Latest news with #Fresnan
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Yahoo
Heading to Yosemite? How to eat like a Fresnan on your way there
Yosemite National Park's tourist season and its waterfalls are about to be at peak flow. And if you're making the trek there — on a busy day when reservations are needed or not — you're going to need to fuel up. Whether you're just driving through Fresno, spending the night at a hotel here, or you live in Fresno and are taking a little staycation, we know all the popular places to eat out. So if you want to eat like a Fresnan for a day, here are a few restaurants to choose from. Some serve foods that Fresno does best, such as tri-tip and Mexican food. Others are popular for good reason. And some are just perfect for refueling after a hike. In no particular order, here's a sampling of delicious options our city has to offer. 1. Heirloom. Fresnans line up for this food. The north Fresno restaurant serves seasonal, local farm-to-table food from one of the best chefs in town. But it's not upscale dining. It's order-at-the counter, cafeteria-style dining with a patio. Or, if you want to avoid lines, you can order online, pick up at the take-out window and take it back to your hotel room. The menu, which changes seasonally, features sandwiches, burgers and pasta with a fresh twist, and salads loaded with local veggies. Some highlights: The tri-tip sandwich, the cashew cauliflower and the Surf N Turf. There are cocktails that also incorporate local produce, along with beer and wine. Details: Heirloom is at 8398 North Fresno St. in the Park Crossing Shopping Center, and open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, except for Sunday, when it closes at 8 p.m. 2. Sam's Italian Deli and Market. This deli and market is another eatery that Fresnans are extremely loyal to. It's ranked on list of Top 100 restaurants nationwide. It has hot and cold sandwiches, and also sells deli meats and cheeses, desserts, salads — including potato and macaroni — and hot prepared foods such as chicken Parmesan. It's got portable market items too, including lots of wine, crackers and other snacks. Sounds like a Yosemite style picnic, doesn't it? The sandwiches are the star of the show here, including top seller Sam's Special, made with ham, mortadella, turkey breast, dry salami and Jack cheese for $10. Order online or inside the busy store. Details: Sam's is at 2415 N. First St. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays. 3. rock 'n' roll-themed breakfast restaurant started as a food truck and turned into one of Fresno's favorite eateries. It's got one location now and a whole opus of creatively named breakfast dishes. The menu is available by QR code on your phone, featuring breakfast and lunch. You can find a simple breakfast, such as the Eggman, an omelet with meat, veggies and cheese. But where Benaddiction really shines is the indulgent breakfasts: Try The Hotel California, an eggs 'Benaddict' made with chorizo hash, avocado and eggs. Or maybe the Kokomo, pancakes infused with rum-infused pineapple and topped with housemade salted caramel. The hash browns are also a favorite, made with potatoes shredded directly into the deep fryer. Details: Benaddiction is at 10063 N. Maple Ave. Open 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. 4. Country Fare Cafe. If you want to get a taste of hearty Mexican food and are willing to brave the underbelly of Fresno that doesn't have a chain business in sight, check out Country Fare Cafe. It's a hidden gem with bars on the windows, parking that is frustratingly mysterious and it only takes cash or credit cards — no debit cards. But the food here gets great reviews — and they serve you so much of it, it will likely be spilling off your plate. Some highlights: The enchiladas, the chile verde omelet and its huevo divorciados — two eggs on separate sides of the plate — one smothered in chile verde, the other in chile Colorado — with potatoes, beans and tortillas in between. Details: Country Fare is at 4662 E Belmont Ave. Open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. 5. Ampersand. This homegrown ice cream shop has three locations in different sides of town. And it is not just an ice cream shop. No, it's like an entire art school only had ice cream as its creative outlet and came up with every imaginative flavor they could. Seasonal flavors change monthly, but have included agave matcha, hazelnut coffee cake and a Pimm's cup sorbet. The standard flavors are always on the menu and include whiskey caramel swirl and honeycomb, along with dark chocolate and vanilla. Gluten free and vegan options are available. Lines sometimes stack up, but they move quickly. Details: Ampersand has locations in central Fresno's Tower District, northwest and northeast. Click here for addresses. Open noon to 11 p.m. daily. 