Taqueria Yarelis opens third Fresno location near River Park

The Anaconda burrito has landed at Blackstone and Nees, and Taqueria Yarelis is now serving customers from a third Fresno location in one of northwest Fresno’s busiest dining corridors. The new spot, near River Park, gives the homegrown taqueria a fresh foothold in a market packed with chain restaurants, retail traffic and diners looking for a fast, familiar meal.

Owner and cook Edwin Espinoza said the move was meant to show that Taqueria Yarelis has “good, authentic and quality food.” He also called the northwest Fresno site “the perfect place” for the business. The restaurant is expected to employ about 15 workers, another sign of the operation’s steady expansion from a family venture into a multi-site brand.

That growth started far from River Park. Taqueria Yarelis began as a catering business in 2009 and later operated as a food cart under the Highway 180 overpass before opening its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2015 at 429 N. Fresno St. A second location followed in 2019 at 6929 N. Willow Ave., Suite 106. Espinoza runs the business with help from his father, mother and sister, keeping the operation firmly in family hands even as it has scaled across Fresno.

The brand’s biggest draw remains its oversized burrito lineup. Taqueria Yarelis went viral in 2016 after posting a video of its three-foot Anaconda Burrito, and the attention spilled well beyond Fresno, reaching Jimmy Fallon and Buzzfeed. The restaurant’s website says the ANACONDA Burrito and ANACONDA Supreme Burrito feed 4 to 6 people, a detail that helps explain why the menu has become part food stop, part spectacle.

The business has also shown it can support volume. The two existing restaurants use more than 3,000 pounds of meat each week, a scale that suggests the River Park-area opening is not a test run but a calculated bet on steady demand. The new site took over a former Ramen Brothers space and required relatively little renovation, mostly kitchen equipment such as flat grills, fryers and refrigerators.

For northwest Fresno, the opening adds another local option in a corridor where restaurants compete hard for repeat customers. For Taqueria Yarelis, it extends a Fresno success story that has grown from a cart under an overpass into a recognizable citywide name.