Uniquely is a Fresno Bee series that covers the moments, landmarks and personalities that define what makes living in the Fresno area so special.
Any conversation about longtime restaurants in Fresno will sooner or later land on one name: Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen.
The restaurant had a location on Blackstone Avenue for nearly 70 years, closing in 1997.
Its building still stands.
It was in a large two-story house — with family members living upstairs — at 370 Blackstone Ave., just south of Belmont Avenue. Today, thousands of drivers cruise past, their eyes never straying to the building where people sipped margaritas and tucked into its famous “hot salad.”
Estrada’s was one of the restaurants that Fresnans said they missed the most in a Fresno Bee poll.
Now it’s home to the nondescript Saiz Construction. The company rents more than 120 homes, builds tiny homes and remodels properties, according to its website.
The building appears to have been remodeled into an office, a fence partially blocking the view of it. The owner did not return several messages seeking comment.
Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen in Fresno
There were at least seven locations of Estrada’s restaurants throughout California, according to Ralph Dillard Jr. of Fresno, 75.
He’s the grandson of Cruz Marcella Estrada Dillard, who everyone called Nini and who founded the Fresno location in 1917. Dillard Jr. is the last living relative who learned to cook directly from Nini.
The first Estrada’s was in Visalia. It was on Main Street and later on Mooney Boulevard where Red Lobster is now.
But the food-making operation got its start before that in Tulare around 1895, when Nini’s father abandoned his family. (He originally came to California as an 11-year-old from Sonora, Mexico in the 1850s, accompanying his uncle who was transporting a shipload of thoroughbred mares to San Francisco, according to Bee archives.)
“He left her high and dry with the 12 kids,” Dillard said. “In order to make ends meet, she started selling tamales on the street corner.”
Various restaurant locations would open and close, but the Fresno restaurant was Nini’s baby. Originally, it was downtown at 804 O St., which now appears to be a parking lot. And then it was at 746 Van Ness Ave., which now looks to be a fenced parking lot between two thrift shops.
Bee archives show it moving to the house of a real estate broker on Blackstone in 1928.
The “hot salad” or tostada compuesta 
This ad for Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen ran in The Fresno Bee in 1954. The Fresno Bee THE FRESNO BEE
Nini dreamed up the dish the restaurant would become famous for, its “hot salad” or tostada compuesta.
“At the age of 11, she invented the tostada compuesta because she was tired of eating tamales,” Dillard said. “It became a hit. It was our No. 1 selling item, right behind the margarita.”
The dish was a crispy, fried yellow corn tortilla, slathered in homemade refried beans with a dollop of homemade beef chorizo, Dillard said. The whole plate was placed in a hot oven until the tortilla started to lightly burn around the edges. Then it was piled high with iceberg lettuce, splashed with vinegar-and-oil dressing and topped with a special red sauce.
That red sauce on the tostada compuesta was a family secret for 100 years.
But you can get the recipe for it and the tostada compuesta today.
Dillard, Nini’s grandson, published the “Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen of Fresno Cookbook” last year. You can buy it on his website or Amazon for $39.95. It’s also available at The Market, the grocery store at Herndon and West avenues.
Nini didn’t write her recipes down. She always said, just because you had a recipe didn’t mean you could actually cook it.
“She would not allow it to be written down and in fact, it was in her will,” Dillard said.
But he published the book anyway, wanting to honor his grandmother and unable to bear the thought that her delicious food would be lost to history.
“I realized that I’m the last person alive who learned how to cook the food from her,” he said. “What I’m really hoping is that (people) can buy the book and cook the food.”
He thought he’d sell under 100 cookbooks. He’s already sold more than 2,000.
“ I’m dumbfounded,” he said. “I had to hire a CPA to do my taxes.”
Mexican cuisine? Spanish food? Early Californian
The restaurant’s cuisine is not Spanish. Nor is it Mexican.
“How in the world, they ever put Spanish in the name to begin with, I could never figure out,” Dillard said. “I suspect they used the word Spanish because that’s the language they spoke.”
The food is early Californian.
The dishes are “a blend of recipes for the dishes Pioneer residents used to take to community celebrations and Sunday get-togethers,” according to a 1970 Bee column by Woody Laughnan.
