New restaurant headed for Fresno’s brewery district. You can soon get tacos and beer
A restaurant is headed for downtown Fresno’s brewery district.
Taco truck Dab Tacos and More has signed a lease to open a restaurant in a renovated building at 721 Fulton St., just north of Modernist cocktail bar.
The restaurant will be small, but it’s a significant change for the area because that stretch of Fulton is home to several places to drink – with more on the way – but doesn’t have a place to eat yet.
Modernist and breweries like Tioga-Sequoia Brewing Co. and Zack’s Brewing Co. typically rely on food trucks to feed customers who are drinking at their businesses.
“We feel like it’s the best place for us,” Dab Tacos owner Nik Velasquez said of the brewery district. “We wanted to be the first restaurant in the brewery district.”
Dab Tacos has been serving tacos and other Mexican food on its food truck for a year and a half, but is best known for its loaded fries, he said.
These are french fries topped with the customer’s choice of protein, including options like al pastor or asada meat, pork belly, and chicken. They’re then piled high with crispy Monterey jack cheese (“we make it pretty crunchy,” he says), chipotle aoli, guacamole, sour cream, queso fresco, cilantro, a banana pepper and a slice of pineapple.
It will be many months before the restaurant opens, however. Dab Tacos still needs to put a kitchen in the building, which could take until June or later.
By the time it opens, its neighbor, a craft beer tasting room called 411 The Rec Room run by Fresno-based 411 Broadway Ales & Spirits, will probably be open. Dab will be sandwiched between Modernist and The Rec Room.
Eventually, Dab Tacos and the tasting room plan to open a 8-foot section so customers can walk between the two businesses, ordering food or drink from either.
In addition to those businesses, another Fulton building will soon bring more places to the district. Developer Reza Assemi is renovating a building across the street from Tioga-Sequoia’s beer garden. The 101-year-old brick building is slated to hold multiple small breweries, a bodega and technology office space on the second floor.
