Fresno’s Tower District loses two restaurants — but a new one is already on the way
Fresno’s Tower District is saying goodbye to two more restaurants in prominent spots.
Bocca Taqueria and Rocky Hill Brewing Grill & Tavern have already closed their doors.
The coronavirus pandemic wasn’t the only reason they closed, but it contributed to their demise.
The good news is that another restaurant is already taking over the Bocca space, a familiar name that plans to offer Bocca’s tacos and salsa, among other dishes. More on that in a moment.
Bocca, a gourmet taqueria at 568 E. Olive Ave. (the site of the former Cafe Rousseau) opened about two years ago. It’s been temporarily closed for months. It reopened for a week or two at one point, but when the state shut down dine-in service again in July, the restaurant closed again.
It didn’t have a lot of room for outdoor dining. Its owners, a trio of siblings, are involved in multiple other businesses, several of which are thriving, said Aaron Ordaz.
“We got super busy with one of our main businesses that we have. We started expanding a lot during this whole COVID thing,” he said. “We were like, ‘You know what, this deserves a little more attention than Bocca.’”
Bocca and more
The family runs a Candies Tolteca, an importer of Mexican candies that supplies businesses throughout the West Coast. It’s in the process of moving to a bigger warehouse.
About a year ago they also opened Colosos Paleteria Y Neveria, a Mexican-style popsicle and ice cream shop on Whitson Street in Selma. That company also recently opened a factory in Fresno to make the desserts.
The two brothers are busy with those businesses and their sister is selling real estate in Santa Monica.
Ordaz thanked customers, but doesn’t consider the restaurant’s closure a failure for the entrepreneurial family.
“Bocca was a good run,” he said. “We always make businesses and end up selling them.”
What’s El Patio got to do with it?
The siblings sold the business and its recipes to Bocca’s neighbor, El Patio Mexican Restaurant.
Most of El Patio’s seating is outdoors, a feature that has made them “stupidly busy” since the pandemic started, as people feel safer dining outdoors, said owner Benjamin Torralva. Business has about doubled.
Torralva doesn’t plan to reopen it as Bocca. He doesn’t want another Mexican restaurant to compete with the restaurant he already has.
Instead, he plans to open Aromas, a fusion restaurant that honors several types of cuisine that have come and gone in the Tower District.
It will have Bocca’s tacos, and probably seven of their 13 salsas, along with Chinese and Italian food. There will be clam chowder in bread bowls, egg rolls, mac ‘n cheese, and biscuits and gravy.
“The slogan will be the flavors of life,” Torralva said. “It will be all your favorites.”
He hopes to open as soon as Nov. 1.
Rocky Hill Brewing
Bocca isn’t the only closure in Tower. In addition to the Olive Avenue Starbucks closing, Full Circle Brewing’s Van Ness Avenue venue closed, and Casa de Tamales moved to a new location in the same building as Tower Theatre.
Rocky Hill at the southeast corner of Van Ness and Olive avenues is the latest casualty in the Tower District.
Owner Ben Litwack said in a social media post this week that the brewery and restaurant that opened in late February has closed. The brewery in Exeter will “most likely” close by the end of the month.
He said, in part: “This wasn’t an easy decision but at the end of the day we were left with the choice of closing now and realizing our losses or closing later and losing even more. I’d love to blame it entirely on COVID-19 but this business was difficult from day one and we were losing money long before the shelter-in-place order.”
Opening the Rocky Hill location in Tower was an attempt to sell more beer and bring in more money, but the business ended up losing money, he said.
One of the partners in the business had majorly revamped the interior of the restaurant, including adding huge murals by local muralist Josh Wigger.
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 9:33 AM.
