One of Fresno’s best sandwiches comes from one of its smallest restaurants. That was just one discovery from our recent search for the best tri-tip sandwich in Fresno.
Mike’s Grill on Cedar just south of Herndon occupies a 150-square-foot kiosk that looks like a former Fotomat, and actually began as a Lehman’s Lock and Safe (and later became a Cingular Wireless). But for 17 years, they’ve been serving what some may consider Fresno’s best tri-tip sandwich.
Michael Sanders first opened Mike’s Grill in 2009 (“It was the last Saturday the Fair was in town,” Sanders says). He’s still running the shop, though these days, he has his two sons, Logan and Brody (age 23 and 19), helping him out prepping food and slinging sandwiches.
Mike’s Grill has a great story – one that seems to exemplify all the things we love about the Fresno food scene in general: a family-run business-turned institution, an unassuming establishment serving unassuming food that also happens to be great. Looks funky, tastes great. That’s Fresno in a nutshell.
Only, the kiosk is actually a lie.
Or at least, the kiosk is only the most visible part of Mike’s Grill. To help cook, trim and prep all the tri-tip sandwiches, pulled pork, chili beans, frito boats, etc. that Mike’s Grill goes through on a near-daily basis (open 11 am – 7 pm, Tuesday through Saturday), Sanders also rents out an 1,800 square foot commissary kitchen in the same shopping center – something he says he’s done since almost the beginning.
“When I first opened, Jeff Aivazian from Meat Market took one look at the place and said ‘It’s too small,’” Sanders says. “He told me, ‘as soon as you start making money you’re going to have to move.’”
Aivazian (who died in 2017), it turned out, was right. Sanders rented out the commissary kitchen space not long after opening, and not much about the business – beyond a few menu tweaks – has changed in the years since.
And that’s just how Mike’s Grill’s customers like it. To the point that a few freaked out a couple years back when they stopped seeing the big yellow smoker out front. That smoking yellow barbecue, along with the open sign on the kiosk, was one of the visual cues alerting Mike’s enthusiasts that they were entering sandwich heaven.
Its absence, in turn, led to some speculation that maybe ownership had changed, that the place was cutting corners, that things were different now, somehow. As that recent New York Magazine piece on Reese’s chocolate showed, there’s ample reason to be vigilant about your favorite food keeping the label while quietly changing for the worse.
But no, Mike says. He’s still running the place. And the tri-tip is still smoked there every day, partly prepped in the same commissary kitchen Mike’s has been using for more than 15 years. It’s only the big yellow smoker that’s gone now.
“Before we opened, I had that big yellow barbecue out at the ranch,” Mike says. “Originally I wasn’t even going to take it over there because it was so big and frumpy, but ultimately I did. We used it for the first batches of tri-tip, even before I opened the kitchen.”
Funny how arbitrary decisions can end up becoming unintentional trademarks like that. As for why the big yellow grill disappeared, it wasn’t a private equity takeover or a boardroom coup. Just a combination of factors.
“People tried to steal that barbecue probably six or seven times over the years,” Sanders says. “One Sunday someone called me and asked ‘Are you moving the barbecue?’”
“I said no, they’re just stealing it again. I told him to keep his distance, just yell at them ‘I know you’re stealing it and I’ve called the police’ and don’t stick around after that.”
“I had to leave the tires flat and a cable through the tires – it was a lot of work the way I had it,” Sanders says.
Still, it wasn’t even crime that ultimately led him to move the yellow smoker. People trying to steal it was just the cost of doing business.
“I ended up buying a barbecue that went under the hood in there because they didn’t have to go back and forth up the alley. It got to be such a chore hauling meat down there to the smoker, then back to the commissary kitchen to get it trimmed up and back again.” Sanders says.
“Over the years it also got to be kind of an eyesore. The landlord got tired of looking at it, so he asked if we could get it out of there, and I agreed.”
Sanders didn’t take his big yellow smoker to the junkyard in the sky though. In fact, it’s possible that we may not have seen the last of it.
