The Curmudgeon-About-Town

Huh? What? What?

2012-01-29T15:36:00.001-06:00

Lüke
125 East Houston Street

(downtown, in the Embassy Suites Hotel)

On opening the door from the street, my mood changed. I'm told it was visible in my expression. And no wonder: the cacaphonous wall of noise in this new-ish upscale downtown eatery was like a cream pie in the face of an unsuspecting extra during the filming of a 1930s short feature. It wasn't just loud, it was disorientingly loud. There was music of some sort playing, something with a thudding beat and not much else. There were two televisions playing over the bar, on different channels, and it would seem no "mute" buttons on the controls. There was the rattle and thrum of the bartenders doing their job, and of what seemed like a horde of waiters moving around the room, of plates and glasses being raised and lowered, of utensils clicking with surprising clarity. And there was the sound of patrons in a half-full room, with nothing to deaden the sound.

From our table in the center of that room, we could heard people at every table talking. They all spoke loudly, to be heard above the general din, and so added to it. I did a little experiment: I sat back in my chair, as though relaxed (which I certainly was not) and said, in a normal tone of voice, "If I talk like this, can you hear me?" My friend leaned forward and said (I think) "I can see your lips move and I can hear sounds coming from you, but I can't make out what you're saying. What did you say?"

The rest of our meal was spent leaning in, trying and failing to communicate, until we gave up, and just ate.

The waiter came with bread wrapped in a restaurant towel — Lüke's uses these standard rags for napkins and bread wrappings and, I suppose, for busing tables — and poured water for us both. He had a trainee attending him, and I concluded, from watching the two of them move around the room for nearly an hour, that it made him uncomfortable; though the other waiters seemed generally tense as well. Poor things, they have to put up with this unpleasant noise through an entire shift, while the rest of us are free to leave. (And don't think I didn't consider doing that.)

The bread was excellent, a warm sourdough, and I took heart from that as a favourable omen.

The space itself is attractive enough: in the rear, a stairway leads up to additional dining space, perhaps devoid of the clamor one must endure at ground level. A large, elegant bar stretches across old-fashioned black and white tile, like in a 1920s drug store or my 1930s bathrooms at home; hardwood floors in the dining room, laid out in a herringbone pattern; light-coloured walls with minimalist decoration; attractive accoutrements, like brass- or copper-accented light fixtures; small, heavily lacquered hardwood table-tops on wrought iron bases redolent of New Orleans; floor-to-ceiling partitions intermittently separating the bar and dining room (ironically, channeling the sound rather than blocking it); and glass walls looking out to the patio dining area, which overlooks the River Walk and IBC's attractive plaza area. I suspect that, had the weather been conducive to dining out there, I would have felt much better about the whole experience. But not, I think, all that much better.

I ordered a drink, hoping to put me in a more receptive mood, or at least dull the throbbing that was already infecting my spirit. Bourbon and coke, tall. I suspect, though, that the waiter had not heard me clearly, though I did say it twice, with emphasis on the "tall" part; because I had to send the drink back with specific instructions to "have them put this in a bigger glass and add some more Coke to it." The drink did little to improve my outlook on the world, and when I later saw the charge for a well drink, that didn't help either. (So they use Jim Beam for their house bourbon? Big deal. It's a waste of good sippin' whiskey to mix it with Coke anyway; they should invest in a bottle of the no-name stuff for customers like me, who drink it with flavourings and just want it cheap.)

I ordered the dish that had brought me here after a viewing of Lüke's on-line menu: the pressed cochon de lait po-boy. I'm usually reliably a sucker for all things New Orleanian. It was served with a ramekin of cherry mustard, and French fries in a paper-lined cup. My friend ordered the Lüke Burger, which featured Swiss cheese, bacon, and carmelized onions; it, too, came with fries. We traded halves of our sandwiches.

The French fries appear to be hand-cut, medium-thin, and fried in small batches. I believe that last part to be so because, where my friend's fries were hot and crispy (though some were badly over-cooked), mine were cold and limp. I mentioned this to the waiter, who was not moved to whisk them away with an apology and replace them with a smile; but only to suggest that maybe my batch of fries had "sat around for a while." Gee, ya think?

Last city inspection: September 2011
18 demerits

The sandwiches were good, but imperfectly so. The po-boy's filling was excellent, the meat smooth and tender enough to justify the suckling pig's sacrifice, with the cheese still warm enough to be creamy. The sandwich was dressed, which in the context of po-boys means it had lettuce and tomato on it. The lettuce was fine, fresh and crispy; the tomato, though, was mushy and tasteless, and I didn't mind when it fell out of the sandwich onto the serving board, where it remained with (eventually) its companion piece from the burger. The bread, though, was dry. Not dry and crusty like a nice baguette, but dry and chewy like old bread. The cherry mustard sauce would have added some much-needed moisture, but I found it too sweet for my liking. I just left the hard, dry edges of the sandwich with the tomato shards.

The burger was better, though at $16 I thought it very badly overpriced, I don't care whose name is on the bacon. There was plenty of beef, a patty four inches across and more than an inch thick, and it was thoroughly cooked to medium, yet still juicy enough to soak through the bottom of the bun. It was thus to confirm yet again the well-known sink-sandwich theorem.* The cheese was the same Emmenthaler Swiss that adorned the po-boy, and was as creamy as in that other incarnation; the name-brand bacon was tasty, too, cut thick enough to satisfy yet thin enough to cook properly. It was crispy without being brittle.

For condiments, both sandwiches were offered with a side plate containing miniature bottles of Dijon mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup. This silly little affectation managed to be pretentious and mundane at the same time. And I suspect that, more often than not, guests take these ludicrous little containers home as souvenirs of their visit to San Antonio. If I hadn't had a concert to sit through after dinner, I probably would have done that myself. (I may have to try the entrepreneur-chef's place in New Orleans, just to see if that other unique city is being unintentionally trivialized in the same way.)

Back when Lüke opened, a PR firm arranged a preview party for local food bloggers. I see that several of them attended, and were pleased with what they found. I didn't go, though I wanted to at the time, for the same reason I reluctantly skipped the reception offered here following the first concert of the Beethoven Festival a couple of weeks ago: because I knew that a free meal would sway me in a way that I would regret (being entirely too full of myself, and needing the fanciful sense of moral superiority that comes from having too-rigid principles too much of the time). Now I feel unexpectedly vindicated, in a pop-psychology way, in that decision.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get myself back to Lüke. There are a few other things on the menu that I wouldn't mind trying, and the dessert menu has many of my favourites on it. (I almost jumped at the King cake, in this Carnival season, but luckily remembered that King cake is only fun when you have a circle of friends who understand the tradition, and play along with it. Otherwise, it's dry coffee cake with colourful sugar icing on top.) Maybe, when the weather warms up, I'll come back, if only for dessert. Because I know this much: if ever I do go back, it will only be when I can sit outside on the River Walk balcony.

* The quality of a sandwich is directly proportional to its messiness, and the best sandwiches must be eaten over a sink.

Exquisite

2012-01-29T12:10:00.000-06:00

Olmos Park Bistro
4331 McCullough Avenue

(near the Circle, in Olmos Park)

The very thought of spending sixty bucks for lunch for two people would generally be enough to make me cough and choke and say mean things about the chef and lay a curse upon his descendents unto the seventh generation. So how good does the food at Olmos Park Bistro have to be to make me think that today's $63 lunch was money well spent? Yes, that good: and for the occasional splurge, for that all-too-rare wallow in immoderate luxury, this was a good value.

First, though, a disclaimer: my friend Rick and I only went to lunch here in the first place because a good friend of ours has taken a job there. The bias that relationship implies precludes me from assigning a rating to the service; at the same time, I think it'd be unfair to him to not mention the great job he and his colleague do in making customers feel welcome, and in ensuring that they have a dining experience commensurate with the milieu. With us, he replaced the "charmingly French tableside manner" one reliable reviewer noted with a down-home howzyomomminem New Orleans flair that, I suspect, even the stuffiest denizens of Olmos Park and Alamo Heights will find more appealing; although I know he is sufficiently experienced in his trade to adopt the sober, stuffy attitude of Big City Waiter when the situation calls for it. In other words, if you go, ask to sit in Peter's section, and you won't be sorry. But you didn't hear that from me.

I was reluctant to try this place, in part because of the prices, and in part because it is still fairly new. I generally like to wait to see if a place is going to survive, and to let it work out any bugs in the complicated process of feeding large numbers of demanding patrons. Some of the reviews I've read of it were a factor too; though the unseemly haste many of those reviewers showed in getting their thoughts out before the paint was dry on the restaurant's walls inclined me to think that any dissatisfaction they experienced was as likely due to the newness of the venture as to any real problems in the house. While some of the people involved in the bistro have tried their hand as restaurateurs before, I suspect this is the head chef's first attempt at giving breath to his own vision of what a fine restaurant should be. Being skeptical of most such ventures is my nature, but after today's visit I'm hoping he finds great success. Another consideration was that I thought the dinner menu, which I viewed on line a week or two ago, was too dependent on seafood. I don't have the same view of the lunch menu.

If the City of Olmos Park does health
inspections, they keep the results secret.
They should be ashamed.

We were seated in the Solar, a room on the south side of the building that serves as a bar. There are café tables on the sidewalk and the glass walls slide open to allow patrons to enjoy fine weather, but today it was too chilly, despite the bright sun, for that. The main dining rooms, which I only glanced at, seem largely unchanged from when Valentino's briefly occupied this building, and they provide a much less casual space for jewelry to rattle in. The Solar is a comfortable space, simply but nicely decorated, and if there hadn't been a television over the entrance to distract me with CNN's constantly breaking news, I probably would have bumped up that rating by another chili pepper. As it is, though, many of my memories of my first lunch at OPB will have to do with the Australian Prime Minister, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney. None of those persons will add any cachet to the recollection.*

We started with escargots bourguignons and Parisian onion soup. The chef here uses what I consider a fairly traditional recipe, a sinful combination of butter and garlic and parsley, and thankfully the presentation dispenses with the passé bourgeois affectation of shells and tongs. The dish comes to you in a plat à escargots, which will cause you frustration and regret when you find that the hard French bread available is too inflexible to sop up all the delicious residue hiding in the plate's indentations. But if you give in to temptation and lick the plate, you probably aren't ready to dine in public yet.

