Three restaurants under one roof. These Fresno businesses are trying something different
Three restaurants. One address. And a whole lot of flavors.
A new eatery in northwest Fresno is tiny, but has a lot going on inside. Walk through the door and you’ll find a single counter where you can order a variety of cuisines: Indian food, Nashville hot chicken and boba drinks.
There are a couple of food trucks involved too, but it’s the restaurant that’s celebrating its grand opening this week.
It’s at the northeast corner of West and Herndon avenues, near locally owned grocery store The Market. (It’s in the spot some may remember as the European Market & Deli, which sold Armenian and Russian food. The daughter-in-law of those owners runs the spot now.)
As for the eatery, the owners call it a food court. It’s all take-out (literally, there’s one table with two chairs). And the food can be ordered on delivery apps such as DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats.
Thursday through Sunday the business will be raffling off a big-screen TV and offering deals. The boba is buy-one, get-one free, there’s free boba with a purchase of Indian food, and with free sides with the chicken.
The counter where customers order is painted to look like a food truck, complete with a covering that props open like a food truck window.
The Curry Life
You can order from The Curry Life, an Indian food place specializing in wraps, bowls and salads.
The No. 1 seller is the chicken tikka masala — chicken cooked in a creamy tomato sauce with spices and served atop bright yellow basmati rice.
Trivia tidbit: Chicken tikka masala is sometimes called Britain’s national dish. Chicken tikka alone is an Indian dish, but legend says the British version was developed because Brits wanted their meat to be served in gravy.
The streamlined menu includes a few other options. They include vegetarian paneer dishes made with the firm Indian cheese, and the vegan chana masala made with chickpeas. Most cost $13.99.
A semi-secret menu item: the naughty naanza. It’s a sort of Indian pizza made with naan garlic bread, curry and other toppings.
Spicy Birdz
Spicy Birdz has been around for a year and half, serving chicken tenders loaded with spices. You can get them in a sandwich, a burrito, in tacos, a quesadilla, on loaded mac ‘n’ cheese or loaded fries.
Customers pick from five levels of spice, ranging from none to “Spicy Birdz hot.”
Spicy Birdz also has a food truck, and if you order the hottest option there, they’ll set off a siren. That usually scares people and they back down one of their orders to something a little less spicy, noted owner Lily Khachatryan.
“It is super spicy, but it’s not at that level where you sign a waiver,” she said.
Menu items range from $12 to $15.
Boba drinks
The owners of The Curry Life figured people would want something cold to wash down a spicy meal, so they launched bubble Bea boba.
It has the traditional milk teas and fruit teas for $7, with optional boba — the little chewy balls of tapioca in the drink sucked up through a fat straw.
There are also drinks for people not into boba, like a creamy sizzling mango, made with mango marmalade, chamoy and Tajín.
Why so many restaurants?
The owners of the businesses also run two food trucks — Spicy Birdz and another with the Indian food and boba on the same truck. You can find them together at the River Park Farmers Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and elsewhere.
When Khachatryan met Kamal Kaur and Smit Shah, the partners behind The Curry Life and bubble Bea, they hit it off.
She showed them the brick-and-mortar spot and invited them to join her.
“We said ‘OK, let’s do this.’ Not even 30 minutes” to decide, Shah said.
The concept of different restaurants under one roof is different for Fresno, Kaur noted.
“You have four people in the family and everybody wants different stuff,” she said. “This is a unique concept. We want to offer them all in one.”
She’s new to the Fresno area, but not to food.
Kaur used to run The Yellow Chilli, a fine dining Indian restaurant in a former Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum in the Los Angeles area. It was a franchise using the recipes of chef Sanjeev Kapoor, probably India’s most famous celebrity chef.
The New York Times did a story about how her exuberant fandom led to opening the restaurant.
It closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Kaur decided to try something completely different in Fresno.
Details: Spicy Birdz, The Curry Life and bubble Bea are at 7070 N. West Ave. Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Phone orders can be made for pickup at 559-437-3898.
