Her mama taught her to make soul food at age 9. Now, she’s opened a new Fresno restaurant

Gloria Hall has flair.

The owner of the newest location of Doll’s Kitchen restaurant is on the quiet side, but she flashes a set of eyelashes that look like they belong on the runway of a New York fashion show.

Her manicure is done up in purple and gold, with an image the L.A. Lakers’ Kobe Bryant painted on one ring finger, LeBron James on the other.

But there’s one thing she hopes outshines her style: her food.

“I love to cook,” she said. “I cook with a whole lot of love and the right seasoning.”

It’s her pride, her passion and her history — all simmering together and ready to be served up at her new restaurant at Blackstone and Shaw avenues.

Doll’s Kitchen has been around Fresno for years, selling fried chicken and collard greens from tents and tables on street corners, a food truck, and gas stations and convenience stores on the south side of town. And for a time, from a restaurant at McKinley and Chestnut avenues that has since closed.

In April Hall opened what might be her most successful spot yet, taking over the former Med Wraps Cafe spot a few doors down from Bingo Donuts.

Who’s Doll?

“She’s my mama,” Hall said. “Doll is my mom who taught me everything I know.”

From Little Rock, she taught her daughter how to cook soul food when she was 9. Her father, from Palestine, Texas, taught her how to barbecue.

So Hall, who was born and raised in Fresno, put them together.

“I was blessed from both sides,” she said.

The menu is a combination of fried chicken and basa (a type of catfish), and all the traditional sides. Plus, there’s oxtail, pulled pork and rib dinners on weekends.

Most of it comes as combo plates, ranging from $13.99 to $18.99 and served in to-go containers. There’s also the house drink, player punch, made from Kool-Aid and lemonade.

Ask Hall what the most popular dish is and she immediately launches into talking about the sides. There’s the mac and cheese, silky smooth elbow pasta slathered in cheese and browned in a way that puts a contrast of textures in your mouth.

And there’s the collard greens, with a kick of spices just solid enough to send it to the top of the list of customer favorites.

Ask her what’s in it and she just laughs.

“A lot of love,” she says.

But really, it’s collard greens, cabbage, turkey meat and spices — and the rest is a secret.

“Some people DoorDash the sides, they don’t even choose the meats,” exclaimed her son, Johnny Smith, who also works at the restaurant.

This is what Hall has always wanted to do.

“I told my mama when I was 9, ‘I want to open a restaurant.’”

Doll told her she could do anything she put her mind to. Then gave her some rather mature advice: Make sure your food is consistent.

Getting it customers on time can be challenging. Sometimes they have to wait longer than they’d like, but Hall said the food is worth the wait.

She’s attracting customers from all over, including Tywin Gordon, a College of the Sequoias football player whose girlfriend Hope Storseth brought him up from Visalia to try the food.

“This is going to be our favorite spot,” he said, chowing down on fried chicken, cornbread, collard greens and mac n cheese before asking Hall to take a picture with him.

Tyrelle Poles of Tulare and some buddies drove up for the smothered pork chops.

“The food is so good. We travel to come eat this food,” he said. “We’ve got no soul food spots where we live.”

Of course, this isn’t the first soul food restaurant in Fresno. No discussion of soul food in this town would be complete without a mention of Chef Paul’s Cafe in Chinatown. Rhapsody’s Restaurant is still going strong on West Shaw Avenue too, along with Chicken King downtown.

And you don’t have to have grown up with soul food to appreciate it. All kinds of people eat here, Hall noted.

“It’s every race — Hmong, Chinese, Mexican, Black, everybody,” she said.

Family

On a recent afternoon, everybody working at the business is family. There’s a niece working the front counter, a sister and son in the kitchen, and a nephew washing dishes.

And Hall, 64, is seemingly everywhere at once, lifting the chicken out of the boiling oil, directing her sister which plate to use.

She’s got some experience with that type of thing. She’s got seven kids, 13 grandkids and one great grandkid.

“She moves around more than I do,” said niece Monique Thomas, sitting on a chair at the front counter. “She gets it done.”

Details: Doll’s Kitchen is at 4925 N. Blackstone Ave. Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. 559-273-3264.