Fresno classic Robertito’s honors a long-gone brother with asada fries, Mexican food
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.
A stop at a car wash while passing through downtown Fresno inspired what would become the Fresno-based chain of Robertito’s Taco Shops.
The restaurant now has 16 locations in the state, and is known for satisfying those late-night (sometimes alcohol-fueled) cravings, often at one of its 24-hour drive-thrus.
Its asada fries — dubbed RTS fries on the menu — are a Fresno favorite — french fries drowning in carne asada meat, cheese, beans, guacamole, sour cream and more. The burritos are also top sellers, especially its power burrito with your choice of meat.
The Dominguez family and Robertito’s are 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.
Robertito’s founder Jorge Dominguez opened his first location in Oceanside near San Diego, where he lived at the time.
He was driving home from a trip to Northern California when he stopped in Fresno to wash his blue Ford pickup near Divisadero and Tuolumne streets. He noticed that while people were waiting for their cars to be washed, they were bringing back food to eat, he said in Spanish, with his son interpreting.
There was a perfect building for a taco shop for lease right next to the car wash. He snatched it up and opened the first Robertito’s in Fresno. It’s still there.
“While he was washing his car, he was also signing a deal with that location right then and there,” said his son, also named Jorge Dominguez.
Now the elder Dominguez runs the company with his wife, Minerva, and three sons, Julio, Jorge and Roberto. They declined to be photographed for this story.
The restaurant has eight locations in Fresno (all but one with a drive-thru) and three with drive-thrus in Clovis. Additional locations are in Valley towns such as Kingsburg and Kerman, and there’s one Southern California Robertito’s in Fallbrook.
And that logo on the Robertito’s signs? The one with the smiling, lopsided-eyed kid wearing a sombrero? That’s founder Dominguez’s brother Roberto, whom the restaurant is named after.
Robertito, as his family called him as a kid, died when he was 9 and Dominguez was 6, in Mexico. The brothers were racing, running side by side when Robertito had a medical emergency that involved his lungs.
The logo is 6-year-old Dominguez’s recollection of what his big brother looked like.
