This upscale Fresno restaurant is now serving brunch. So, what’s on the menu?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Cracked Pepper Bistro now offers counter-order brunch Monday–Saturday.
- Limited menu of about 10 items priced $12–$16, featuring pork belly and croque madame.
- Owner roasts coffee weekly (Sanctuary Roasting), plus espresso and cocktails available.
For years, Cracked Pepper Bistro in north Fresno has collected awards for its fine dining.
But it was always for dinner — for its filet mignon, eggplant appetizer and that famous bread pudding.
Now, the 19-year-old restaurant is offering brunch. From 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, Cracked Pepper serves a brunch-inspired menu.
It’s not the same full-service experience you get dining in the evenings. In order to keep prices between $12 and $16, there are no servers taking your order at the table. Instead, you order at a counter and the food is brought to you.
The brunch menu
The menu is part breakfast, brunch and lunch.
So there’s a croque madame, the French ham and cheese sandwich served with a creamy cheese sauce and an egg on top.
Another highlight, according to chef and owner Vatche Moukhtarian? A pork belly that is sous vide (slowly cooked at a low temperature in a vacuum-sealed bag) overnight and then sautéed til crispy and served atop rice with a crispy fried egg.
Avocado toast, eggs with bacon and potatoes, a bread pudding French toast, and bagel sandwiches are also on the menu.
It’s a limited menu with about 10 items.
“A lot of stuff is very simple,” he said. “We’re not doing biscuits and gravy. There’s enough restaurants doing that.”
Sanctuary Coffee
The coffee here is not an afterthought. In fact, it’s what led to the creation of brunch.
The coffee served at Cracked Pepper is roasted weekly by Moukhtarian from a location in Clovis. In addition to regular coffee, there is espresso and a few other basic coffee drinks on the menu.
“Just the classics only,” he said.
There are cocktails available, including mimosas and an espresso martini.
Moukhtarian has run his own roasting operation, Sanctuary Roasting, for about two years. He also runs a coffee shop, Sanctuary Coffee Shop, on the Northwest Church campus at Barstow and West avenues.
That serendipitous arrangement happened after his son was dating the pastor’s daughter. The pastor was trying unsuccessfully to find a coffee shop to open at the church. When the men were out to lunch, he pitched the idea to Moukhtarian and the chef ran with it.
Moukhtarian started with local coffee roasters, and eventually got into roasting his own.
He was thinking of opening a second Sanctuary Coffee shop. But it costs so much to open a new place these days, he decided to open something in the spot he already had, Cracked Pepper.
Reservations are only available for parties of 10 or more.
