Dustin and Kristin Stewart recently celebrated the opening of the restaurant version of their Dusty Buns food truck near Fresno City College. This is a continuation of the Stewarts’ journey from culinary school grads to the owners of Fresno’s first gourmet food truck.

The Stewarts were inspired to start their careers as professional chefs because they enjoyed cooking for friends and host get-togethers. Both pursued their dreams by attending the Le Cordon Bleu School in San Francisco where Dustin studied culinary arts while Kristin studied baking and pastry making.

While helping to run a newly opened restaurant named Medici in the Soma district of downtown San Francisco during their externship, Dustin became head chef, while Kristin became head pastry chef.

After a year at Medici, the Stewarts were offered a live-in chef and management team position at the Drakes Beach Café at the Point Reyes National Seashore. While at the restaurant, they served two types of menus: locally sourced organic burgers to beach-goers during the day and local gourmet organic “prix fixe” multi-course meals with limited choices with a fixed total price at $50 a person at night.

The Stewarts both felt they were serving two totally different clienteles at two totally different price points. They both said they both noticed, “a need to bridge the gap so that a larger variety of people could enjoy an affordable, honest menu filled with local, organic, handmade food.”

They then built a business plan called Dusty Buns to serve handmade buns and organic, gourmet sandwiches to 100 people weekly out of a small food cart. There were no other carts that filled this niche, so they took their business plan to Golden Gate Park. Park officials gave them a list of costs that began at $10,000 for a spot. Kristin and Dustin then went around to different banks and found that they didn’t have many options.

While on a regular visit to see family in Fresno, they found an old taco truck for sale in Selma, and decided to purchase it. They felt that “this was meant to be”. Dustin and Kristin adjusted their business plan to have less money than needed in San Francisco. After meeting local farmers like KMK Farms in Kingsburg, they decided to move to Fresno to start their “bistro bus” business.

During the first few months of opening their food truck business, there were some initial difficulties with city officials because the city had never dealt with this kind of business before. But Dusty Buns has developed a relationship with the city after new regulations were written for food trucks.

After a year of being in business in Fresno, the Stewarts said they have met “tons of people who are passionate about good food” and welcomed their first baby to the world. Dusty Buns was serving almost 500 people a week as they took their truck all over town. From Kaiser Permanente Hospital in North Fresno to the Café Corazon in the Tower District. The Stewarts found that they had to buy more and more food to sustain the demand that they couldn’t fit all the food they needed in the truck.

The Stewarts decided that they needed to find an affordable restaurant space where they could support the extra customers by preparing food for both restaurant and food truck customers. They were looking for an affordable restaurant space for a few months until they found a spot near FCC at Echo and Weldon Avenues north of the central Tower District area. With some help from family and friends, the Stewarts opened the new Dusty Buns Bistro after nine days from signing the lease. With the new business plan, they serve lunch at the food truck and dinner at the bistro. The Stewarts say that they feel very much at home in Fresno and are “honored to serve such a passionate community.”