To call Heirloom popular is almost an understatement.
The restaurant is an anchor at Park Crossing, the shopping center at Friant Road and Fresno Street — the kind of place where folks don’t mind queuing up to wait. And there’s always a wait, even seven years after its opening.
Heirloom was listed on Yelp’s list of 100 best restaurants in the county last year and has consistently been on localized best-of polls (including The Bee’s Best of Central California) for its hip, farm-driven cuisine.
It can now add to those accolades: California’s No. 1 payday dinner spot.
That’s according to a survey commissioned by the lending company Advance America, in which they asked some 3,000 families about the restaurants where they most often spent their payday money. According to a news release from the company, this was an online study with a nationally representative panel, balanced for age, gender, household income and geographic region.
“Results were weighted where necessary to align with national population benchmarks, ensuring a broad and representative snapshot of family preferences across all 50 states.”
Along with collating a list of restaurants, the survey looked at why people eat out in the first place.
”The majority (36%) see it as a reward for getting through the week. These meals aren’t victory laps. They’re a pause — a chance to decompress and mark the end of one demanding stretch before the next begins,” according to a release on the survey.
Across the survey, the top restaurants all had:
Generous portionsFamily-friendly pricingWelcoming atmospheresMenus that feel comforting and a little special
Heirloom ranked first in the state in a top three that included the restaurant Rasselbock in Long Beach and Frugatti’s Wood Fired Italian in Bakersfield.
Part of a Fresno restaurant empire
Heirloom is part of a growing collection of popular restaurants run by an ownership team that includes Brandon Smittcamp. The group also operates Otherside Cafe, Saizon, Butterfish and Mayd Modern Mediterranean.
Saizon in 2025 made the L.A. Times’ list of California’s best restaurants.
Smittcamp, who is the group’s managing partner, also owns the Lime Lite restaurant at Palm and Shaw avenues and Dos Pescados, a Mexican restaurant he helped open in Aptos in 2024.
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Joshua Tehee covers breaking news for The Fresno Bee, writing on a wide range of topics from police, politics and weather, to arts and entertainment in the Central Valley.