More late-night eats now in Fresno’s Tower District. This bar has a new restaurant inside
Scarfing down some munchies after hitting the bars and clubs in the Tower District is a late-night tradition in Fresno.
Now there’s one more place to do it.
Plant Slayer Express has opened inside Strummer’s, the bar and concert venue (formerly Starline) on Fern Avenue. It’s selling a vegan version of bar food, including hot dogs loaded with all kinds of toppings.
“We wanted to fill a niche that isn’t in the Tower District,” said co-owner Jeremy Brownstein. “We wanted to fill that vegan junk food need, open later and such.”
You can order Plant Slayer’s food from a kiosk inside the restaurant and bar side of Strummer’s. It’s also available as takeout and will soon be on several food delivery apps.
Plant Slayer Express is open from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.
Brownstein and co-owner Gina Perez are the same people who run the Plant Slayer restaurant downtown. (And yes, their name is a nod to one of their favorite bands, the thrash metal group Slayer. The band also inspired the business’s logo.)
The couple has also hosted Y2K and ’90s music nights at Strummer’s for years, with music and people dressing in the style of those eras, and photo booths.
The downtown location of the vegan restaurant just celebrated its one-year anniversary in the The Galleria, the building home to several restaurants at Kern and N streets. It’s open for lunch and dinner and sells vegan comfort food such as fried chicken sandwiches, burgers and milkshakes.
The menu at Strummer’s is different, though.
The food
About 70% of it is hot dogs.
Hot dogs in Tower certainly aren’t unusual — Richie’s Pizza & Hot Dogs and mobile cart Durty Dogs have been indulging late-night meaty cravings for years — but vegan hot dogs are rare.
Plant Slayer Express’s popular hot dogs include a Taki dog — a vegan dog with vegan nacho cheese and dusted with crushed Takis, the intensely flavored rolled tortilla chips.
And there’s the breakfast dog, which is an homage to a hot dog at the former Tower Dogs. That business, which flanked the Tower Theatre and closed in 2011, was a favorite stop for customers looking for something to soak up the evening’s beer and cocktails.
It had a “last-call dog” served only after 11 p.m. that was topped with hash browns, cheese and an egg.
Plant Slayer’s version is topped with a vegan egg, vegan nacho cheese and tater tots.
The menu also includes vegan chicken wings and loaded tater tots with cheese, Takis and other toppings.
A Tower kitchen
The kitchen inside Strummer’s has been home to several eatery concepts over the years.
Most recently, downtown restaurant Libelula started serving pizza from the kitchen in 2021. But it stopped, the owner saying the space didn’t allow for the type of service its customers were accustomed to.
Plant Slayer will be there permanently.
The arrangement was a natural fit, Brownstein said, because he and Perez already know the people and the space. They plan to continue their 2000s-era and 1990s music nights.
Details: Plant Slayer Express is inside Strummer’s (enter through the bar) at 833 E. Fern Ave. Food can be ordered online at the restaurant’s Square site. Hours: 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Details: 559-981-4707.
This story was originally published August 11, 2023 at 10:32 AM.
