“It’s the most quintessential Fresno thing… Here’s this beautiful food, named after us, but we’re not celebrating it, we don’t even know about it.”
like a jalapeno and, well, it tastes like a jalapeno, too. But, you know, different. I first noticed it when I was eating the rice and beans at B.S. Taqueria downtown Los Angeles. The dish — the rice and beans — had a lot going on: The rice was puffed; the beans were lightly fried. There were also grilled onions and cotija cheese, all served in a brown paper bag that quickly went wet with grease.
Hamlin’s nephew, Casey, also lives near Fresno and sells seeds, including those of the Fresno, which he describes on his company’s website as similar to jalapenos but with thinner walls, which makes them perfect for cooking, or in a salsa. When I tried to buy the seeds online, or contact Casey directly, I couldn’t. Links were defunct, my calls and emails unreturned.
My first stop was a farm stand in Clovis, the town adjacent to Fresno and where Brownie Hamlin had first hybridized his chile seed. There I met Vincent Ricchiuti, great grandson of Vincenzo Ricchiuti, who first arrived in the Valley from Northern Italy in 1914. Vincent’s father, Patrick, runs P-R Farms, Inc., among the largest farming concerns in the valley. They grow peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, apples, grapes, almonds, and olives.
An hour later, I arrived outside a small black gate, the entrance to Thao Family Farms, where Kong Thao met me and led me back to the 34 acres he and his parents and some of his 10 siblings farm. He smiled a rakish smile and asked if I was the guy who wanted to talk chiles, and then trudged off toward a patch of freshly tilled earth where his Fresnos had just gone in. “This is just a very small part of what we do,” he said, gesturing toward the patch.
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