It may only be because this was my most recent indulgence of the sort that I think these were the best escargots bourguignons that I've ever had, but I cannot recall an occasion when I've had better. And I've chowed down on more snails in more places, including some distinguished Parisian restaurants and my own dining room, than most people, and over a lot of years.** At ten bucks, I consider this appetizer a good deal: I have a fair idea of what goes into making snails not only edible but delectable, and while I doubt that the kitchen at Olmos Park Bistro does all the preparation themselves (it takes days, after all, and involves special wooden boxes and garden hoses and other things you don't normally find in a sensible kitchen), the cooking alone can take hours and require careful attention.

At seven bucks a crock, the onion soup is almost underpriced, even by my miserly standards. My friend Rick is strangely devoted to this "simple" culinary treat, so I get to try it any time it's on the menu. Having now tried the soup at Olmos Park Bistro, I will give it the highest possible compliment by saying that I would order it myself. Yes, I know, I sound like a snob (quelle surprise), but this is, I'm pretty sure, the first time I've found French onion soup anywhere in San Antonio that is as good as I think it's supposed to be: as good as in any kitchen in la belle France. Like the escargots, it's easy to slap the ingredients together according to some formula and toss a hunk of bread on top; most restaurants in town do it that way. It's much more difficult — tediously so — to do it with the care and attention that it properly demands. Somebody in the kitchen is assigned that onerous task, and is performing it well. I hope they get let off their chain once in a while, as a reward.

I chose eggs Benedict as an entrée, I suppose just because it was so unexpected to see it on a lunch menu. (It was actually my second choice, but the ground lamb sandwich with Morrocan spice was unavailable.) It was served with new potatoes and green beans on the side, and the presentation was impeccable. The eggs, ordered poached medium, were done just so. The Hollandaise sauce was applied deftly, neither too much nor too little, and best of all it had a very subtle kick to it, accomplished by the addition of some piquant ingredient; possibly a dash of Tabasco, but I'm just guessing. In any case, it was remarkable for its subtlety. It steals upon you slowly, remains firmly in the middle distance, and lingers like a ghost behind the altar of a cathedral.

The beans had been lightly steamed, and retained all the satisfying crunchiness they could offer. The roasted potatoes had a perfectly toothy texture, smooth without being soft, and the seasoning mix on them had a slight piquancy to it, similar to that of the Hollandaise sauce; but, to my taste, the seasoning mix was too heavy on the salt, though I admit a bias against salt that, it would seem, somewhat exceeds the norm.

My friend Rick chose the organic chicken breast salad, and naturally he couldn't help but compare it with the spinach salad he'd had at a restaurant in the Quarry Market the other day. But there was no comparison. This salad was fresh, trimmed spinach, lightly coated in a surprising vinaigrette dressing with Dijon mustard sauce and maple syrup; dollops of tangy goat cheese and deliciously carmelized onions were mixed in with the greens, and a large chicken breast, pounded medium-thin and coated with a light mixture of bread crumbs mixed with hazlenuts, overlay all. I got only a taste of it, though I kept hinting for more, but Rick was too intent on his food to respond.

I understand that.

* Though I have nothing against the Australian Prime Minister, don't get this Republican started on Mr Gingrich or Mr Romney.

** And yet I'm still only 49!

Just Polite Applause, I Think

2012-01-22T22:41:00.001-06:00

Houston Street Bistro
204 East Houston Street

(downtown, by the Majestic Theater)

Seated in a front corner of the Houston Street Bistro on a show night at the Majestic, with unobstructed views of the entire room and of the sidewalk outside, I had a chance to reflect on the excitement of downtown when the San Antonio Symphony is performing. In past years, I've often chosen this particular downtown restaurant for dinner before a concert or stage play; first, because it is one of a handful of restaurants within spittin' distance of the theater (a larger handful now than before, but still only a handful); second, because it's always been pretty good. Never great, mind you, just good. It aspires to greatness, with a varied menu chock full of interesting dishes; a menu that bows slightly toward the current faux-healthy fascination with exotic-sounding salads and seafood dishes, and describes them in perfect postmodern chef-speak; but which keeps sight of the fundamental druthers of South Texas diners, with a reasonable selection of steaks and chops, too.

To my way of thinking, the bistro's proximity to the city's Majestic Crown Jewel has been as much a curse as a blessing. When I would go there for lunch years ago, I always found the food carefully prepared and the service relaxed and efficient. But in the evening, when a normal restaurant's three-hour dinner rush is compressed into a theater-going hour and a half, little things are done too hurriedly, and service suffers.

Sometimes it matters, as last night.

The glum and dour maître-d' (I saw him smile at one departing customer, and heard him bark brusquely at a sympathetic foursome who had arrived without a reservation) seemed on the verge of apoplexy when I had to wave him over and ask for a second menu for our table for two. From where we sat, we could watch him cast his baleful glare around the room like the Eye of Sauron, and pity the wait staff; but four of the five waiters on duty seemed to move fluidly around the room, tending their tables with grace and efficiency, and covering for each other where needed. Only one waiter — ours, as luck would have it — seemed to merit the menacing glower of the maître-d'.

He tried hard, our waiter; I'll have to give him that. But I suspect the Houston Street Bistro is not his milieu. Having at last secured a second menu and consulted it, we gave him our order, and he wrote it down, or seemed to. But a minute later he was back, asking my dining companion what wine he had ordered. Three minutes after that, he was back again, asking me what wine I had ordered. (We had both ordered the same wine.) (And later, when our entrées were served, he seemed unsure of what he had for us, or who got what.)

Within a few minutes, a different waiter brought our order of panko-crusted calamari. The presentation was respectable: a good number of morsels filling a plate, along with a steel ramekin full of thick cocktail sauce. The breading was even, mild and light, pale and unseasoned, and nearly flavourless. The squid, though, was unnecessarily tough and chewy, indicating that the frying oil hadn't been allowed to heat up as much as it should have. And the cocktail sauce was strangely bland, and thick enough to pull the breading from the squid.

We had just polished off this dish when our waiter brought another, unordered dish of calamari. As he returned it to the kitchen (destined, I hope, for the bellies of the staff, rather than the wastebasket), the maître-d' tailed him with unmistakable purpose.

"About that calamari...."

In time, our waiter returned bearing entrées. We took the opportunity to ask, for a second time, about another basket of bread. He assured us, as he had before, that it was in the oven; an explanation we accepted until we realized that, while our chincy three-slice basket of mild sourdough was in the oven, other baskets of bread had been streaming forth from the kitchen like promises from a congressional candidate.

The dishes we had chosen for our main courses were reasonably good. Competent is the word that describes them. The chicken gorgonzola was a large-ish skinless chicken breast on a bed of overcooked cappelini in a mushroom cream sauce. There was nothing light about the sauce; it had been applied with a slightly too heavy hand, giving the pasta the appearance of great age, when in fact (as I know from my own kitchen) it was just the effect caused by a few minutes under a hot chicken breast. It made no difference in the taste, or indeed in the quality of the dish, but it made a less pleasant presentation than might have been had. Abundant sun-dried tomatoes completed the dish, seasoned distinctly yet not overwhelmingly with tarragon, an herb that grows readily in this part of the country.

Last city inspection: August 2011
11 demerits

The "West Side Story" — all the dishes are given these cute little theatrical names, which seemed to confuse our waiter when we used them in ordering — is a large tossed salad, offered with tuna steak or, as we ordered it, salmon. The salad greens were reasonably fresh: there was no suggestion that they'd just been picked from the back garden, but clearly they had not been long on hand. The variety of ingredients showed some inspiration had gone into the construction of the dish, and in addition to the fresh arugula and red and green lettuce, there were pitted kalamata olives, blanched green beans, boiled potatoes, hard-boiled egg and roma tomatoes. The tomatoes had only a faint flavour and a too-dense texture; the other ingredients were more pleasing. The dressing, served on the side, was a thick cream-based affair, and there was just enough of it to serve. Since I tend to be somewhat frugal in my use of salad dressing (except in comparison with my wife, who prefers no dressing at all), others may well find they want more. The salmon topping the salad was nicely grilled, with the woody flavour clearly noticeable in the meat, while at the same time the innate salmon flavour of the meat was somewhere between subdued and absent.

The prices at this restaurant were in line with what one would expect to pay in a somewhat upscale establishment. Perhaps coincidentally, the bill here was almost exactly the same as what we ran up the previous Saturday evening at a similar-class restaurant a block away. Except, on that occasion, we left a larger tip.

All the Old Familiar Places

2012-01-21T14:54:00.000-06:00

Ciao Lavanderia
226 East Olmos Drive

(in Olmos Park, just off the circle)

Being lately resolved (again) to lose some weight, my wife and I decided that the traffic circle in Olmos Park, a mile and a quarter distant, was not, in fact, too far to walk. And it being a really fine evening, with temperatures in the high 60s and a clear sky, it turned out to be a really enjoyable half hour's walk. (The return trip, being slightly downhill, was even nicer.)

And it being such a great evening, the sort we expect here in Paradise South only during fleeting moments in April and October, we took a table outside of Ciao Lavanderia, a place we have been coming to, not frequently, but somewhat regularly, since it opened I don't know how many years ago. Being outside was particularly nice because, in addition to the perfect weather, we could enjoy the relative quiet — there's so little traffic on Olmos Drive that it's much quieter out on the sidewalk than inside the restaurant. Unfortunately, before long the restaurant staff propped open the front door, giving us just enough of the noise from inside to cause us to think about moving, but not so much that we were actually roused to do so.