“I’m actually thinking about having it repainted,” Sanders says. “Since I took it out, the shopping center got new ownership, and in my new lease it says I can put a barbecue back out there.”
Turning his original smoker into a sort of tourist attraction, or an act of historical preservation is an odd place for Sanders to find himself, after 17 years in an industry that “never in a million years” did he think he’d even be part of in the first place.
Before his second career as a pitmaster/sandwichpreneur, Sanders spent 17 years with Saladino’s Sausage Company, starting in the warehouse. “I sort of got to grow with the company,” Sanders says.
Then he turned 40, and for whatever reason, got the itch to start serving food.
“It was on a whim,” Sanders said. “The Food Network was a big deal back then, and I was just interested in making food for people. It’s a rough business, and I didn’t know anything about it. But I started searching for little hole in the walls, and I came across that place. I didn’t like the shopping center much, but there was just something about it.”
“That place” was the current location of Mike’s Grill. Mike figured the rent there was probably cheap, that he could maybe learn the restaurant business there on the side; do it for fun. He started making inquiries. It turned out, the old tenant’s lease was up. The landlord wanted him out, and the realtor wanted Mike to make a decision – now.
His hand hovering over the button, Mike says he went just to spend a few hours hanging around the shopping center before making his final decision. The area seemed to be teeming with potential customers.
“I didn’t know where they were going or where they were coming from, but there were a lotta cars,” Sanders says.
He signed his first lease, initially for three years. He decided he’d serve – what else? – tri-tip sandwiches.
“I was around when the Meat Market brought tri-tip around here,” Sanders says. “We cooked tri-tip every way you could cook it – on the grill, smoked in the kettle. We cooked tri-tip until we couldn’t cook it anymore.’
Sanders didn’t have any illusions about changing the tri-tip game, but he did have a vision for what he liked. You can’t please everyone, so you might as well start with yourself.
“I intentionally made the bread bigger,” Sanders says. “One of my biggest pet peeves is if you eat a tri-tip sandwich and it’s not trimmed up, you take a bite and you get a bit of fat or gristle in there and half the sandwich comes apart. I made the bread bigger so I can slice the meat thinner, and then I put an herb butter on there. That was just what I liked.”
Fresno’s tri-tip sandwiches are served on everything from hot dog buns to hoagie bread to kaiser rolls, but Mike’s wider, sesame-seeded baguette manages to stand out. In the end what separated Mike’s Grill from some of the also-rans in the Fresno tri-tip sandwich contest was that he’d clearly thought about the entire sandwich experience, rather than just the meat.
“I just wanted them to be able to take a bite, get a bite. And not have the whole sandwich come apart,” Sanders says. “It’s not real conducive to making money. If I cook 100 pounds of meat, I probably only get 50 pounds back after we trim it up. But it’s the only way you can do it.”
As of this writing, Fresno doesn’t have anything, nationally or even regionally recognized, as a “Fresno-style” of sandwich. Is it possible that Sanders has invented one, simply by virtue of doing it his own way?
“If you go over to the central coast they tend to slice their tri tip a little thicker, and they maybe serve it with salsa,” Sanders says.
In the place of salsa, Mike’s Grill has herb butter. In place of oak or hickory, Mike’s has almond wood.
“We use high quality meat and cut the fat and gristle off of it,” Sanders says of his basic philosophy.
“Chuck [Evans, of Chuck’s BBQ] does a brisket-y type tri-tip. A lot of guys like [Dave] Fansler [of Westwoods BBQ] are a fan of the sous vide. We use a southern-fried smoker, and we smoke over almond wood. It’s what we’ve always done, just because that was what was available around here.”
Herb butter as a nod to the Central Valley’s dairies. Almond wood to honor the almond farms. Sanders could maybe get fancier with his sandwiches – add some kind of vegetable, pickled or grilled, for crunch; maybe a spread. Then again, maybe the simplicity is the point.
