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.
The 2021 Fresno Rogue Festival has come and gone, it’s virtual shows departed, but I still have my memories...of food. Usually, I write about all the Tower District restaurants I go to during the festival. Instead, I picked up meals on the way home from work or threw something together at home. This episode of The Great Food Search will follow the journey of what I ate during Virtual Rogue 2021.
Look, this has been a strange month. I will be retiring in March (from my real-world job, not from Kings River Life), and there is a lot of paperwork and running back and forth involved in it. I went to six different restaurant locations in the last month, intending to review each one for The Great Food Search…but I’m only going to do one of them. Therefore, I wish to temporarily apologize to...
What a year for the Great Food Search! Quarantine! Lockdown! Shelter in Place! forced to review my own cooking! Take-out Time! Looking for places that kept COVID-safe!
Here are my top eateries of 2020—a year that will go down in infamy!
Wouldn’t you like to party like it’s Two Thousand Nineteen? Things were so much simpler, then. Now…oh, boy. Imagine what it would be like to run a restaurant during this pandemic. No, you can’t. Yes, you can. No, you can’t. Yes, you…maybe. Owners have to find some way to make things work and keep their employees employed.
‘Tis November, and the Great Food Search’s heart (and stomach) turns to Pumpkin Smash Smoothies, but the local Jamba Juice branches are out of them, so I’m out of luck. Where to go? Well, there was one place in Sanger, and I went there…and I went there…and WOW!
It’s October. I know this is The Great Food Search, but do you really want to hear me tell of delicate dining? Of course not! You want the ooey-gooey, sticky-licky sweets, the sugar-laden and calorie-unconscious! Let’s go satisfy your sweet tooth!
You have to eat, right?
Restaurants have to make money to survive, so they will bend over backwards to follow the rules, and hope people will drive up…and drive out with some food.
Let's eat!
What do you do for food during the pandemic?
Do you sit in a restaurant with other people, hoping that nobody is infected?
Do you hide in your home and try to survive on your year’s supply of chewy granola bars?
Do you look for minimum-contact food places where you can order and pick up without fear? Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do with these play-it-safe editions of The Great Food Search.
If you can’t take it with you, don’t get it. This set of take-outs are centered around my home and work.
El Pollo Loco—4865 E. Kings Canyon Rd., Fresno— Of course, I’m chicken! I always have been. I do get cravings for red meat, but I’m more of a chicken aficionado. I have clutched buckets of KFC and crunched my way through Popeye’s, but that flame-kissed yumminess from El Pollo Loco gets me every time.