And even better, that section of tables was being attended to by one Callie, an articulate young woman who may be, when it comes to restaurant food in this town, among the most intellectually straightforward people working in the business. It was still fairly early in the evening when we arrived, so she could discuss with us, unhurried, not just the menu at Ciao (which, in all modesty, we probably know as well as most of their more frequent guests), but favourite dishes at several other places in town. She was also very helpful in selecting a wine, and in selecting entrées, and even when the place started to fill up as the evening went along, she ensured that every aspect of our evening was as enjoyable as it could be. I was impressed enough that I almost — almost — left more than a 20% tip, which heretofore I've only done by math error, or when dealing with foreign currencies, or after way too many drinks.

The new menu at Ciao is not extensive, but it is impressively more varied than some other nearby restaurants.* That was one of the reasons we chose it this evening; the other two places that we considered near the Circle had menus that I can almost describe as monotonous: one beef dish, one chicken dish, and ten kinds of seafood. Ciao offers pasta and pizza and a few traditional Italian dishes done with flair and verve, and quite a few unusual dishes that start with flair and verve and go from there.

I suppose it's a good thing that my favourite dish at Ciao, pappardelle with sausage and spinach, is no longer offered; it forced me to try something new. Being, as I said, newly resolved to shed some pounds, I liked the sound of the goat cheese and polenta salad. But our waitress was adamant that I would find that an insufficient meal (God bless her), so I gave her my second choice, steak fiorentina, one of the evening's specials. My wife, ever the sensible one, chose another special dish, the pasta primavera.

If Olmos Park does restaurant
inspections, they don't
publicize the results.

The pasta was excellent. The pasta was orrechie, the oil-based sauce was light, the vegetables were done tender-crisp, and the seasonings were deft. The quantity was sufficient for her to eat her fill and still have enough left for tomorrow's lunch.

This was also true of my meal, which was good but less perfect than hers. My steak was barely medium-rare, about eight or nine ounces thick-cut, but the quality of the meat should, I think, have been better, as it carried a $27 price tag. It was seasoned well for the most part, but a couple of bites were overloaded with black pepper. Underneath the steak was a bed of cannellini in a nicely seasoned sauce; and some familiar salad greens, possibly arugula, topped with a few shreds of hard cheese. The taste, except for those concentrations of pepper, was exquisite, but in the struggle between beef and blade, the blade was near overmastered.

* Specifically, Olmos Park Bistro and McCullough Avenue Grill, both of which we had considered as targets for this evening's foray.

Some differences noted.

2012-01-20T15:33:00.001-06:00

Big Bob's Burgers
447 West Hildebrand

(by the railroad tracks near San Pedro)

Last Spring, I went to the Big Bob's Burgers on Harry Wurzbach and found it interestingly unimpressive. Soon after, the restaurant moved to the edge of my own neighbourhood, and the owner sent me a comment through this blog (which, it appears, I didn't publish, and deleted; I don't remember why) asking me to try the new location. Today, my friend Rick and I did just that, making it a point to order the same meal we had gotten at the old location (except that I passed on the fried Twinkie.)

The first difference I noted was in the pricing. The cheeseburger combo was still $6.50, but now it consists of the burger and a drink, whereas last time it included fries. Our total bill this time was about the same without the fried Twinkie as it was last May. (The Twinkie is now four cents more, but, like, who cares?)

The second difference was the service. This time it was fine. Businesslike. Efficient. Last time it was particularly good, and we felt welcomed in a way that we didn't feel today. Today, we were just customers.

The new location seems larger than the old one, and naturally has not had time yet to acquire the slightly grungy patina of age (also known, in some circles, as "character"), but the staff seems to be making a good start. I noticed unswept floors by the cash register, by the drinks stand, and by our table, and the chairs had not been wiped when the tables were bussed. If this had been the tail end of the lunch rush I would overlook that, expecting that it would be dealt with when the staff was less harried; but this was before the rush had begun. There was no excuse for the lax housekeeping.

The food itself was improved from before. Not so much the burgers, which were both large and very well dressed, with soft and tasty buns; but both burgers still lack that very desirable grilled flavour that is the first requisite to separate the ordinary from the extraordinary. The onion rings, which were good last time, were excellent today: large, crispy, fried in clean, hot oil to the right degree of doneness. The serving size might have been smaller than last time, but given that, before, we had to leave some of them on the table, that wasn't a problem. The fries showed the biggest improvement, mainly because they, too, were fried in clean oil. They are hand cut, with the peelings on, and so there are substantial differences in texture depending on how close to the outside of the 'tater a particular fry was, but they were generally more satisfying than before. They still had a dusting of seasoned salt on them, but not enough, on this occasion, to displease. I note, though, that many of the fries were fragments, indicating that they were from the dregs of a fryer basket that had seen some rough treatment.

Big Bob's Burgers is okay; just okay. But in this neighbourhood, if people want a really good burger, they will think first of Chris Madrid's (Lord knows why), and second of Daddy Macky's, both of which are a few blocks away, on Blanco. I don't doubt that Big Bob's can survive here, but if its owner wants to prosper, I think he really needs to up his game.

Creative Mexican Food

2012-01-18T12:41:00.003-06:00

Acenar
146 East Houston Street

(at the River Walk, in the Valencia Hotel)

Even with the propane heaters going full blast, it was just a little too cold to think about sitting outside for dinner tonight. It's a shame, really, because Acenar has one of the nicest outdoor dining areas in town, one level above the River; and the traffic on Houston Street, right beside the balcony, is generally light enough not to interfere with patrons' enjoyment of the atmosphere of the place. But inside, it's pretty nice, too. Someone has devoted a great deal of thought and attention to the décor and ambience in this restaurant. The interior is done in medium orange, mulberry and beige, with the design of the walls echoed in the light fixtures, while the furniture is done mostly in black, with fake zebra-wood tops. The overall effect is one of sophistication and understated elegance, as though they were saying they could make it fancier but don't want to show off. As a place to eat, it is welcoming, comfortable and attractive.

We showed up on a Saturday night without a reservation (what is this town coming to?), and were relegated to the worst table in the house. It was worse than the worst table in the house should have been, bad enough that the manager should seriously consider making do with one less table. (Or he or she could just invest in a sound-deadening screen, to put between the crap-table and the kitchen alley.)

Direct access to the restaurant from the street is through Acenar's bar area, which, when we arrived, was thronged with prosperous-looking thirty-somethings playing with their smart-phones; until one couple started dancing, at which point all the other prosperous-looking thirty-somethings stopped fondling their screens and watched surreptitiously, perhaps even enviously. I don't know the outcome of this event, whether the dancers went back to their stools or the others joined in, for at that point the tag-team duo of hostesses got their ducks in a row and we were led away to our purgatory.

We each ordered a house margarita. While waiting on that, we were served chips and salsa; the chips in a paper cone placed in a wire holder rescued from the now-defunct Water Street Oyster Bar, which used to use these things in lieu of bread-baskets. The salsa is a house concoction of roasted tomatoes, roasted peppers, and roasted something else, which was neither piquant nor smoky. It wasn't bad, but considering how much roasting had to take place for this production, it seemed a questionable investment of time and energy. The chips were equally unimpressive, with neither an interesting flavour nor an appealing texture. They were sturdy enough for the salsa, but in a place with such elevated pretensions as Acenar has, that didn't seem to be enough.

The margaritas, when they came (in tumblers), proved very strong, with a good citric taste and a smooth tequila de oro. By that time, we had arrived at our choices: crepas de pato for me, pescado veracruzana for my table-mate.

Last city inspection: December 2011
23 demerits

Crepas de pato proved to be a good choice. The crepes were corn with a little pepper in the masa (serrano, according to the menu), and the filling was juicy, tender, delectable duck meat roasted to perfection. The topping, a tamarind sauce with onions, complemented the flavour well, and there appeared to be a gloss of melted Monterey Jack cheese as well. Over the top was a sprinkle of jicama, cut shoestring fashion. Unfortunately, its texture was rather too much like actual shoelaces for it to add anything to the meal, beyond its appearance.

The pescado veracruzana was excellent. The fish was fresh and flaky, and it was topped with a deliciously piquant sauce of tomatoes, capers and olives. It was served on a bed of fluffy rice, with more than a hint of cilantro, and wilted watercress.

After this enjoyable meal (and finding ourselves with some time before the concert that had brought us downtown), we each chose a dessert. My first choice from the expensively-printed dessert menu proved to be no longer available; apparently the manager was opposed to tossing away such a hefty investment merely because it was no longer correct. My second choice, crepas de cajeta, failed to impress. The crepes in this case, small and slightly sweet, had the texture of whole-wheat tortillas that have been too long in a microwave. The filling, Mexican vanilla ice cream, was flavourful, but had the texture of mellorine. My friend's guava sorbet in "strawberry-watermelon soup" had an impressively deep guava flavour, but no soup. "A" for taste, but "C" for effort.

I did not come to Acenar expecting to dine like this for cheap, but when I add up the charges for what we ordered, I get to about fifty-five dollars; add tax to that and I'm up to sixty. So why was my bill, when it came, over sixty-eight dollars? Because, I believe, those "house margaritas" we had ordered, which were supposed to be $5 each, were something more elaborate, and we were charged for what we got, not what we'd ordered. Contrary to my usual practice, I didn't check the bill closely on this occasion, but that wouldn't have mattered: there were no prices on the drinks menu, so I wouldn't have known. It's only now, after the fact, looking at the menu on line, that I see the price and realize I was charged for something else.

I'm prepared to accept my share of the blame for not having been more vigilant about it, and I will put the difference down to plain ol' human error on the waitress's part. But next time I go to Acenar, I'll be more careful. The margaritas were good, but personally I'd rather have the extra five bucks.

Boxcar Boardwalk Takes Shape

2011-12-09T20:11:00.001-06:00

All Aboard Deli
Dirty Dogz
One Cute Cupcake Boutique
Box Car Creamery
all at 5300 McCullough

(in The Yard shopping center in Olmos Park, behind Olmos Perk)

For many a year, a line of six old box cars sat vacant in the back of the Yard shopping center, on McCullough in Olmos Park. The owner of the shopping center had an idea, but apparently lacked the will to bring it to life. In the past year, though, that vision has started to blossom, and now the cars are all refurbished, and occupied, and open for business. One is a candle and gift shop, and one is a salon, but the other four have become, just within the last few months, four of the more interesting new small food establishments in town.

