from over 70% to under 50%.

“During two weeks in September, we harvest a year’s growth of pistachios, with a prune harvester, and put it in cold storage, raw. The shells turn yellow if not dried to 5% moisture within 72 hours. Organic pistachios account for less than 1% of the market,” he said.

Mike explained that there’s not as much demand for organic pistachios as for organic almonds. The latter involve more risk (organic almonds require more nitrogen which reduces their yields) and higher mark-ups compared to non-organic. Mike said he plants rye grass and legumes in both acreages and he adds fish and kelp to the soil.

Mike gave us some raw pistachios which were so good we ate them all before back to San Francisco, without even looking for a fast food fix. Then we ordered more on line. Raw ones are that much better than any we tried before. But remember, being raw, they have a short shelf life and should be eaten within a month or so.

But then, that’s the whole point. If we ate more food when it’s still fresh, we‘d solve the Fresno paradox.

If you go to Fresno:

Hotel

West Shaw Piccadilly2305 West Shaw AvenueFresno, CA 93711559-226-3850
Piccadilly Inn is an independent innkeeper exclusive to Fresno, making it a delightful paradox in its own right. The West Shaw inn has 194 large rooms in several different buildings with all the expected amenities, plus fresh baked cookies, a spa and some uniquely styled fixtures. Definitely, a cut above similarly priced hotel chains.

Restaurants

Trelio
438 Clovis Ave. # 4, Clovis, CA 93612559-297-0783 http://www.treliorestaurant.com/home.htm//

Shepherd's Inn in Historic Downtown Fresno
935 Santa Fe Ave., 559-266-2228

Shopping

Simonian Farms
2629 South Clovis Avenue (Corner of Clovis & Jensen)Fresno, California 93725559-237-2294http://www.simonianfarms.com/

Braga Farms
10668 Road 26 1/2, Madera, CA, 93637, 559-675-1743
http://www.buyorganicnuts.com/

To purchase nuts:Braga Organic Farms Customer Service
http://stores.buyorganicnuts.com/Service.bok

Tours

MOA's Farm, Asian Specialty Grower
http://www.moa-fresno.org/

Fresno County Fruit Trail : http://www.gofresnocounty.com/Fruit%20Trail/FruitFestivals