It was November, and the Great Food Search was getting desperate. What to review? What to review? Was there some new style of food to discover, an exciting restaurant opening, or any idea that hadn’t been beaten to death? I needed to feed my wife and not travel too far. I drove to the spot where leaving Sanger becomes going to Clovis–Shaw and Academy, and there, in a micro-mini-strip mall, is The Red Caboose Café.
It’s October, time for trick-or-treat, and I tricked myself into a treat. I had planned a review for several months, and had checked to see if I needed reservations. Told I didn’t, I lay down for a short rest…and woke up more than an hour later. It was getting dark, and I didn’t want to drive to a new town in the dark, so I took my family somewhere I knew I could find, The Spike N’ Rail Steak House in Selma. This monument to Scandinavian traditional architecture had taken the place of the Pea Soup Anderson Restaurant by Freeway 99, windmill and all.
I’ve lived in the Sanger area for a long time, and DiCicco’s Sanger has always been there: close, convenient, and basic Italian cookery. Recently, nobody in the family wanted to cook and I didn’t want to go all the way into Fresno. We chose DiCicco’s, and things had changed. The place still had the familiar semi-dark atmosphere, the carpet with grape designs in it, tables, booths, black outfits on the servers, and faux-Italian-village painted walls. What was different was the menu.
Grapes in a Pouch. Root Beer Milk. Pepperoni Pizza Tamales – where can you find things like this?
The Fresno Food Expo!
It started as a way to expose local products to a wider number of buyers. It was held in March, which meant there wasn’t a lot of fresh produce available to promote. This year, the fourth Expo was moved to July 24, a time when the bounty of the Valley has begun to ripen, and what an amazing array of foods, products, and services there was!
Pho.
What is pho?
Before I tell you what it is, I have to tell you how to say it. It isn’t pronounced “foe.” You have to say “fuh,” which leads some people into off-color puns, but I try to show respect to people’s languages, so my puns will stay clean.
As part of my work for the library, I visit several of the communities on the east side of the Valley, so I look for places to eat, because eating is one of my hobbies (I do it frequently). One restaurant kept coming up on lists of places to try: OC’s China Garden. A Chinese restaurant in Orange Cove? It seemed ridiculous. Then…I tried it.
The Great Food Search has explored Valley foods from taco wagons to grilled cheese sandwiches, and it’s getting hard to come up with new ideas, so I’ll announce a contest at the end of this article.
As the Valley moves from what it calls winter to the weather the rest of the nation considers flash frying, lighter food is recommended. Salads are a good alternative, but, being Americans, we have to “go big.” For this Great Food Search, I bring you...Salads on Parade!
It stands next to Academy Avenue in Sanger’s Southgate Center. It was once a Perko’s. For a long time, it was Austin’s and for a short time, it was The Ranch House. Now it has a new name and a new lease on life: Restaurant La Haciendita Mexican Food. I’ll tell you the truth; I didn’t expect much from this place. In the past, it was a basic, unsurprising eatery with basic, unsurprising food. I was really, really wrong.
Wintertime is soup time, time for a steaming bowl of goodness for the soul. Since January is National Soup Month, (Go ahead, look it up!) so in its honor the Great Food Search has conducted a FoodQuest in search of taste-tempting soups.