Last city inspection: August 2011
6 demerits

The first to open was the All Aboard Deli. I've been two or three times now, and have recommended it to a number of friends; all of whom, I suspect, have promptly forgotten about it. Out of sight, out of mind, no doubt: the biggest problem for All Aboard Deli's success, like all of the excellent new businesses in The Yard, is invisibility.

All Aboard Deli features a decade of sandwiches with railroad-related names, a gimmick that comes off as clever without being cloying. Some of the ingredients are rather too new-age for my own tastes — can you say 'sprouts'? — but there are plenty of people in the Midtown area, including some whom I respect and admire, for whom New and Trendy are not necessarily things to disparage, and these sandwiches should attract their interest. I will probably never order anything that boasts homemade mango avocado spread, but there are plenty of other things to interest me: excellent meats, really, really good breads (including a rye that, I find, I must exclude from my general dislike of rye bread), and tasty cheeses (Swiss, havarti and feta; the only real drawback about this place is that, with the low volume of business they presently have, they can't afford to offer a wider variety of cheeses), plus the fundamentally desirable combinations of textures that come from the use of high-quality, fresh ingredients.

My most recent choice was the Train Car Club. (Shouldn't that be the Club Car Club?) Lots and lots of thinly sliced turkey ("Black Forest Turkey," it says on the menu; is that a brand, or a style? I neither know nor care; it was good, and there ends my interest) and equally thinly sliced ham ("Tavern Ham," it says; that must be a brand name; but again, who cares?) with crisp bacon and all the right accoutrements to make the price seem more than reasonable; and all nestled between two marvellous slabs (i.e., thick slices) of a wonderfully tasty and surprisingly light bread. My friend Rick went with the Reuben,* piles of warm pastrami on that excellent rye bread I mentioned, plus sauerkraut (which isn't bad stuff, kids, despite the name) and Swiss cheese, with a homemade dressing. It was all I could do to keep from swiping half his sandwich.

All Aboard Deli is a wonderful out-of-the-way spot, and I'm torn between the desire to see them succeed, and the fear that they will succeed and be ruined for me.

Two cars over is Dirty Dogz, a very new place looking to capitalize on the current trend toward gourmet hot dogs. Six months ago I would have sneered at the very idea that hot dogs are real food; but then, under pressure from family members, and displaying the lack of resistance that comes from being on vacation, I succumbed to the idea while visiting the gulf coast. OK, I admit it: hot dogs are not just for children, nor is their approbation limited any longer to cookouts, ball parks, movie theaters, visits to Chicago or New York, or quaint little carts on downtown sidewalks in tourist towns. Hot dogs, properly done, can be not just a meal, but a fully satisfying meal.

No city inspection yet

In this case, three hot dogs split between two people proved to be almost too much of a meal. Surprising, because they really didn't look all that big. We tried the Dirty Italian Meatball Dog, the Dirty Stuffed Jalapeño Dog, and the Dirty Kraut Dog. Based solely on the listed ingredients of each, I expected to like the meatball dog best and the kraut dog the least. Didn't happen that way: I couldn't pick a favourite. The kraut dog: nicely grilled onions and lots — even too much, if that's possible — of spicy brown mustard, and the overstuffed Nathan's dog. I wouldn't mind if the bun had been toasted just a little longer; that's true of all the hot dogs we sampled, because they tend quickly to turn to mush with the application of moist ingredients, of which there are plenty. But toasting buns is a finicky thing, so I won't hold the soggy buns too much against the kitchen here. In any case, even with the depredations of mustard (and other liquids) on bread, there was still enough of that crunchy, crumbly texture to titillate the tongue as these hot dogs vanished in quick succession.

The problem with the Italian meatball dog — I say problem; it was no problem — is that I'm pretty persnickity about all things Italian. What little sense of ethnic heritage I have, being an all-American boy from way back,** is tenuously linked to a couple of Italian grandparents, one of whom could cook and the other of whom could eat, and both of whom could talk about food. So I'm disinclined to be appreciative of generic marinara sauce and commercially available mozzarella cheese; which, naturally, are what one finds on the Dirty Italian Meatball Dog. Still, even I, curmudgeon that I am, and dago-snob par excellence (or should I say per eccellenza?), can't deny that even mediocre generic marinara sauce and commercial mozzarella on generic meatballs out of some food-supplier's stock make, in combination, a delicious meal. It's all in the spices. Add to them a big ol' fat beefy hot dog and a toasted bun (soggy from the mozzarella, yes, but you know the kitchen-sink corollary to the mess-to-sandwich ratio) and you've got something worth having. And at four and a half bucks, I could stay fat on these things alone.

Then there's that stuffed-jalapeño dog: a nice kick to it, but one that sneaks up on you. After one bite I thought about old girlfriends who would just lie there. By the second bite I was picturing fantasies no mere woman has ever lived up to. Marvellous combination of flavours, as in a well-made stuffed jalapeño (and better, in fact, because it has bacon too), but without the deep-fat-frying. Again with the toasted bun infused with all the liquids of the ingredients, but also again, still enough crunch to satisfy that need for texture. Saying this was my least favourite of the three is like saying that big piles of Euros are my least favourite currency, compared to dollars and pounds. I would not turn them down, even in today's international market.

Last city inspection: November 2011
six demerits, half of which
I'd say don't count

So after you've downed a big, thick sandwich or a gourmet hot dog, you're faced with choices for dessert. Your choice becomes a conundrum, a Gordian knot of spectacular finishes, in the guise of businesses located at either end of the row of box cars. At the north end, you've got One Cute Cupcake Boutique, run by two women who know cute, and cupcakes. Being proudly male, I wasn't too enthused by the elevated cuteness quotient of this little bakery, but I couldn't help but be impressed by the cleverness of its operators (not to mention their exuberant enthusiasm for their products) or the variety of goodies on offer.

the goodies

Having already stuffed myself with hot dogs (and ice cream, but we'll get to that), I couldn't bring myself to have a cupcake. Or, at least, I managed to resist chowing down on half a dozen of these things right then. So I bought a few to go. I'm happy to report that all three managed to survive the three-minute ride home.

People who know me know that I have, not to put too fine a point on it, a weakness for baked goods, so I say with some small pride that now, several hours after fetching home these delightful, even whimsical little cakes — including something called the Elvis, and a version of Boston cream pie that I will undoubtedly save for last — two of the three I bought liveth still. The one that has succumbed to my lust was a banana-nut cake stuffed (and I do mean stuffed) with sweet cream cheese filling. The banana chip that graced the top was more a visual treat than a culinary one, but that is the nature of banana chips. The cake was moist and firm and just sweet enough to be pleasing; the filling was very sweet, with a velvety texture and a good creamy flavour. Thank the Lord I only bought one. If I'm very lucky, I will not hear the others calling out to me in the middle of the night.

No city inspection yet.

Toward the other end of the boxcar boardwalk is the Box Car Creamery, open now about a month, I think. It presently offers about a dozen and a half flavours of ice cream. When I asked him where it's made, he said "Up north," which I thought meant, you know, New York or Cincinnati or some other foreign place, so I sardonically said, "You mean, like, Boerne?" Well, yes, turns out Boerne is exactly right. (In the owner's defense, I should mention that he comes from California, where people can't be expected to understand the deep cultural baggage that the term "up north" carries.) It is not, technically, home-made ice cream, but it is certainly artisanal ice cream. Rich, heavy, sinfully creamy ice cream, with intense flavours and no skimping on the ingredients. The chocolate is too chocolate-y to believe, the cookies and cream too thick with cookies. The amaretto peach pecan, my early favourite, proved to be too much for me. I will have to work up to it, I guess.

With the removal of Justin's from Main Avenue to the Riverwalk, the opening of the Box Car Creamery is an especially welcome addition to the mid-city area, one approaching the promise of salvation. In South Texas, good ice cream is a pleasure in December, but an absolute necessity in summer. Right now this place has very limited hours (noon to five, if I remember right), but if we're lucky it will survive long enough to expand the schedule, and will be there to fill our needs when the temperature outside starts to approach the average I.Q. Let us pray.

* He is so predictable.

** Though still only 49 years.

Good, as Steakhouses Go

2011-12-03T16:21:00.001-06:00

Texas Land & Cattle Steak House
201 North St. Mary's Street

(in the Drury Inn, on the Riverwalk

next to the Sniper Trees floodgate)

Here's the thing about steak houses: if you own an outdoor grill, and are willing to spring for the charcoal and some mesquite chips, and take the time to monitor your piece of meat on the grill, you can make yourself a steak every bit as good as what people seem willing to pay any amount for.

It used to be that steak houses had access to better quality meats than you could find at your local supermarket, but that's no longer true. The HEB I shop at, much as it irritates me in oh, so many ways, carries some excellent USDA-Prime steaks, as good as any you'd find at any of the big-name places around town. So what you're buying at a steak house is the convenience of having someone else do all the work, and plying you with alcohol and all the good, hot bread you want.

The holiday season is a particularly good time to visit
restaurants on the Riverwalk

Because I have that knowledge firmly lodged in my brain, I can't bring myself to go, any more, to the really high-end steak houses. I've been to all of them, I believe, and I've never yet had a steak that is really worth the exorbitant charges they ask for. When I have that yen to let someone else cook my meat, there are only a few options for me*, and all of them chain restaurants: Outback, which has franchises in twenty countries around the world; Saltgrass, a part of the Landry's Restaurant empire; and Texas Land & Cattle, which at least has the advantage of being Texas-born, though it now has a few locations beyond the light of the Lone Star.

All of these steak houses offer high-quality meat, properly cooked, nicely accompanied, and served in a comfortable setting. They compete on seasonings, which is purely a matter of personal preference, and on gimmicks like Outback's "bloomin' onion" and it's Australian theme. Texas Land & Cattle's gimmicks — it's "signatures" — are the smoked sirloin and the lettuce wedge, both of which found their way to our table last night.