7. Sal's Mexican Restaurants. Sal's is a legacy in the Fresno area; the family named Restaurant Royalty by The Bee last year. It's more of a sit-down dining experience than a taqueria. Its Fresno location is at Fresno Street and Alluvial Avenue, with other locations in Madera and Selma. The family-run restaurant has birthed other restaurants from the multiple generations behind it, including the Bobby Salazar's restaurants and Lucy's Lounge cocktail bar. At Sal's, a highlight is the fancy burrito, which was once voted Fresno's most famous dish in a Fresno Bee poll. It comes with beans and chili con carne in a large flour tortilla and lots of melted jack cheese (though you can get it with chile verde or half and half too). Details: The Fresno Sal's is at 7476 N. Fresno St. and open from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sundays through Wednesday and until 9 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Details about other locations here. 8. The Dog House Grill. If you're looking for two things that Fresno gets really excited about — tri-tip and the Fresno State Bulldogs — this is your place. It's a noisy, good-time place with a bar and sports on TVs. Smokers out front cook 400 cuts of tri-tip a day — 700 on weekends. The tri-tip comes on sandwiches, salads, and on a single huge taco that could be a meal in itself. It's across the street from Fresno State and is the place to celebrate big wins after sports games. But take note of one down side: Its parking lot is tiny and there is almost never a slow period here. Be prepared to park creatively. Take out is always an option.
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Yahoo
Undocumented workers vital to Fresno restaurants. How much will deportations hurt?
A farmworker picking oranges or grapes is often the image that comes to mind when talking about undocumented immigrants working in Fresno. An estimated 75% of California's farm workers are undocumented — but what about restaurant workers? How much do Fresno restaurants rely on the labor of undocumented immigrants? And what could happen to Fresno's restaurant scene if those workers were suddenly deported? We went right to the source to ask: restaurant owners. 'Restaurants hire undocumented workers every day,' said one owner of three restaurants in the area. 'The backbone of our restaurants are undocumented workers.' It's a topic Fresnans likely don't think deeply about when ordering their ceviche or tri-tip sandwich with garlic aioli. But it's one that could soon affect not just the lives of immigrants, but the dining out experience of the average Fresnan. Restaurant owners aren't comfortable speaking publicly about employing undocumented workers. They don't want ICE busting through their doors and hauling off cooks and dishwashers in handcuffs in the middle of dinner service. So The Bee agreed to talk to six restaurateurs without identifying them or their restaurants so they could speak freely. Some employ undocumented workers. Some don't. But all have worked at restaurants that employed undocumented people. 'That's what makes this issue so challenging: Everyone's so afraid because of the fear of what might happen,' said Jason Leverant, president and chief operating officer at AtWork Group, a national staffing agency that has a location in Visalia. The company does not hire undocumented workers, but competes with companies that do. Several organizations representing local businesses did not return messages seeking comment, including the Fresno and Central California Hispanic chambers of commerce and the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation. The state and national chambers declined to comment as well, along with the California Restaurant Association. So The Bee talked to the employers themselves. Undocumented workers are most commonly in behind-the-scenes roles in the kitchen: cooks, dishwashers and bussers cleaning up tables. It used to be much more common decades ago, but today just how many undocumented workers restaurants employ many varies by location. One owner said 12 of 14 cooks at the company's multiple restaurants are undocumented. Another said chains and franchised restaurants employ mostly undocumented kitchen workers as a way to meet strict budget limits. Yet another said 10% of his staff are undocumented. Some restaurants don't employ any. Workers without proper documentation are often from Mexico because it's so close, but restaurateurs say they have also worked with people from Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. The workers are at restaurants ranging from the most popular high-end places in town to casual mom-and-pop eateries. The restaurants include Italian, Mexican, American and family-oriented chain spots. The owner of the north Fresno Italian restaurant Bella Pasta does not employ undocumented immigrants. He doesn't want the stress of worrying about getting busted by authorities, he said. At age 22, Fabian Rodriguez worked at the Italian restaurant he would eventually own. 