corny and gentrified<\/a> in other places. But here, in a neighborhood even locals don\u2019t always know the name of, it makes for a strange oasis of calm basically in the middle of a traffic island; genuine and personal, in spite of everything else. Kind of the Fresno experience in a nutshell. You can order a Modelo with your sub-$10 lunch, and they\u2019ll ask you if you want Tapatio in it and it won\u2019t cost you $8.50.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776640839_309_image-11.png\")
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\u201cI tell people all the time, \u2018in here, we don\u2019t need cable TV,\u2019 Gonzales says. \u201cThere\u2019s always something going on. People fighting down the street maybe, cars bumping their music. You got motorcycle clubs down there racing their bikes. You got CRMC hospital, so the ambulance and the police are just flying up and down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That sense of the hectic, the hustle and bustle of real life, somehow doesn\u2019t really puncture the Don Tacha bubble. In New York, you might see people bringing their chairs down to the sidewalk on warmer evenings, just to sit and talk and experience the general buzz of the neighborhood. It\u2019s strange to imagine that in a place as suburban and synonymous with sprawl as Fresno, but Don Tacha\u2019s manages to evoke the experience. Maybe that\u2019s a product of Jos\u00e9 senior, who spent 10 years in Spanish Harlem as a kid after emigrating from Guadalajara, before making his way to San Jose and eventually Fresno.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These days, it isn\u2019t just Fresnans making the case that Mexican food in the Central Valley is different, even among other North American regional Mexican food cuisines. The continually refreshing pool of migrant farmworkers from all parts of Mexico and Latin America bringing their own traditions, mixing with second, third, fourth-generation Mexican-Americans, and again with nouveau trends and everything now visible through social media, combine to create something unique here. The food at Don Tacha reflects that pan-Mexican sensibility, including, somewhat controversially, beans in the tacos.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unusual when we first started, because you don\u2019t put beans on tacos as far as what you eat out here,\u201d Gonzales says. \u201cBut when you really think about it, and any Mexican will tell you this, you go to Mexico, whether it\u2019s in a restaurant or on the street, you get your taco, they have the salsa out, you get your veggies, and they always have a big pot of frijoles. Everywhere you go, the northern part of Mexico, central, down south to Oaxaca, it doesn\u2019t matter. The tacos, man, they come with beans. Maybe not on top, but it\u2019s always been a part of it. So we thought, what the heck, let\u2019s throw it on there. We loved it, we told customers to try it out. They loved it, and we just kept it ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of what Don Tacha has you can find at plenty of other taco places throughout Fresno and the state. As Vincent says in Pulp Fiction, it\u2019s about the little differences. Beans on the tacos. Arrachera over the open flame in place of the usual asada. Juicy adobada in place of the charred al pastor on the trompo. And oh yeah, asada fries.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThose are thin-cut potatoes sliced in-house,\u201d Gonzales says. \u201cPretty much like nachos, you get the cheese, the beans, the guac, all the toppings. No one else does that. I mean, I put \u2018Fresno\u2019s only\u2019 on the menu, but I\u2019m pretty sure I could put California\u2019s only thin-cut asada fries. I haven\u2019t seen it anywhere else in the state. I\u2019ve checked social media. No one has it like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a nice idea, cutting the potatoes into rounds, more like chips than traditional fries, and taking the time to do them in-house rather than dropping bagged potatoes into the fryer like so many do. It\u2019s also a good example of Don Tacha\u2019s ad-hoc remixing of tradition and commerce, with a personal twist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s Don Tacha\u2019s approach in general, and also what makes them feel like a microcosm of Fresno\u2019s food scene. If the 99-cent tacos (chicken, ground beef, or chicharron) or the buy-one-get-one-free michelada deals on Saturdays draw you in, you might find yourself wanting to stick around for a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to lie and say it\u2019s all butterflies and stuff. Through COVID, a lot of my crowd from north Fresno, they weren\u2019t coming this way,\u201d Gonzales says. \u201cWhat kept us afloat, honestly, was the community. I\u2019ve really tried to change my mindset, where instead of trying to get all of Fresno to come here, why don\u2019t I just take care of my neighborhood? And so we\u2019ve worked hard to have a good footprint here. The community takes care of the rest.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno is a tough place to stand out for serving great tacos. Taco Truck Throwdown has been establishing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[13189,112,114,113,94601],"class_list":{"0":"post-276088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-crmc","9":"tag-fresno","10":"tag-fresno-headlines","11":"tag-fresno-news","12":"tag-lowell"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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