The lettuce wedge is exactly that: a big chunk of iceberg lettuce, gussied up with bleu cheese, bacon, tomato and croutons. As salads go, if you like bleu cheese, this is an excellent choice. It's crisp and fresh, and it's so large you might want to just have the rest of your meal served in a go-box. Personally, I rate bleu cheese right above molded bread on my list of favourite foods, so I opted for the tortilla soup as an appetizer. The creamy broth was reminiscent of the excellent tortilla soup my wife makes, with the added bonus of smoked chicken, which imparted a pleasing flavour, lifting the soup above the ranks of the merely good tortilla soups. The serving should have been larger, the tortilla pieces more plentiful, but overall it was a satisfying prelude to the meal.

The smoked sirloin is the item that keeps this restaurant at the top of my steak-house preferences, such as they are. It is a sirloin, the whole thing, coated with cracked pepper and smoked, which is something I can't do at home. It's the item I've chosen from the menu probably nineteen times out of twenty. Last night my wife chose it (in combination with the lettuce wedge), and it was as good as ever. But I decided to sample some of the other items on the menu for a change, so I went with the TXLC Trio, a sampler plate with a six-ounce sirloin steak (graded USDA Choice, not prime), a mesquite-grilled chicken breast with barbecue sauce, and four medium shrimp (fried or grilled; I chose grilled). The menu lists a rice side-dish, but I got a baked potato instead.

Having had my soup and two loaves of soft, crusty, hot bread, it's no surprise that about half my entrée made it home to be today's lunch. There is a lot of food on the TXLC Trio plate, enough even to make a curmudgeonly miser like me feel like I got a pretty good deal. (A nice, refreshing drink of bourbon helped, too.) The steak was cooked just a tad beyond the medium-rare I ordered it at, but close enough to call it done right. The chicken was cooked, I would say, just about perfectly too, though I found the barbecue sauce used to be much sweeter than I care for; a common complaint for me. The shrimp were cooked through and nicely seasoned, but the tails were burnt. I don't think it'd really be fair in counting off for that, though, since probably 99% of the customers any restaurant gets wouldn't give a hoot in Hell about the state of the meatless tail. But I'm one of those peculiar people who will usually eat the crunchy little buggers, so I was disappointed that they were carbon instead of calcium.

Latest city inspection: May 2011
33 demerits (rather a lot)

The baked potato was steroidally huge, and accompanied with all the fixings we want on a "loaded" potato, including a mixture of cheddar and jack cheese instead of the usual cheddar. If I'd've thought to ask for some jalapeño slices for it, it might have been perfect. (And another benefit to go to a steak house instead of cooking at home is, they don't serve microwaved baked potatoes at restaurants, and we all know there's a noticeable difference.)

The downtown location of Texas Land & Cattle is in a hotel. That would normally be a strike against it for me, because hotel restaurants tend to cater to a clientèle other than the local population. But a steak house is a steak house is a steak house, and besides, this particular hotel can claim some indulgence as part of a locally-owned chain. Besides, the Riverwalk is such a pleasant place, especially this time of year. I've also been to the location on Loop 410, and actually prefer it in some ways (convenient free parking, for example, but when the weather's fine, as it was last night, the distance from door to car is actually a point in favour of downtown restaurants). The interior décor is pleasing if not authentic, and the staff that I've encountered at the downtown location, and not just on last night's visit, has always been of the highest calibre for efficiency and helpfulness.

* There are some good independent steak houses around, but my wife doesn't ever want to go to those places.

Politically Correct Decoration by Committee

2011-12-02T21:42:00.001-06:00

For as long as I can remember, the City of San Antonio strung those big old-fashioned coloured bulbs from the trees of the Riverwalk every Christmas. They would spend months, it seemed like, putting them up, checking them for burned-out bulbs to replace, and they would light them up for a month or so, then spend a month or so taking them all down.

The county courthouse dome from the Riverwalk

Our present city council, not content to let San Antonio enjoy the lameness that is its hallmark, decided to get out in front of the politically-correct trend toward eco-friendly lighting, and spent who knows how much to replace the nearly quarter of a million old-fashioned bulbs with newfangled LED lights — millions of them. These new lights are brighter, the City points out (implying that brighter is necessarily better) and the two million or so lights we now have to decorate our Riverwalk with use half as much electricity as the 200,000 old bulbs did: ten times the bulbs, twenty times the light, for half the recurring costs.

Not knowing how much the new strings of bulbs cost — knowing only that, when I price them in the stores for my own consideration, I still consider them too expensive — I reckon that, with as many lights as the City puts out every year, that reduction in annual costs is probably enough to make the purchase price worthwhile.

So I was all gassed up to get downtown this year and see these newfangled lights, and have now done so.

The new lights certainly are brighter. In fact, they are positively garish in their glow. This might not be such an unpleasantry, if the lights were strung gracefully from the branches overhanging the water, as the old ones used to be. But these new ones are wrapped tightly around the trunks and major branches of selected trees, in the already-dated style popular in the early 1990s, to make the trees so illuminated seem like so many dead victims of lightning strikes. Colorful, yes; bright, yes; pretty, in some ways yes. But not nearly as attractive or as graceful as the old dangling strands of barely-bright lights were in years past.

I sure hope that next year, and on into the future, the people who decide how to use these things will devote a little more thought to the decorations than they did this year.

Excursion Along Hildebrand, Part I

2011-11-28T18:52:00.001-06:00

After posting my last review, a couple of days ago, I decided to visit some of the other places on Hildebrand that I haven't been to, or haven't been to lately, just for comparison's sake, and to put more substance into my often-stated belief that there are more good taquerías and Mexican restaurants on that street than in all of Loopland. Today was a good start.

Today I visited

El Manantial Mexican Restaurant

1136 West Hildebrand

(at I-10, next to the railroad tracks)

This restaurant is in one of the seedier-looking strip centers in, let's face it, a not-too-glamourous part of a no-longer-glamourous street. There was a time when Hildebrand Avenue was the City Limits, and by the time they moved farther out, Hildebrand was reaching what would be its peak of trendiness. It has long ago subsided from what was never a particularly frothy avant-garde position, but neither is it continuing to decline. If anything, it's threatening to experience a sort of low-level gentrification.

But not here by the railroad tracks. It's a semi-industrial area, the natural home of machine shops, contractor supply houses, tattoo parlours and bars you only hear about on the blood-and-guts local news. This particular strip-center is so tatty-looking that I've never considered stopping at whatever restaurant has occupied the space on the end over the years, and there have been plenty of them. (Though I did consider buying the little shopping center when it was for sale a few years back.) El Manantial is only the latest kitchen to set up shop there.

No city inspection yet.

I wonder if its predecessors in that space were as good. If they were (and plenty of good restaurants have failed in this town, like in any other), then I regret not having tried them. Because El Manantial is one of the best on a street filled with good ones. It is totally lacking in aesthetic attractiveness on the outside, but once in through the doors, you find a large space, brightly painted in attractive colour combinations: two-toned side walls with a terra cotta theme are juxtaposed with muted yellow (my friend Rick calls it "goldenrod"; unlike most men, he knows the names of more than eight colours) on the back walls and a section of ceiling. The décor is for the most part done with more of a thought toward, if not elegance, then cohesion. The exception to this is the area around the counter, in the back, where the tasteful decorator's work concedes to the exigencies of a mom-and-pop business, and all is hand-lettered poster boards advising of specials, rules, and so on. Oh, well.

The place was empty when we arrived, though apparently everyone was just waiting to see where we went to eat, because it filled up quickly when noon came. Many of the people who joined us in the restaurant are regulars, as evinced by the greetings they gave the staff, and each other. We, however, two gringos in a swarm of mejicanos, received service as prompt, as pleasant, and as efficient as any of that regular crowd. Our waitress spoke about as much English as I do Spanish, but between us we got by just fine. I believe she's one of the more effective waitrons* I've encountered lately.

The food was very good overall. The corn tortillas holding my tacos (made in-house, naturalmente) were medium-thin and not at all lacking in coherence. That's a fancy way of saying they didn't fall apart even though they weren't heavy. Rick's flour tortillas (also made in-house) were good, but unremarkable. The fillings he chose (his usuals, beef fajita and picadillo) were on the high side of average, with plenty of meat, good seasoning, and, in the fajita taco, a good accompaniment of onion and pepper.

My machacado taco was better than average, and average, as you must know, is pretty good. There was good dried beef in it, and the egg was cooked solid but not dry. The other requisite ingredients were all present, although if anything there was rather more onion than I would call perfect; but it only obtruded mildly, and in passing. It wasn't enough of a flaw to really complain about. Usually I wouldn't let that stop me, but the overall quality was so good that I'm in a forgiving mood.

The real standout was the chilaquile taco. From the first bite, I knew that I had found a truly superior chilaquile. I do not know what about it makes it so good. I thought it was that the eggs were scrambled in butter — they had a very buttery taste — but the waitress was sure it was done in oil. There was plenty of sharp cheddar cheese, not that cheap and common (in both senses of the word) stuff that can't legally be called cheese; and the veggies were grilled to absolute perfection. The chilaquiles themselves — the fried bits of corn tortilla — were also cooked perfectly. They were cut in a square shape, which makes them look less than thoroughly authentic, but that's just appearances. The flavour and texture was right up there with the best.

The only other thing worth mentioning was the basket of tostadas brought to us after we had ordered. The salsa accompanying the basket of chips was good but not noteworthy (by contrast, the salsa verde that came with our tacos was excellent), but the chips were ... oh, let's just say disappointing. A little too thick, a little too greasy. But that was not enough to detract from the total experience of tacos at El Manantial.

* Thanks to Biff and the Hankmeister for that very useful coinage; Biff for thinking it up, and the Hankmeister for passing it on to me.