There’s macaroni on the menu, which Italians introduced to Mexicans and Spaniards, according to the column.
That column ran on the same page as ads for other popular restaurants of the day that no longer exist, including Cafe Midi, Happy Steak, and Basque dinners at the Santa Fe Hotel.
Estrada’s was farm-to-table before it was trendy.
“They used the local foods that were grown right there in Tulare. The types of chiles that came from Tulare —many of the spices, tomatoes, the iceberg lettuce — that was developed by Burpee around the 1895 era, and my family started using that long before it became famous for the railroad,” he said of Estrada’s start in Tulare.
Iceberg lettuce, by the way, is a piece of California history. It got popular when the railroad started shipping it east in train cars packed in ice — hence the name. Much of it was grown in the Salinas region, and still is.
The Fresno restaurant was ordered closed by a judge in 1997 after conflicting wills from family members led to a messy probate case.
A second restaurant on the north end of Blackstone Avenue would close in 2001.
Estrada’s memories 
Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen is pictured in a 1963 photo from the Fresno County Assessor’s Office, courtesy of the Genealogy & Local History Library, part of the Fresno County Public Library and the Fresno County Genealogical Society. Special to The Bee FRESNO COUNTY ASSESSOR’S OFFICE
But the memories made in that that two-story house near Belmont live on.
Nini eventually moved out of the second story and other family members moved in. Many kids took their first baths in the big kitchen sink.
Dillard remembers being 7 and crawling on his hands and knees to scour the corners of the kitchen with a toothbrush on his Nini’s orders.
The first floor was the public dining area.
From Laughnan’s 1970 column: “Some of the charm of the Old Dominion home has been retained. Customers dine in individual rooms on the main floor which once were the family dining room, library, parlor and children’s room.”
And plenty of people fondly remember the food.
Johnny Geston posted about Ralph Dillard Sr. and the restaurant in the Facebook group Fresno, CA Histories and Memories: “My Mom, Grandma, Dad and me worked for Ralph back in the day. Best Tamales, Enchiladas, and Macaroni I have ever tasted. Raised my kids on it as a special occasion.”
There was a back porch with booths that overlooked Nini’s garden and a Tahitian lime tree.
“Customers, they would watch that tree for the limes getting ripe for the margaritas,” he remembers. “They were special. They were so much better than the Mexican limes.”
Then-Vice President George Bush stopped in during his campaign for president in 1988. He tried the tostada compuesta and a margarita, among other dishes.
Today, Dillard can’t go anywhere without being stopped by people sharing memories of dining at Estrada’s.
“Countless Fresnans, they got engaged there, their first date was there. … Every kind of celebration that people would have was done at Estrada’s. It was home,” he said. “They weren’t just our customers, they were friends. They were family. And they still are.”
An archive photo shows Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen, which used to be at this location on North Blackstone Avenue at Grant Avenue near downtown Fresno. The building is now Saiz Construction & Development, which buys and manages/rents houses and does construction. Estrada’s was there from 1928 to 1997. CRAIG KOHLRUSS ckohlruss@fresnobee.com 
Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen used to be at this location on North Blackstone Avenue at Grant Avenue near downtown Fresno. The building is now Saiz Construction & Development, which buys and manages/rents houses and does construction. Estrada’s was there from 1928 to 1997. CRAIG KOHLRUSS ckohlruss@fresnobee.com 
This is what remains of the parking lot beside Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen, which was located at this location on North Blackstone Avenue at Grant Avenue near downtown Fresno. The building is now Saiz Construction & Development, which buys and manages/rents houses and does construction. Estrada’s was there from 1928 to 1997. CRAIG KOHLRUSS ckohlruss@fresnobee.com 
Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen used to be at this location on North Blackstone Avenue at Grant Avenue near downtown Fresno. The building is now Saiz Construction & Development, which buys and manages/rents houses and does construction. Estrada’s was there from 1928 to 1997. It was hugely popular. CRAIG KOHLRUSS ckohlruss@fresnobee.com
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Bethany Clough covers restaurants and retail for The Fresno Bee. A reporter for more than 20 years, she now works to answer readers’ questions about business openings, closings and other business news. She has a degree in journalism from Syracuse University and her last name is pronounced Cluff.