'Everyone in that kitchen was an illegal immigrant. We knew it,' he said. Customers had to walk through the kitchen to get to the restroom and the staff was instructed to stop speaking Spanish when they did, he said. About 11 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States in 2022, the most recent figures available, according to the Pew Research Center. That's about 3.3% of the overall population. Of that 11 million undocumented number, 8.3 million people are working — an increase from 7.4 million in 2019, but essentially the same as previous highs in 2008 and 2011. Most entered the U.S. without legal permission or arrived on a temporary visa and stayed after it expired according to the center. The majority of immigrants overall — 77% — are in the country legally, according to the research center. Restaurant owners cited the same three reasons for hiring workers without the proper papers: difficulty finding workers, an ability to pay them less than legal workers and a work ethic they say they can't find elsewhere. All this is happening against the backdrop of a labor shortage, noted Leverant, from the AtWork staffing agency. About 7.6 million jobs were unfilled nationally in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 'The role the undocumented workers are filling are those that are very challenging to staff with documented employees,' Leverant said. One restaurant owner, said that young people ages 16 to 20 who might be expected to fill some entry-level restaurant jobs often struggle, especially in their first job. In restaurants, workers are expected to pivot quickly. A dishwasher can be asked to clean toilets, fetch silverware or wipe tables at a moment's notice, he said. People who grew up here, in a culture where parents try to protect their children from hardship, don't always last very long washing dishes, he said. 'Their work ethic is not really there,' he said. 'I feel like immigrants fill that void so easily because they're so willing to just work. They put their head down. 'OK, I'll clean tables.'' The work is also hard. It is fast-paced and sweaty, with kitchens sometimes reaching well over 100 degrees, and cooks are always on their feet, restaurateurs note. Several restaurateurs said undocumented workers were some of the hardest working employees they ever had. Often, they have families back home, and are sending a good percentage of their paycheck to them. Some cooks work multiple jobs, said the owner of one central Fresno restaurant. 'Those guys are working 80 hours a week and they don't seem to be complaining about it,' he said. 'You send half your paycheck back home, and your family is building a home for you. And you do 10 years here, and you move back home.' The owner of Bella Pasta said he's struggled to find good workers who aren't undocumented. 'We've not hired people on purpose and it kills you because, you are what I need, you are what I want, you are what is going to help me achieve my goals,' Rodriguez said. 'The frustration (is) ... finding people with the experience that are willing to work hard. … It will take a long time.' Despite being the son of an immigrant himself, Rodriguez said he believes in giving high school kids and people who have the right papers a chance, even if it means he has to work a little harder. He fondly recalls a group of Clovis North High School kids he said were the best workers he's had in 30 years. Undocumented cooks at one popular restaurant in town make about $20 an hour. Cooks who went to culinary school, even starting out, typically want $30 or more, the restaurateur said. 'I'm not going to find an American cook that's going to do what I need them to do for $20 an hour,' the owner said. 