History

Pio Loco restaurant was founded in 1986 by Chef Jeff Cerasaro, named after his father 'Pio' (Italian) Cerasaro who was loco enough at the time to back Jeff in his restaurant endeavor, thus the name Pio Loco.

Chef Jeff graduated from City College restaurant program in 1976. After working in Tahoe, before and after City College, Chef Jeff received a call from his uncle to move to Redding to help him run a roadhouse restaurant known as Doc's Skyroom.

Doing lots of Bartending and little cooking Chef Jeff opened a small Mexican lunch spot in the Rusty Nail Bar in the Mt. Shasta Mall. Soon after that Jeff became the food and beverage director at Silverthorn Resort working for Merle Haggard, a very interesting period of time.

In 1986 Pio Loco opened on Lake Blvd in Northern Redding. In 1996 Pio Loco opened at its current location in old downtown Redding housed in a historic building called the Pine St. School built in 1922.

Utilizing the gym/auditorium space in the school the project took almost 2 years as you can see it is now done and we think it came out pretty nifty.

Pio Loco is known for its Mexican cuisine, fresh seafood, steaks and salads with prices for anyone's budget its well worth a visit to try some of our innovation or conventional cuisine.