Sometimes, you want a little something before your whole meal arrives, and that’s why the Great Food Search orders…APPETIZERS! Welcome to a collection of the mini-dishes the Valley has to offer: ethnic specialties, crunchy treats of the deep-fried variety, and culinary surprises.
If you thought 2020 was a weird year, 2021 was curiouser and curiouser. For the Great Food Search, it was a time of confusion and discovery. Here are five great moments in eating—and an added dessert!
Jingle Bells, Silver Bells, Carol of the Bells…Ring a Bell? Yep, it’s Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Holiday time in the Valley. It’s gift-giving time, forget-your-diet time, get-something-for-yourself time. At The Great Food Search, that means—Good Stuff! Let’s dig in!
A food magnet of the area for thirty-eight years, the Sunnyside Delicatessen owners retired and closed shop during the Pandemic Panic. Take heart, dear friends! It has returned, under new ownership, and southeast Fresno once more rejoices in the taste of Reuben sandwiches.
Coagulated milk protein. Sound delicious?
Hold on! That’s cheese we’re talking about, and there are over a thousand types, each with a different combination of the animal source, its diet, added enzymes to speed coagulation, pasteurization, butterfat, and aging. The Great Food Search presents the ooiest, gooiest, cheesiest dishes we could find—How Cheesy Can You Get?
When it’s summer in the San Joaquin Valley, it’s hot…so, why not have a hot dog? The Great Food Search has gathered a tasty pack of the frankfurter kind. Let’s take a bite.
It’s summer, and you want to eat something light, so…Let there be SALADS! And there WERE salads…and they were GOOD!
The Great Food Search has featured salads before (in 2014 and 2019), and some of the restaurants I’ll talk about this year are ones I’ve mentioned in earlier articles, but they aren’t the same salads, so…Let’s Eat!
Barbecue, barbeque, BBQ, or Q—call it what you want, it’s always good eating. Banners, flags, and billboards up and down Clovis Avenue promoted BBQ, but I never paid much attention to it until I went to a friend’s memorial service at the California State American Legion offices in Sanger (Yes, Sanger). After the service was a barbecue, and it was so-o-o-o-o-o good! Where did this food come from? I found out, and the answer is the subject of this Great Food Search.
You know how it is. You find a place to eat that you like, and a dish that you enjoy, so every time you go there, that’s what you order.
Where’s the adventure? Where’s the excitement? Where’s the danger?
Back in February, struggling with the pandemic closures, I tried a bunch of restaurants, planning to review them…until we went to Cattlemen’s in Selma, and that one place became the whole article for the month. However, I promised to write up the others, so this month’s Great Food Search will try to keep most of those promises.