'They're going to want $40 an hour, but I can't do that because I can't charge $80 a plate.' Several restaurateurs also said undocumented immigrants are more likely to follow orders, where recent culinary grads often want to put their own spin on dishes — something you can't do in longtime restaurants where customers expect the same classic dish every time. Restaurant owners cite concerns over pay in an industry where eateries are struggling to keep their doors open. Last year, 37 restaurants in the Fresno area closed, most citing rising food and labor costs — including a minimum wage that rose to $16.50 an hour Jan. 1 — and astronomical energy bills, climbing rent and other expenses. Still, at least two restaurateurs said they have worked alongside colleagues over the years who they knew were making less than minimum wage. One owner of a downtown restaurant said he once worked with a woman who got one legitimate paycheck paying her minimum wage for some of her hours. Then a second paycheck that didn't play by the rules, including not having any of the taxes, insurance or other expenses employers are supposed to pay taken out. In all, she was making less than minimum wage, he said. 'I'm sure there's a lot that are not getting paid minimum wage,' the restaurateur said. Another longtime chef and former restaurant owner confirmed he's seen workers making $14 or $15, but they often don't stay at the job long. It all depends on the owner, he said. On the other end of the spectrum, some of the best chefs in town are undocumented and making excellent money, he said. If someone is really good, he or she is going to be taken care of so they stay, he said. 'I know a couple people in this industry who don't have papers and they're making bank,' he said. Some restaurant owners told The Bee they knowingly hire undocumented workers. Others said they don't know when they hire someone, and only find out later that their workers are undocumented. As long as an employee has a Social Security number or an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number), they can be hired. Some restaurants run their employees' Social Security numbers through an I-9 employment eligibility system (though if a number and name match and are valid, it will check out). Some don't, and there's very little enforcement of using the system, they say. Sometimes the Social Security number is stolen. Sometimes it belongs to somebody's uncle. Sometimes the job applicant has a different name on the application than he does on his Social Security card, restaurateurs said. But as long as the worker has a name, birth date and a Social Security or ITIN, the person can get hired. It's especially easy to hire undocumented people in chain restaurants, said one restaurant owner, where there's several levels of management involved in hiring. Locations are also often saddled with strict budgets from corporate that are most easily met by cutting back on pay. The restaurateurs said workers are usually getting paychecks with the appropriate taxes, workers' compensation and Social Security removed — though workers may never get some of that money back. Deportations are already happening around the country, though few have happened in the Fresno area so far. Although Trump first promised to deport criminals, ICE's own statistics shows about a quarter of the 33,242 people swept up by ICE so far this year did not have convictions or criminal accusations. As time goes on, losing workers from local restaurants could have a big affect on the local restaurant scene and the national economy, said Hannah Archambault, an assistant professor at Fresno State with a doctorate in labor economics. 'Even eliminating a small portion of them is still going to have a significant negative recessionary impact,' she said. 'It's going to slow our economy down.' It would mean less spending at local businesses by those workers, less tax revenue paid to the government, and jobs left vacant, Archambault said. One study she cited shows that prices would rise as fewer workers means less output of goods — from farms or factories — and the gross domestic product shrinks. Specifically in Fresno, several restaurateurs said the situation would be similar to COVID-19 times, when restaurants suddenly wouldn't have enough staff to run a restaurant. They would have to close temporarily, at least — and some permanently. One restaurateur said losing staff on top of all the other challenges the business is facing would be devastating: 'I would probably have to shut down half of my restaurants if I did not have undocumented workers because I would not have the staff.' Replacing those workers with higher-paid employees here legally would cost more. And those costs would be passed on to customers, restaurateurs said. Think $5 for a taco is expensive now? 'Get ready for $10 tacos. Get ready for $20 burritos,' said one restaurant owner. 'It doesn't take much to trigger that.'
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California farmworkers feared ‘La Migra' raids. Is Trump's deportation crackdown ‘more vicious'?
