Sal’s Mexican is a legacy in Fresno, Selma. A teen tired of picking peaches founded it

Fresno's Restaurant Royalty is a Fresno Bee series that tells the stories of eight of the city’s most prominent restaurant families. Have a tip? Email bclough@fresnobee.com.

Sal’s Mexican Restaurants are favorite in Fresno and the Valley.

The Salazar family’s restaurant has roots seven decades deep and several locations. Plus, one family member, Bobby Salazar, runs his own network of restaurants, cantinas and a food manufacturing.

The family is part of The Bee’s series focusing on local restaurant families with several locations and often multiple generations involved that have shaped the Fresno restaurant scene.

The original Sal’s restaurant in Selma got its start in 1942. That’s when 17-year-old Salvador “Sal” Salazar, an immigrant who was picking peaches in an orchard, climbed down his ladder and proclaimed, “I have picked my last Elberta,” according to family history.

He bought some spare lumber intended for a chicken coop and set up a taco stand. On his first day, he made $8 selling meals to farmworkers — almost three times the amount he would have made picking peaches.

He and his mom, Antonia Salazar, who was already selling lunches to railroad workers, day laborers and farmworkers, grew the the stand into an actual restaurant.

His father Jose would help out after work, later coming in his wheelchair at age 81 to light the stoves and chop vegetables.

Sal eventually met and married Eleanor, a young woman who was once teased by her family for baking cookies as hard as rocks.

With those humble beginnings, together they grew Sal’s into one of the Valley’s favorite institutions. It moved into its current location in 1973, plopped in the middle of a residential neighborhood where it still operates.

The family lived two blocks away. Some of them still do.

They would go on to open locations in Visalia, Madera and Fresno. Today the Selma location, the Madera location and the Fresno restaurant at Fresno Street and Alluvial Avenue are still open.

When Sal died in 1980, Eleanor would go on to helm the family business for decades.

Sal’s restaurants all serve the fancy burrito, which was once voted Fresno’s most famous dish in a Fresno Bee poll. Sal invented the dish in the 1970s and it comes with beans and chili con carne in a large flour tortilla and lots of melted jack cheese (though you can get it with chile verde or half and half too).

The couple had four children: Lorraine, Bobby, Karl and Henry.

Over the years, the family would also open a scaled-down Sal’s inside bowling alley Sunnyside Bowl, Henry Salazar’s Fresh Mex Grill in Visalia and the quick-service Rapido Sal’s in Madera.

All have closed, though Rapido Sal’s became the regular sit-down Sal’s that’s there today. Salazar’s Grill, run by Henry Salazar in Kingsburg ran for 20 years before he announced in late March that the restaurant will close April 14.

Sal’s sister Sara Escobar also opened the Mexicatessen in downtown Fresno, which she ran for more than 30 years.

Today, several of Sal’s grandchildren are involved in the business, including managing restaurants.

Sal, like several of the restaurateurs in this story, was an immigrant.

“You have to understand, the food business, even to this day, is an entry point for entrepreneurship for families to start a business and to be able to build generational wealth,” said Lorraine Salazar, who is a past chair of the Fresno Chamber of Commerce and who often advocates for mom-and-pop restaurants.

Help with business plans and loans wasn’t available when Sal’s was getting its start, but the business was successful enough to send several of Sal’s younger siblings to college.

“It’s sheer survival and the goal of providing for their family,” she said. “You’re going to find all these families have a work ethic that has propelled them into the successes that they are.”

Another name synonymous with Fresno: Bobby Salazar’s.

Son Bobby went on to open taquerias and restaurants with the Bobby Salazar name on them. Today, there are five.

Over the years, there were additional locations, including ones that used to be Sal’s locations that were converted into Bobby Salazar’s, along with a Kingsburg Bobby Salazar’s and a sports bar called Dos Locos at Herndon and Cedar avenues.

There were ups and downs along the way, including Salazar pleading guilty to insurance fraud in 1997 after he arranged to have his pickup truck stolen. He was sentenced to a year in a work-furlough program, 600 hours of community service and had to sell off some of his liquor licenses.

Separately, the Bobby Salazar’s near Blackstone and Princeton avenues closed in recent months.

In 2017, he went on to open Lucy’s Lounge, a cocktail bar attached to Mama Mia Pizzeria and named after Salazar’s wife Lucy.

And although the Clovis and the Tower District Bobby Salazar’s have a reputation as a place to have a good time, there’s a whole other side of the business.

Five kinds of fresh salsa are sold in grocery stores all over the western U.S., including at Save Mart, Target and Costco.

It has a factory where it makes food for grocery stores, schools, convenience stores and more.