El mercado de comida en el centro de Fresno se está llenando. Casi murió después del colapso de Bitwise

There is an adage about best-laid plans and how they tend to go awry.

It’s something Allen Juarez experienced when he expanded his family restaurant, Las Mañanitas, into what was then a newly renovated Bitwise Industries building on R Street in downtown Fresno.

The plan was that the restaurant would be one of four eateries to open food-court style on the ground floor of the building filled up with hundreds of tech-sector employees. Las Mañanitas would be followed by a cafe, a pizza spot and bar, and a poke bowl restaurant that Juarez would run with his daughter.

“Things changed,” Juarez says.

“Obviously.”

Mainly, Bitwise furloughed then fired all its employees and shut the doors on all of its downtown properties. The weekday customers base at Las Mañanitas all but dried up and any master plan for the building was put on hold.

“We thought at any moment the lights were going to be turned off and we’d be done,” Juarez says.

“It was rough road, but we stuck it out.”

Aha Ahi now open

Now, things are actually getting back on track.

On Monday, Aha Ahi opened next to Las Mañanitas.

The restaurant serves build-your-own poke bowls in small, medium and large sizes. The Hawaiian-inspired dish has tuna or salmon (or calamari, shrimp or octopus) on a base of rice covered with a sauce (cirtus ponzu, spicy mayo) and a choice of toppings (green onion or ginger, sesame seeds, fried onions).

This is a lighter, healthier fare for those who don’t want to eat Mexican food every day (or those who can’t because of doctor’s orders), Juarez says.

His daughter will run the restaurant.

“She was the master mechanic behind it,” he says. She went to a culinary training program and spent the past year working up the menu, “creating the sauces and all of that. We were the ones getting the treats at home.”

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Return of R Street Marketplace?

Getting Aha Ahi open and running is the first step in a new plan for Juarez. By the end of the year (or early next year, if it comes to it), he hopes to have the entire first floor of the building open and operating as the R Street Marketplace.

That was the original name and concept for the space, which should make things easier.

There’s already a sign hanging up outside that can be seen as you’re driving along R Street.

Juarez kept in contact with the people who ran Mosaic Cafe and is hoping to bring them back on board with a coffee spot and bakery (it may also have juices, Juarez says). The cafe was owned and operated as a Bitwise entity and was shuttered during the bankruptcy.

That’s the same for Railway Pizza and Cocktails, which Juarez will relaunch, though possibly under a new name. It will serve pizza and wings and have an accompanying bar section with beer and wine (and plenty of televisions for a sports bar-ish vibe).

“I’m trying to open up everything,” Juarez says.

Like in a food court, each eatery will have a designated area, with its own seating and branding, but also part of the open seating throughout the space. The place will be open on weekdays, but also on the weekends and for special events like Grizzlies baseball games.

Las Mañanitas (which is nationally ranked for its breakfast choices) has already established a weekend crowd of families that come to the restaurant from all over Fresno, Juarez says. The new choices will help pull in people who live in the neighborhoods across the street and around the corner.

“They can’t wait for all of this to start opening up.”