Yet Another Taquería

2011-11-26T15:57:00.002-06:00

Taquerias La Huasteca #3
3901 San Pedro

(at Olmos Drive, just north of the railroad underpass)

There is a building on the corner of Olmos Drive and San Pedro that, in the 20-plus years I've lived in the area, has housed probably half a dozen restaurants. None of them have thrived, or even survived. Most of them — all but one, in fact — opened and closed before I'd even had the chance to try them. The other day I was stopped at the traffic light on Olmos, and realized that yet another restaurant occupied that space now.

It was a fairly long light, so I had the chance to study the building. It's a sort of mid-50s industro-retail space, all plate glass windows with a gaudy orange overhang; a few parking places facing both streets, a warehouse behind, a failed bank (now a lawyer's office, I believe) across the side street, and used-car dealerships on the opposite corners. The name in big letters was amateurishly painted across several of the windows.

Those windows are coated with a glare-reducing shading material that is so dark, it makes the business look closed. If it hadn't been for a small lighted "open" sign above the door, I would have concluded that yet another restaurant had come and gone un-noticed. But this one was still in business; it hasn't even been there long enough to fail.

So today, on my way to take part in the Black Friday shopping experience — something I normally avoid like flavoured mineral water — I took my chance and had a late breakfast there.

In a neighbourhood that has more good taco houses than grackles, why would anybody think there's a call for another one? This is not some novice restaurateur: the same people have another location about a mile away, on Hildebrand, near the Deco-B. They must have a lot of confidence in their ability to draw trade away from the sixteen thousand other good places within a mile. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.

When I try a new taco house for the first time, I like to order things that I'm most familiar with. How can I evaluate a place rationally if I order something I rarely, or never, eat elsewhere? So this morning it was what I think of as My Usual: one chilaquile taco, and one machacado taco, both in corn.

The interior of the place seems cavernous. It's not really that big, but would comfortably hold nearly twice as many tables as it currently has, about a dozen. Or a dance floor; there's room for a dance floor. But instead of music, you have the audio from a television in an entertainment center, rescued from somebody's living room, over in the back corner. And of course the TV is tuned to some telenovela at this time of day. This is where that cavernous room really comes in handy, as I could sit far enough away to ignore the TV entirely (and read a little in my "car book" — I always keep something to read in the car, and it always takes forever to get through; currently I'm reading an interesting and well-written, if somewhat oddly focused, history of New Orleans).

No city inspection yet.

If I wanted to complain (and unusually for me, I don't) I would find some slight fault with the service. It was relaxed to the point of distraction, but good enough under the circumstances, and everything was done correctly. No particular effort went into making me feel welcome; it was kind of like the second week visiting your mom's house. Yes, they're glad you're there but the novelty has worn off.

The food I got was well-made, good enough to justify this additional taco house in the neighbourhood. The corn tortillas had good texture and reasonably good flavour, and they were packed with well-made fillings. The veggies in both tacos had been cooked sufficiently — I find a lot of places are in too much of a hurry at that stage, which is on the way to becoming a pet peeve — but not over done. The eggs were thoroughly cooked without being the least bit dry. And the machacado was nicely chewy, while the chilaquiles had just the right amount of crunch. All that gets the place a rating slightly above average, but I left feeling that it could easily have done it all better. The seasoning seemed mundane, unadventurous. The people in the kitchen seem to know what they're doing; I would just encourage them to try something a little out of their routine.

NOT A RESTAURANT REVIEW

2011-11-18T17:56:00.000-06:00

One or two restaurant owners or managers have taken exception to my review of their establishment in the past few years. That's alright: I'm entitled to my informed opinion, and they are entitled to take umbrage when I say what I think. I'm not a perfect critic, but a review I recently spotted on Urbanspoon San Antonio makes me feel like one by comparison.

This appeared on the page for Il Sogno, a trendy, new-ish, Italian place in the Pearl, owned by a guy who's as close to being a celebrity in this town as anyone who owns a mandoline, Andrew Weissman:

Bad service
by Food Lover (1 review)

I took my guest for a birthday dinner. There were six of us.

The food was great, but the service was unbelievably terrible.

First off, our waiter could not pour a bottle of wine evenly. Two people, including the birthday guest hardly get any and he suggested us to order another bottle when we had a plan to order a different kind of bottle next to match the entrée.

Secondly, he could not get our orders right. In addition to that, he kept rushing us. We felt at the point we sat down, they were already trying to hurry us out for next customers.

Thirdly, we order a cake with a candle on it, of course, it is a birthday dinner. They brought a cake with a candle on it, but they brought the cake when the birthday guest was not at the table!!! The waiter did not know what to do so we had to ask a manager to take it back and wait for a right timing.

Lastly, we ordered two pots of coffee, but we had to use a desert spoon to stir the coffee .not to mention they did not bother to bring any sugar when there is a party of six.

I will never use the restaurant for a company event.

I don't know who "Food Lover" is. The fact that he (or she) has only posted one review (and — why pass up the opportunity to quibble? — that he doesn't know the difference between a "dessert" and a "desert") indicates to me that he doesn't really take any serious interest in restaurant dining.

The fact that he thinks you can get six glasses of wine out of a bottle makes me think that he's the sort of person who either drinks wine straight from the bottle, or gets looped by the second glass & so doesn't know how much he drank after that.

The fact that he blames the waiter for his guest of honour's not being at the table when the birthday cake came indicates to me that he is a person who looks to place blame anywhere but where it belongs.

And that makes me think that, if the waiter really did have a problem getting the table's orders right, it was probably their fault, not the waiter's.

And I will even go so far as to assume that the reason his party was being rushed was because the house staff wanted these people out of their restaurant, but were too considerate to simply throw them out. And I reckon that, if the people at Il Sogno read the review and remembered this party of six, they're very glad not to have the threat of a company event for Food Lover.

All in all, it makes me feel like I'm a damn good restaurant critic. And maybe I'll take the wife to Il Sogno tonight.

Potential Unrealized

2011-11-17T18:24:00.001-06:00

Bunz Burgerz & More
1012 South Presa Street

(in Southtown, across from Pig Liquors, a

charming little place y'all should visit)

Southtown feels different from the rest of San Antonio. The congested, urgent newer developments out in Loopland and beyond feel, unavoidably, like Anytown, USA. The postwar developments inside the Loop feel, generally, like comfortably bland sets for Leave It To Beaver. The old pre-war neighbourhoods closer to downtown feel like where your grandma used to live, where you could play stickball in the street and then walk down to the ice house for a soda pop. And downtown feels like, well, like a fairly ordinary city on the day before a holiday, when half the people have taken off early from work, and the rest are just kind of relaxed in anticipation.

Southtown, though, reminds me of a cross between small-town America and small-town Europe. Not a large area, it's not really easy to get lost in, but it is easy to not be sure whether you want to turn to the right, or to the left. As you travel its few streets, criss-crossing each other at odd angles and turning with the nearby river, you start to decelerate, and very quickly you're feeling the hum of its low-key, slightly quirky trance. You relax. You drive slow enough to irritate the city folk behind you, who are probably from Dallas or somewhere, and so have farther to go to reach a state of bliss. You start to notice the old buildings, the galleries and small offices, the low-aesthetic art, the oddities that surround you. You mellow.

Bunz Burgers and More fits right in. A newish occupant of the pointy end of the building that stretches the entire block, its large glass windows with northern exposure are like the viewscreen on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, except that you're not going where no one has gone before; you're sitting still, and letting it all pass by you. Bright, bright walls of primary colours, broken stucco, only two annoying flat-panel televisions, and a few too many tables more or less lined up in two rows across an oddly-shaped dining room, with the kitchen in back behind a low counter, so pleasing aromas drift out to excite you: you feel comfortable enough because the huge windows make the place feel much more expansive than it is. The volume on the televisions is off (thank the Lord, because they're tuned to different sports stations; the audio would make it hellacious) and, despite the hardness of all the surfaces in the room, even the buzz of conversations at other tables stays in the background.

The servers are cheerful; a tad overworked during the lunch rush, but they're capable people, and you appreciate the effort they make to get you what you want, and get it right, and make sure you're happy with everything. They seem genuinely glad to have you in their restaurant, so you avoid mention of anything that's less than perfect: just as they are being good hosts, you want to be a good guest.

Everything, unfortunately, is less than perfect. It is, so far, all potential, unrealized. But the place is young, only about three months old. And it's a burger joint, not an haute-cuisine nosh house. It may yet improve.

The afore-mentioned pleasing aromas wafting in from the kitchen made us eager to try the food. The menu features several varieties of burgers, including an intriguing version of surf-and-turf: grilled beef with charcoal-grilled shrimp; but Rick opted for a slightly more traditional sandwich, the Flamin' Jack (beef, Jack cheese, grilled onions and roasted jalapeños), while I wanted to try the house's version of the Cuban sandwich, the Miami: roast pork, ham and Provolone on a pressed hoagie roll. We also asked for a side order of fries and onion rings, half and half.

Last city inspection:
October 2011
4 demerits

We split the sandwiches. We also split on the verdict for Rick's burger. He thought it was a non-specific "pretty good." I didn't. The onions and cheese were good, and the roasted jalapeños gave the sandwich a subtle but very pleasant kick; but I thought the burger's main feature, the half-pound of grilled meat, was overcooked, to a point where it was bone-dry and had lost almost all its flavour.

My sandwich was not as deliciously messy as the best Cuban sandwiches, but it had excellent taste nonetheless, and the meat in it was finely cooked. But it was kept from being a complete success by the fact that the hoagie roll was pressed almost into cardboard. Some bites, my teeth could barely penetrate the solidity of the bread.

The onion rings were excellent. They were thinly-cut and breaded in a well-seasoned flour mix, cooked long enough but not too long, and served hot and crumbly. If only the rest of the meal had been prepared with as much attention. The fries, on the other hand were a huge disappointment. We received them in two batches (I'm not sure why; the waiter apologised when he brought the first part, then returned with another basket containing more). The first was undercooked and cold, with a greasy texture and almost no potato flavour. The second batch was undercooked and hot, but with the same greasy texture and as little potato flavour as the first. Maybe if they'd been cooked a little longer, in hotter, fresher oil, they'd acquire a bit of crispiness that would help them overcome their limp, flaccid feel. They were a great deal like the fries that keep Chester's from being a really good chain of burger joints.