Growing up in the 1970s, fourth-generation Fresnan Patrick Fontes used to pick chile and grapes in Fresno County fields alongside his grandfather as a fun way to make extra money. Fontes, a Fresno State professor of American History, is the grandson of a Bracero worker, a controversial guest worker program that brought in an estimated four million Mexican farmworkers in the early 1940s to 1960s. On several occasions working in the fields, he witnessed immigration agents show up in green vans and raid the workplace in search of undocumented people. 'Most of the people in the fields would run and shout, 'La Migra!'' Fontes said. 'It stuck with me all these years.' Sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter centered around Latino issues in California. As President Donald Trump promises to carry out mass deportations, many central San Joaquin Valley residents are on edge — especially after a surprise January Border Patrol operation in Kern County resulted in 78 arrests and dozens of deportations. The Valley is no stranger to immigration crackdowns. Several of the region's residents, lawyers and farmworker advocates who were active in the Central Valley during the 1960s-1980s — as well as archived Fresno Bee reporting from the era — recall a time when immigration raids were common in Valley fields and local towns. High-profile raids led to a farmworker's death by drowning during a Border Patrol field raid. Threats of deportations were often used to quell farmworker unionizing campaigns. Raids in small Valley towns in the 1980s involved local law enforcement and targeted people who looked Latino or Hispanic. Trump's focus on mass deportations has revived a debate in Fresno County and beyond about the role local law enforcement should — or shouldn't — play in cooperating with immigration enforcement. Recent polling shows almost half of Americans support allowing local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants without legal status. The central San Joaquin Valley is home to a large concentration of the nation's farmworkers. Between 50% to 75% of California farmworkers are estimated to be undocumented. Threats of deportations can especially impact small, rural farmworker communities, said Juan Uranga, former attorney and executive director of California Rural Legal Assistance, a legal aid nonprofit that sued the federal government over deportation practices in the 1980s. 'People have to keep in mind that it's more than people getting deported,' Uranga said. 'On top of the arrests themselves, there's this constant message to Mexicans that they're less than and totally vulnerable. That, at any time, at any place, people more powerful than them can swoop in and completely make a mess of their lives.' After the passage of the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, California's landmark law allowing farmworkers to form unions, Uranga said growers, labor contractors and others in power used the threat of calling immigration officials as a 'weapon' to keep farmworkers from organizing. 'Even if growers didn't call on the INS, Latinos knew that growers had the capacity to do that,' he said. INS used to oversee the Border Patrol and is the predecessor to what is known today as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Humberto Gomez, a retired United Farm Workers organizer, said that raids happened frequently in the late 1960s to early 1970s — around the time the UFW started its strikes. But they returned in the 1980s, he said. 'In the '80s we had a lot of raids,' he said in Spanish. 'They hit us very hard.' To protect workers during workplace raids, Gomez said the union got creative. When immigration officers would show up to the fields, workers who had legal citizenship would run, while undocumented workers stayed back picking crops, Gomez said. The idea was that usually workers without papers were expected to flee at the sight of officers. Another concern for Gomez during workplace raids was the risk of drowning. 'We didn't want anyone to fall into rivers or canals during a raid. Many people don't know how to swim,' he said. In March 1985, Alvaro Dominguez Gutierrez, a farmworker, drowned in the Kings River during a series of raids near Kingsburg in which 80 people were rounded up. He was the 14th undocumented foreign national to drown in California since 1974, according to a March 1985 Fresno Bee story. Border Patrol agents arrived at the orchard Dominguez Gutierrez was working at and started chasing a group of workers, The Bee reported. Frightened, Dominguez Gutierrez also started running with another group of workers through water about three-feet high. He then stepped into a hole and drowned, likely because he didn't know how to swim, officials said. (INS later said the drowning was a 'tragedy' but not Border Patrol's fault.) 