You know how sometimes you have really good food, but you don’t finish it, so you have a refrigerator full of leftovers? Food reviewers can have a version of that. Maybe you come across a great restaurant, but it doesn’t fit the theme you had planned for that month, so the pictures sit in your phone until you can’t quite remember what you ate or where it was. That happened to me this year, so I present—LEFTOVERS 2023!
Sometimes, I hanker for a rare steak. Other days, I long for salmon. In the summer, a salad sounds like a really good idea. Yes, summers are My Salad Days.
It happened in 1904: Latrobe, Pennsylvania. “Doc” Strickler, an optometrist, cut a banana lengthwise, added three different scoops of ice cream, topped it with strawberries, raspberries, crushed pineapple, marshmallow syrup, chopped nuts, and pitted black cherries. That was the first Banana Split. It was a hit, and Strickler eventually bought the pharmacy/soda fountain downstairs from his office.
The Great Food Search will go just about anywhere in search of food providers to share with a salivating public. Once more, we scoured the Valley for food trucks with good eats, looking for food trucks parked at Gazebo Gardens, the Tower District Farmers Market, Simonian Farms, Reedley College Farmers Market, and Sanger High School.
Usually, The Great Food Search seeks out unique dishes and eating establishments in the San Joaquin Valley, but this installment is a little different. I focused on chain restaurants. I dragged my wife (All right, sometimes she dragged me) to places in Clovis, Fresno, and Kingsburg. We discovered Spring menus and new offerings at well-known restaurants ... and they were good! Follow us on another Great Food Search to see what’s new in some of the Old Reliables.
In September 2022, The Great Food Search brought you Fresno Street Eats. In January 2023, The Great Food Search brought you Return of Fresno Street Eats. NOW—The Great Food Search brings you Return of the Return of Fresno Street Eats.
The 2023 Fresno Rogue Performance Festival has come and gone, but the memories remain. For The Great Food Search, some of the best memories are of food. As I went from venue to venue, reviewing strange and amazing shows, one thing became obvious: even reviewers need to eat! Since the venues for the Rogue were in the Tower District, restaurants in that area were the obvious choice for the hungry reviewer. Therefore, here is a selection of where I went and what I got for Rogue ’23.
You know how it is in the restaurant business—things change. One restaurant closes, and another opens in the same place. Somebody takes over a place, and it changes. The Great Food Search visited a couple of places that once were, and are now different.
Fresno Street Eats is an organized group of food trucks that gather at different locations in the Fresno County area (or thereabouts) in various numbers (1-6 or more) at various times (lunch, dinner, etc.). The Great Food Search sampled several trucks and locations in September, but there are many more trucks and gathering points out there, from north of Herndon to south of Jensen, so Here We Go Again with Round Two.
2022—The Great Food Search family (“Dad,” “Mom,” forty-two-year-old “Child”) went through urgent care visits (D, M), dentists (D, M, C), ankle replacement surgery (M), physical therapy (M), five 5K (3.1 mile) walk/run races (D—I walked), and year-ending Covid (D, M, C). Somehow, the three of us are still alive and talking to each other. Still, 2022 was a pretty good year for food in The Great Food Search—twenty-seven different restaurants and eateries.