But like I say, Bunz has only been around a little while, and as much as this sort of cooking has an artisanal side, it ain't rocket science. Clearly the folks behind the counter have some idea of what makes a good burger joint. When they get it right, there'll be one more reason to hang out in Southtown. Until then, though, I'll be finding my burgers elsewhere.

A Surprise, and not the good kind

2011-11-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

Cappy's
5011 Broadway

(in Alamo Heights, behind Cappychino's; parking lot entry from Mary D Avenue)

I admit to feeling a certain gratitude to Cappy Lawton and his wife Sue (or Suzy; I forget which she goes by) for resuscitating La Fonda on Main a number of years ago. That place is an institution in the neighbourhood, but one which was on the verge of being dismissed. They bought it, and fixed the problems, and while it may not be the absolute best Mexican restaurant in town — a mythical title anyway, in this town — it's certainly a good one, and charming, and reliable.

The Lawtons had already had success with Cappy's, their signature restaurant on Broadway; and in many ways The paradigmatic Alamo Heights restaurant. It's always been a little on the pricey side, being geared as it is to the upscale end of the '09 zip code, but it's always been a comfortable, charming and enjoyable place for those of us who feel that eating there is an occasionally-worthwhile splurge.

Planning our weekly Friday culinary excursion, I realized we had not been to Cappy's in far too long. We rectified that last night, and I come away feeling an ambivalence about the place that I've never felt before.

The restaurant itself is invisible from Broadway, but somehow everybody knows where it is. It hides among the live oaks behind its little sister, Cappychino's, a more informal place that is as much bar as café. Cappy's looks and feels like the common room of a medium-range Colorado ski lodge. Wide blond flooring, large glass walls set at an angle to give onto the patio area, a few tasteful if not exquisite paintings; tables with white cloths properly spaced along the walls of the narrow front dining room, a small bar area, the hint of other rooms farther back. It has a feel that is both intimate and open; it is the sort of place where you wish to be seen.

Our waiter was with us in a flash. The entire staff was, as always, capable and industrious, but our waiter — I'm pretty sure I recall correctly when I say his name was Rene — seemed to be the best of a good bunch. Another waiter, at a nearby table, made a slight nuisance of himself by going on and on at a graceless pace — think New York — and in an unnecessarily loud voice; but once he finally reached the end of his spiel, calm was restored, and reigned until our leisurely departure.

The menu was a disappointment. There was, I thought, a serious lack of variety to it. It was heavily biased toward seafood, which constituted over half the entrées on offer, and for which I was not in the mood. The only beef dishes available were steaks, which are a fine choice sometimes, and the house-specialty "Heights Burger," with a $16 price tag that would guarantee dissatisfaction for me. The most interesting dish remaining was Mustang Chicken, which was my wife's choice, leaving me either roast chicken or gumbo; neither of which appealed. Off-menu specials included a cut of prime rib, which in the end was my choice, not because I wanted it, but because I didn't want anything else they had.

The city of Alamo Heights can't be
bothered to make restaurant health
inspections readily available on line.

We each started with mushroom bisque, a dark medium-thick soup of the day. My wife thought it excellent; I thought it a little bland, and found the texture off-putting. The outstanding bread Cappy's offers went a long way toward making this course much more enjoyable for me.

On the plus side, that Mustang chicken dish my wife ordered was marvelous. Coated with horseradish and served with a red pepper coulis, it was absolutely delectable, one of the greater taste sensations of recent memory. Unfortunately I only got a single taste, since it wasn't my dish. It was served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes, with a vegetable medley.

My own plate of prime rib was another disappointment. I had ordered it medium rare. When it came, I hardly noticed that it was served medium — such distinctions are often slight, and beyond the ken of both cooks and customers; I probably would have forgotten to mention it at all had the check, when it came, not shown that somewhere between my lips and the cook's ear, "medium rare" had become "medium" — because it had what I can only describe as an odd density. It was a thick cut, thicker than I was expecting, but had none of the marbling I was accustomed to seeing in prime rib; nor did it have the soft rind of fat that should give it so much flavour. It was tender but not at all juicy, and had sort of a pressed look, as though cooked under some heavy weight. At bottom, I find myself entertaining the suspicion that the meat I was served was not from prime-grade beef; how else to explain the peculiar texture of the meat? It had an undistinguished taste, palatable but not more, even with the aggressive application of a very nice horseradish sauce.

The prime rib was served with delicious mofongo mashed potatoes and the same vegetable mix of green beans, mushrooms and yellow beets* as was served with my wife's dinner. The beans were perfectly crispy, while the beets were unbelievably tender, making the entire medley a textural thrill one can only expect in the best restaurants.

I had gone into Cappy's knowing that its prices were not of the shy, retiring variety. Had the food been of the quality I had expected from eight or ten previous visits, I would not have been too unhappy. But because it did not live up to expectations, I came away feeling very unhappy about a check that surpassed $80. This dissatisfaction was made sharper, too, by the recollection of a more artful and satisfying meal for about half the cost the week before.

As I say, this is the first time I've been less than completely satisfied with Cappy's. After all these years, it would be too curmudgeonly, even for me, to simply dismiss the place as no longer any good. But next time I go, I will unavoidably approach it with somewhat lowered expectations, and the sense that it will have to work to regain the respect it has lost in my esteem.

* Beets are second on my list of Five Foods I Will Not Eat. These were interesting enough to make me give some thought to revising my list, but on reflection, I still hate beets.

¡Impresionante!

2011-11-01T16:33:00.001-05:00

RoMo's Café
7627 Culebra, Suite 107

(at Ingram Road)

The local campus of the Culinary Institute of America has been putting out graduates for a while now, but Rob Yoas is the first alumnus of that campus, that I know of, to open a restaurant locally. He and his wife Monica (who, I understand, is an on-camera talent on one of the local Spanish-language stations) have put this interesting little place into a strip center out beyond Ingram Mall.

CIA grads have something of a reputation for quality, and the success of some who have been through the program at the New York or California locations allow the school to bask in their reflected glow. If it is "just" a trade school, it's a prestigious one, and one that shows what trade schools can aspire to. This country could use more such trade schools.

The space chosen for this culinary venture is airy, with its very high ceiling painted dark red, its wainscoting and dark furniture set off against light yellow-tinted walls. The décor has a warmth to it that is only mildly disturbed by the two gigantic projection television screens (and five smaller flat-panel sets) that cover three sides. While they seem grossly out of place in a "refined but casual" restaurant, they are, mercifully, placed high enough on the walls that they don't continually assault your vision; even better, they were all turned off.

I was more than a little surprised to find the place so sparsely attended. Contrary to our normal practice, we had waited until seven o'clock to leave home for dinner (to let that awful Loop 410 traffic die down), and arrived at what should have been well into a peak part of the Friday night dinner rush; but there were only three or four tables occupied. And while it had picked up some by the time we left, my impression afterwards is that this place deserves to enjoy the same kind of fashionable buzz as any of the other snob-appeal places in town. It ought to be packed, despite its unfashionable suburban strip-center location.

The waiters on duty — only two, both also named Rob — were attentive and capable. The one whose table we were at seemed tentative, as though he were very new to this table-waiting business, but he had the virtue of not guessing at answers to our questions. If he didn't know, he found out. He was able to give us full information about the unusual food on offer, and was very helpful in our decision making; which was particularly good, because there were so many intriguing things on the menu. I agonized over the sandwiches and entrées on the menu, and on the specials board near the entrance; it was a chore to finally make a choice, but in the end I chose the duck and gator tacos, paired with a Shiner hefeweizen; my wife went with pasta in vodka sauce, with some kind of red wine. I have no interest in red wine so I can't tell you the first thing about it.

Last city inspection: September 2011
A perfect score!

The gator taco was chunks of tail meat (and no, it doesn't taste like chicken; it tastes like gator) that seemed to have a light, seasoned breading on them, served in a flour tortilla with some kind of light sauce and a few familiar vegetable accoutrements. That doesn't sound like much, but it may have been the best taco I've ever eaten. It was certainly the best alligator meat I've ever eaten, much better than I can fix at home (and I take some small snobbish pride in being the only person I know who actually has prepared alligator at home, though not for many years). The only thing that kept it from being perfect was that the oil from the duck taco had coated the outside of the tortilla, making it feel unpleasant to hold.

The duck taco was also purdy damn good: a portion of delicious meat topped with a dollop of veggies and a thin ribbon of something white. (I don't remember, now, what it was. Yogurt? Sour cream? Ricotta cheese? Whatever it was, it was good.) Except for the afore-mentioned oil, that dripped off the taco and infested the other tortilla, the dish was exquisite in its flavour and texture.

The vodka sauce on the pasta was light, nicely coloured and tasty. There were chunks of what looked like minced garlic in the mix, and the sauce was unevenly distributed over the pasta. (That's a good thing, actually: it shows that the kitchen isn't taking easy shortcuts, by pre-mixing and re-warming the dish. Of course, in a house that is trying to establish a reputation as a premier-class venue — a distinction well within its grasp — such shortcuts would be shocking and untenable anyway.) The pasta was appropriately al dente, who is rather hard to satisfy on that point. She was quite satisfied. The only downside to the pasta dish was the rather drab piece of French bread served with it, which stuck out like a Kia Rio in the parking lot at Bill Gates's wedding.

This wonderful meal was topped off by a serving of pastel imposible, a traditional Mexican cake. In RoMo's variation, the cake is more an English tea cake than the traditional smooth chocolate cake popular down South. It is served with a rich, sweet cream sauce, and one slice should satisfy two sweet tooths.

RoMo excels in value as well. Food of this calibre is normally priced noticeably higher, yet even with a glass of wine and a bottle of beer, we managed to get out for well under $45, well below average on our weekly excursions into the world of restaurant cuisine. That, my friends, is really impressive.

