A doctor named the restaurant. A grandmother built it. An African-American cook taught us the chicken. Three generations later, the doors are still open.
Julius Orton plants the first orange tree in the Lindsay district on his homestead. It earns the area its motto: "Central California's Citrus Center." By 1905, 700 acres of orange groves cover the foothills.
Mexican families arrived to work those groves. By the 1930s, Lindsay was a citrus boom town. In 1939, Dorothea Lange came here to photograph the workers' houses for the Library of Congress.
World War II was still being fought. And in a small Tulare County town called Lindsay, a Mexican grandmother named Nofie Garcia wanted to open a restaurant.
Her doctor — Dr. Bowen — owned a building. He told her she could have it. "Pay me back when you can," he said. He named the place after the alley behind it. That was the deal.
Pay me back
when you can.
In the 1940s, an African-American cook named Bell Johnson worked at China's Alley. He developed our fried chicken recipe — slow-cooked, hand-breaded, the way it's still done today. We never changed it. Locals know to call it in 45 minutes before they arrive.
Grandma's secret for the taco meat came from making the food go further. "She'd put potato into the hamburger meat," Ruben says. That depression-era trick became why every Valley family says our taco meat tastes like home.
Grandma's children took the restaurant in 1970 and ran it for twenty years. The full bar opened in this era. Word traveled. Visalia regulars started making the drive on Friday nights. "The owner makes a mean margarita" became a phrase repeated for the next sixty years.
The Henderson Avenue location in Porterville opens. Same family. Same recipes. Same red sauce, hauled over from the Lindsay kitchen so the consistency wouldn't drift.
Grandma China passed in 2001. She'd been in the kitchen for fifty-eight years. Her recipes are everywhere — every plate that goes out is hers, in some form.
Ruben Gonzales, Grandma's grandson, runs both locations now. He's the third generation. He's added exactly one dish to the menu in his time: "The Ruben Special" — tri-tip, beans and lettuce, served in a sea-shell-shaped fried tortilla. The only "new" item that earned its place.
We've got all this great food to offer everybody in the Valley. Wherever you're from, come and check us out.