What Is The Best Steak In Fresno?

The Fresnan
fullsizerender-compressed What Is The Best Steak In Fresno?
The Edo-ya Filet I had the other night

I have been mulling over this one for some time. What is the best steak in Fresno?

Yes, we are the taco capital, have the best Mexican food breakfast spots, love tri-tip, and chicken sandwiches are everywhere (although I think that is an every-city thing).

But us red meat-eatin’ Fresnans can still like some straight-up steak too.

Right now, my favorite is the tepanyaki filet at Edo-ya. A bit of a different choice, I know. It’s just so soft and fucking perfect. And they have that spicy sauce too.

But there are a lot of perfect steaks in Fresno. And sadly I have not even had a quarter of them.

I would love to try all the steaks in Fresno but I don’t think I could. It would be a lot of work. And money.💵

I suppose if you had a large food budget and the time and energy to go out and eat all the time, a person could do this. But I am sadly not this person. Yet.

That person could exist though. There is somebody rich enough in this town to have the time and money to try every freaking steak in Fresno, but just doesn’t do it. For shame.

Yeah, well, anyway, I went to ‘Fresno Twitter’ to get the vibe. To see what they think about the steaks. And it seems I need to try a steak from the Lime Light:

I am sure I have had a steak at the Lime Lite but it has been many many years since, so I don’t even remember. Many people picked it, so I am excited to go back and try.

Other places brought up in the Twitter thread I totally agree with and want to try again:

  • Manhattan’s
  • Yosemite Ranch
  • Richard’s
  • Max’s
  • Flemings (chain)
  • Ruth’s Chris (chain)

Some I need to try that are also recommend:

  • Annex Kitchen
  • Cracked Pepper
  • Cosmopolitan

Not only does “Cosmo’s” and Richard’s have a Craig Scharton endorsement, it has an endorsement from THE Simon Majumbar:

https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fec4651e1-d594-47d8-9eba-5f73ff7ea01a_1165x917 What Is The Best Steak In Fresno?

Side note: I truly have no obligation to bring up Clovis Taint District trash but some place called “13” or something, got brought up a fucking lot.

I honestly never heard of it. I will not go there unless strong-armed. I don’t go to Clovis for steaks because Clovis sucks.

If I were to go to a Fresno County place for steak though, I hear Cattleman’s and Harris Ranch are good suggestions.

Hope this helps you decide your next Fresno steak adventure. If you have any recos for a good Fresno steak, please leave us all a comment.

I Like What They Did With That: Little Leaf Tea‘s Sign

The Fresnan
img_6186-compressed I Like What They Did With That: Little Leaf Tea‘s Sign
Creative use of the Little Leaf Tea sign

Last month-ish, Little Leaf Tea at Palm & Bullard, moved next door into their bar area so they could make room for Kuppa Joy to move into their old space.

I like how they moved over their sign to the front of their window. Good re-use idea and it looks cool.

They have 1/3 of the bar now their tea area and left the rest of the bar alone.

img_5606-compressed I Like What They Did With That: Little Leaf Tea‘s Sign
The bar area of Little Leaf

The tea is still good and you get it just as quick (maybe even a little quicker) than you did before.

As far as the bar, they still have a cozy neighborhood bar vibe – a good spot for an after work drink or a leisurely walk over.

Oh, and they have food too that I somehow have never tried. ✌️🫖🧋

We Are Not Handling The New Protected Bike Lane All That Well, Fresno

The Fresnan 2 Comments
img_5749-768x1024 We Are Not Handling The New Protected Bike Lane All That Well, Fresno
Van Ness heading North to McKinley, picture by T

This new bike lane on Van Ness (You know, the Van Ness you never think about because it is not Old, Extended or Downtown) has everyone all messed up.

Admittedly it is some weird looking shit. It requires processing. And processing we are.

Maybe the best thread I saw about it came from a local musician’s on Facebook. We will call him T.

I always feel a little queasy pulling Facebook threads out here into the open part of the Internet so I won’t use any real names of people in these quotes but they are real and sum up the bike lane drama:

The fact that they took so many parking spaces away in front of people’s homes makes no sense at all. Besides passengers aren’t normally looking for bicyclist on their side if the car when they get out so there’s that hazard.
I don’t even want to know how much of our money they spent researching this lovely idea.

L

It’s a drunken stagger zone. For City liability insurance. Only intoxicated Fresnans work or travel through this area. It is known.

K

From what I’ve observed, almost no one is using this properly–almost everyone just parks their car against the gutter as they always did, totally blocking the new bike path. I wonder if they sent out a notice or anything.

N

Doesn’t make sense to me. I would rather not ride in a bike lane sharing the road with cars without any concrete divider. I do not trust drivers. I ride my bicycle on the sidewalk as long as there’s no pedestrians around.

D

It’s nuts! I wouldn’t park in those spaces! You might a well put a target on the back of your car! 2am catastrophe

F

Yes, this was a total fail. Half the parking is gone, and now the bike lane is useless because people are using it for parking. Here’s my proposal. Go back to curbside parking, and turn all that new parking weirdness into a big fat bike lane.

L

This is the lane in question:

dfda6752-dcbc-4da2-94de-96955df456ed-852x1024 We Are Not Handling The New Protected Bike Lane All That Well, Fresno

When you go a little further up the road next to FCC, those college educated kids are having problems too:

It’s not ALL bad pedal press though:

I ride that route fairly regularly. It is an adjustment, but the idea is to separate bikes from moving traffic. And it reduces the chance that you ride into a quickly-opening door.

T

Ha ha! Tell me about it. Complete Streets are something that the org I work for espouses, but I don’t like them when I’m driving, huge hypocrite that I am. It makes sense to stop designing our transportation systems solely around making it easier for cars. Perhaps making the world safer for bikes will encourage more people to ride?

C

I don’t known that my opinion is valid since I only drive on there occasionally and can’t remember the last time I rode a bike through there.

But, I will still say, it feels like we are scared of this new thing. It will be confusing at first but we will get it. Some street has to be the street we learn on, might as well be regular old Van Ness.

I believe protected bike lanes are a build-it-and-they-will-come sorta thing, not a “Look at all these damn bikers, they need more lanes!!” kinda thing.

And one day it could be as pleasant as this (found on mmwpro63’s feed):

🚴🏻‍♂️🚴🚲✌️

Update #1: Good ol’ CMAC and the City Of Fresno teamed up to make a video of bike lane protection:

Update #2:

Thanks to Ed for the heads up on this thread and flyer:

img_5764-881x1024 We Are Not Handling The New Protected Bike Lane All That Well, Fresno

Hopefully we will all keep trying to make Fresno safer and radder for biking around, even if it gets funky sometimes.

The Struggle Of A Fresnan

The Fresnan

I can get super bummed about not posting here.

Long spans of time can go by and I don’t post and I feel shitty and then I get a few in there and feel better about myself.

The thing I just realized and it’s why I sat down to post, I am too fucking old to blog about Fresno in the way I wish I could.

The old days.

Work. Age. Life. They all keep me from running around the Tower or Downtown or some thing at Fresno State, with any kind of regularity.

So, I cannot be what I want, what the hell do I do?

There are only so many Save Mart & Whole Foods posts I can do (grocery stores are my number one social places these days).

This is not some setup to tell you I am quiting The Fresnan like that other time. I just need to tell you that I know things are not the same and they can’t ever be.

But I can still figure out a place for this blog and newsletter. It may be something else, but something.

Anyway, thanks for being here. Fresno and blogging rule!✌️