Toledo’s: This favorite Mexican spot has quietly shaped the Fresno restaurant scene

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.

The path to one of Fresno’s most popular Mexican restaurants started decades ago when a 14-year-old Sam Toledo trekked alone from Mexico to the United States.

Decades later, he and his wife oversee a multi-generational business that not only has launched several restaurants under the Toledo’s name, but also quietly helped launch numerous other Mexican restaurants in Fresno. The Toledo family and restaurants 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.

Known for its albondigas soup, margaritas and chile Colorado, Toledo’s has two locations in town right now. One is in Clovis, and the Fresno location is at Herndon and Milburn avenues. The family is gearing up to open their largest restaurant yet, a new one designed from the ground up at Cedar and Nees avenues that is about 95% done.

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The restaurant will replace the location with the beloved patio with trees growing through the roof on Blackstone Avenue in Pinedale that was torn down in 2019.

But Sam and Martha Toledo’s influence on the Fresno food scene is much bigger than the general public knows.

And it started from humble beginnings.

When Sam Toledo came to the U.S., he had no family here to take him in.

He did what he could to survive, living and working at a labor camp in Bakersfield picking “whatever was on the trees.” To get by, he made friends with the tough guys, the people everybody respected, he said.

When the harvest season was over, he got a job at the former Papa Gallo restaurant at Marks and Ashlan avenues at age 15. He started as a dishwasher and a busboy and — working at various restaurants — rose to cook, waiter, chef and restaurant owner.

Today, he can tell if a cook has made the chile Colorado correctly purely from the scent.

“I was curious about every job,” he said, adding that he has no formal culinary training and learned English mostly from waiting on customers.

Toledo was key to opening El Cid in 1981 at the spot that would become Toledo’s on Blackstone. He didn’t own it, but was general manager, head chef and created the recipes for the menu. El Cid would go on to have several locations in Fresno and one in Oakhurst, which is still open.

The first Toledo’s opened in 1991 at the same Blackstone spot. Several others followed, including the Mission Village location at Shaw Avenue and Fresno Street, which closed during the pandemic.

The family also opened a smaller location in downtown Fresno, selling it to Sam’s brother for $1. It’s now called Toledito’s, open for breakfast and lunch.

He’s also lent expertise and recipes to family and others opening their own restaurants.

Lily’s Cafe in downtown Fresno was opened by a cousin. El Bajio Mexican Restaurant on Shields and Brawley avenues was a nephew. Both are still open and if the menus look familiar, its because they’re using Toledo’s recipes, though their menus have evolved over the years.

Toledo would do the same for La Haciendita in Sanger, Serrano’s in Three Rivers (now closed), and another family member’s restaurant in North Carolina.

Early on, he met his future wife, Martha. She was 13. He was 16.

He was working as a dishwasher and had two fry cooks as roommates. They were dating a pair of sisters.

Their little sister, Martha, often tagged along with her older siblings. And Sam hung around his roommates. The rest was history.

Sam and Martha Toledo have been married for 46 years now.

Martha’s sisters and their husbands independently opened Country Fare Cafe on Belmont Avenue and Cafe Leon on Blackstone Avenue (though Cafe Leon was recently sold to new owners). Both places used many of her mother’s recipes.

Along the way, those couples also used to run the former Las Cazuelas and Jorge’s Place Mexican Restaurant.

Sam and Martha Toledo have three children — Jesse, Carmen and Andrew — and two manage various parts of the company from the corporate office just behind the soon-to-open restaurant. Grandchildren work at the restaurants in the summer.

When he was a teen, people used to tell Sam he’d have his own restaurant someday and he would laugh at the thought. Today, it’s a bigger reality than he ever imagined.

“I think I’ve been blessed,” he said. “I was lucky enough to meet people to teach me.”