'The technique they would use was basically to force people into an irrigation ditch or into a body of water,' Steven Rosebaum, a former staff attorney for CRLA who called for an end to field raids, said in an interview. In September 1984, members of Sanger police, Fresno County Sheriff's Office, California Highway Patrol and INS/Border Patrol used helicopters, floodlights and barricades to blocked off several streets in town and descended into 16 bars to arrest undocumented people. According to a Jan. 17, 1985 Fresno Bee story, 255 individuals were deported as a result of the operation, and 40 more were arrested with a variety of charges. Fresno civil rights activist Gloria Hernandez, who worked for CRLA at the time, said she was 'pissed' when she learned of the raids. 'One of the (raided) bars that they went to is one that I used to go with my sister and brother-in-law. We'd dance and have a good time,' she said in an interview. Hernandez alerted CRLA's legal team about getting involved in the case. Among those detained during the operation were Sanger resident and Korean War veteran Tony Velazquez and his wife, Sallie. The couple was detained for several hours in a Sanger bar during the raids, according to a lawsuit filed the following year by CRLA. 'They were forced to sit down with their legs open and (weren't) able to get up until they proved their citizenship,' Hernandez said. (Velazquez's family members declined to comment on this story.) The high-profile raids were controversial because they involved local law enforcement and because immigration officers detained 'everyone with brown skin who could not prove they were citizens,' according to a Nov. 17, 1985 Bee story. A similar operation targeted in Parlier bars on April 6, 1984, resulting in the deportation of 170 Mexican nationals, according to Bee archives. 'They knew that the campesinos went to the bars for a while on Friday and Saturdays,' recalled Gomez, a Parlier resident. After Fresno County Board of Supervisors rejected a multi-million dollar claim in connection to the Sanger raids, CRLA sued the INS in 1986 on behalf of eight individuals arrested during the raids. They alleged their civil rights were violated by INS and Border Patrol agent when they were detained without reasonable cause or warrants. The lawsuit, known as Velasquez v. Senko involved eight separate immigration raids in Gilroy, Salinas, Calistoga and Watsonville that happened in the early 1980s. 'As part of an alleged pattern and practice, the defendants target predominantly Hispanic towns, neighborhoods, and businesses for warrantless dragnet searches and seizures of suspected illegal aliens,' the suit said. The lawsuit was dismissed in 1992 after the parties agreed to settle. The settlement included a ban on joint raids in the Valley for ten years, said Hernandez. The 1980s raids prompted a wave of activism and local policy changes. Sanger City Council issued a resolution opposing raids and pledging that 'Sanger officers would not be used to round up illegal aliens in the future,' The Bee reported in January 1985. Fresno City Council voted in April 1985 to prohibit Fresno Police from participating in Border Patrol raids, according to The Bee newspaper archives. For Uranga, the main difference between the 1980s and now is that elected officials in California are keen on protecting immigrant rights, he said. Whether local jurisdictions can get away with anti-immigrant actions depends on state action. 'We didn't have that kind of political support (back then),' he said. Over the years, raids as a means of enforcement became 'frowned upon,' Rosenbaum, now a UC Berkeley law professor, said in an interview. Raids in the Valley ended up slowing down in the 1990s and 2000s as they became politically unpopular, Rosenbaum said. 'The raids, you know what, it just didn't look good,' he said. Democrats didn't like them and Republicans like Reagan and Bush were of a 'softer and gentler Republican Party.' A shift in priorities after the 9/11 attacks also played a role. Border Patrol closed down its local offices in Fresno, Livermore and Stockton in 2004 and as the federal government shifted its focus to enforcing immigration at the border, The Bee reported at the time. Two decades later, Trump in his second term has embraced a 'rage policy' that champions and highlights raids as a tactic to enforce immigration, Rosenbaum said. He called today's immigration crackdown under Trump 'more focused and more vicious than 40 years ago.' The new administration's rhetoric around immigration has revived a debate about the role of local law enforcement in immigration enforcement – which was a hot topic when the sanctuary city movement took hold in the 1980s, Rosenbaum said. Last month, Fresno County Sheriff John Zanoni criticized a 2018 state law that prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration officials. Last week, a Sacramento area sheriff said he'd work with ICE in certain circumstances 'even if I'm not supposed to.' Hernandez said young people today are protesting against inhumane immigration enforcement tactics. She credits decades of activism for laying the foundation, particularly the wave of Latino activism after the passage of the 1993 anti-immigrant Prop 187 in California. The initiative sought to prohibit undocumented immigrants from accessing state services, including public education and health care. 'I think the groundwork we laid in the '80s, '90s, has raised awareness. I think people are mad. The young ones are mad,' she said. 'They're saying, 'no, we're not going to allow this to happen.''