Bad Watermelon

2011-10-29T14:36:00.000-05:00

Bun & Barrel
1150 Austin Highway

(at Exeter Street)

To me, barbecue is like watermelon.

A good watermelon is wonderfully tasty, and messy. Bad watermelon isn't so much bad as just not good. The universe of watermelons is divided into a great mass of mediocre ones, and a tiny sprinkling of good ones. Very few watermelons are worth the inevitable mess.

Barbecue, prepared by artists, is also wonderfully taste, and messy. Bad barbecue is okay, but nothing more (until you get into the styles popular in some other parts of the country, which can be revolting). Most barbecue isn't worth the mess.

Bun & Barrel is a restaurant that's been serving up barbecue on Austin Highway for ages. I'm sure when the first Spanish explorers passed this way, Bun & Barrel had an icon on their GPS screens, and they probably stopped in for dinner. Maybe they liked it, maybe they didn't.

I was last there more recently than the Spanish explorers, but it had been decades; long enough that I had no memory of it, good or bad. So, driving down the road the other day with my faithful sidekick, Rick, and the lunch rush just beginning, we decided it was time to give it a try.

Outwardly, the place hasn't changed since at least the Eisenhower era, a relentless hold on tradition that I find generally comforting. Inside, the place has surely been spruced up more recently, because the floors and walls and furnishings were clean and neat, showing nowhere near the decrepitude that sixty years will produce in retail property. The theme of the décor, loosely displayed, was the Rock & Roll era of the 1950s and '60s, meaning that the background music being played was mostly old when I awoke to the world. Another comforting thing, though I suspect people who came of age after the Berlin Wall came down are starting to tire of its ubiquity.

Not a large place, Bun & Barrel manages to pack people in at meal times, without having them feel packed in. Service is prompt and cheerful, and the staff's quickness keeps the tables turning over. There is a buzz of conversation in the dining rooms, but it's not so fashionably loud as to deter pleasant conversation.

The menu is almost without surprises: barbecued beef, chicken, sausage, ham; burgers; fried fish for the Friday Catholics; and side dishes that you expect to find in any self-respecting barbecue house. The only departure from the ordinary (besides the absence of pork loin) is the "spicy Thai burger," which I take as evidence to support the belief that Bun & Barrel is now owned by the people behind Tong's Thai restaurant, next door. I had Thai the other day, so I had no interest in that novelty menu item.

The best barbecue I've had — and despite my bias against the cuisine, I've had a lot, being a native Texan born in exile — is moist, tender and complex. That is true of good barbecue whether eaten in Texas, its true home, or in some benighted foreign place like Missouri or Alabama. The barbecue at Bun & Barrel, sadly, was none of those things. The turkey and beef were both dry through and through, and less tender than crumbly; as though they had been dehydrated prior to cooking. The two sauces available in squeeze bottles on the table (one sweet, too sweet for me; the other piquant) did a little to mitigate the lack of good texture, but not enough. The sausage was a little better in texture, but had little in the way of flavour to recommend it.

The side dishes were reasonably tasty, though only the french fries stood out. They, in fact, would probably rank in my personal Top Ten, if I could think of nine other places with really good fries. They were cut with the peeling on, and fried perfectly in good-quality oil. They had a hint of crispiness about them, and an excellent potato flavour on the inside. The beans were in that vague area between good enough and pretty good, with plenty of pork to flavour its thick, rich sauce, but the seasonings just missed the mark. The cole slaw was pretty to look at, and not bad to taste, but its sauce was runny to the point of being water.

Last city inspection: September 2011
Only 6 demerits

There was something about the ambience of the place that prompted both of us to order malts, something I haven't done three times in my life. The malt flavour in Rick's was much more pronounced than in mine, I guess, because he commented on how clearly it came out, while I suspected that I had been given a mere milk shake. Still, the consistency of the it was excellent, and if I had ordered a milk shake instead of a malt, I would be raving about it, and comparing it favourably to the shakes at places like the Olmos Pharmacy. (No, it wasn't quite that good, but it would have merited serious comparison.)

My Happy Place: Guanajuato hildebrandensis

2011-10-24T22:55:00.004-05:00

El Rafas Cafe
1535 West Hildebrand

(between I-10 and West Avenue)

Last city inspection: October 2010
15 demerits

I've often expressed the opinion that there are more good Mexican restaurants on Hildebrand Avenue than in all of San Antonio outside Loop 410. This is not mere hyperbole, but Hildebrand is, by local standards, unremarkable in this regard. All of the major streets, from here to Mission Espada, are lined with mom-and-pop operations that put the O in San Antonio. Hildebrand just seems to be the northernmost outpost of that thick carpeting of taquerías. Get beyond it heading north, and high-quality tacos grow increasingly rare and precious, until, when you can hear the traffic on the Loop, you have reached the taco equivalent of Death Valley.

I don't know why that is. All those people who grew up on the West Side and the South Side — before the people known locally as "Anglos," decades ago, discovered the Joy of Breakfast Tacos — now live on the north side, many outside the Loop; you'd think they would patronize places that make tacos como Abuelita hecha, yet those places seem not to have found their way successfully out to Loopland with the population. Maybe they eat at home?

Fortunately for me — and that is, of course, all that really matters — Hildebrand Avenue is close to home.

One of these many good Mexican restaurants is El Rafas. It's a little out of the main Hildebrand culinary cluster, being west of Interstate 10, but as it's right up there with the best of the best on that stretch of city street, it's worth the short extra drive. My friend Rick and I went there the other day for a late breakfast.

Jardín Unión, Cd. Guanajuato
photo by Gorgo

One of the things I like best about El Rafas is that the people who run the place are Guanajuatense. My love affair with comida tipica mejicana began decades ago with a plate of chilaquiles con huevo in a tiny, crowded restaurant that spilled out into Jardín Unión. Most of my good friends in Mexico live in Guanajuato, or are from there; all of them went to school there, and no matter how much they move around, when I think of going down to Mexico, Guanajuato is the place I think of. (Sadly, none of my pictures from there are digital, but I'm thinking of getting a scanner. It's just a shade too much technology for me now, though. Meanwhile, I have to use somebody else's pictures.)

Anyway: when I need a dose of memory, El Rafas is the place I go. The food is food that I could get at any of the thirty or so restaurants I know in Guanajuato (even if I can never remember the names of them: the place in the jardín; the place on the road to Dolores Hidalgo; the place that looks like a church; the place down the street from some other place ... you get the idea). If I had an abuelita to make tacos for me growing up, this would be the food I'd've grown up with. It's delicious, it's familiar, it's good quality. It's like another home.

But there's something else I particularly like about El Rafas: the feel of the place. No matter what time of day I go there, it always feels like it's full of family. Not that I get involved in the conversations going on around me; it's just that the place is always full of unusually chatty people.

Go to most decent taco houses, and you'll find people talking sotto voce, consciously keeping their conversations among themselves. Or people sitting by themselves, reading books or newspapers, or sitting silently with companions. But at El Rafas, it seems somewhat de rigueur for people to speak, not loudly, but in their happy voices, and the conversations are distinctly animated. Everybody's talking cheerfully and sincerely, like a TV family around the dinner table on a show from before Seventies Angst took hold of our culture. It all makes you glad to be a part of it. Even I, the laconic curmudgeon, tend to talk more, and more cheerfully, at El Rafas. (This may or may not be a good thing, but it certainly feels good.)

Otherwise, the restaurant features reliably good service and good prices. I almost hate to say such nice things about it, because it's already a challenge to find a table there, some mornings.

Not Worth the Drive

2011-10-12T13:08:00.001-05:00

Las Salsas
2018 San Pedro

(a block north of Woodlawn)

I started going to Las Salsas not long after it opened. It was conveniently located, just a few blocks down the avenue from my house. The first time I tried it, I thought it was pretty good. The next time, not so much. The time after that, pretty good again. The next time, it was back to being not so good. Every time I ate there was like a voyage of discovery: would the chips be light and crisp, or stale and chewy? Would the seasoning be artful and delicate, or heavy-handed and unpleasant? Would the food be too hot, too cold, or just right?

In time, I stopped going. It was just too lousy too often. But now, after maybe seven or eight years, my friend Rick and I decided to give it another try.

Wish I'd stayed home.

Inside, not much had changed. It's got two large dining areas, each with room for about 40 people. They've replaced the mix of tile-topped and plastic tables for some with a bamboo veneer, nicely painted in primary colours, and all the chairs now match. The walls are a light yellow with occasional patches of trompe-l'oeil broken-stucco design, which despite being somewhat dated is not unpleasant. A few standard paintings of pretty Mexican village scenes compete with what look like reprints of old magazine ads rough-framed in cypress. The train track still runs around room just below the ceiling, but there was no train. (Years ago, often as not, the train would be derailed at one turning or another; maybe they just got tired of climbing up on a stool to fix it.) The dining area is clean and bright, though I wouldn't want to sit at a table by the window in the afternoon sun.

The staff greeted us warmly when we came in, and the waitress was with us quickly as we chose our seats in the near-empty restaurant, giving us menus and taking our drink orders. We decided quickly, and then bided our time awaiting her return until Rick wondered out loud if they were having to grow coffee beans in the back. When the coffee arrived, it was lukewarm and even weaker than I like it — and I don't care for strong, acidic coffee.

Last city inspection: April 2011
10 demerits

We each ordered our usuals: beef fajita and picadillo tacos, on flour, for Rick; chilaquiles and machacado tacos, on corn, for me.

My first bite of my chilaquile taco was disappointing: it seemed flavourless, almost unpleasant. I decided, though, after a few more tastes, that the problem was with the corn tortilla. Home-made, it may have been, but it lacks the flavour that a year of preferring corn to flour has taught me can be infused into a tortilla. The filling, though, was nicely made, and plentiful. The appropriate amount of time had been taken to sauté the vegetables and fry up the chilaquiles — the little strips of corn tortilla that give the dish its name — which, I might mention, were of an appropriate size. (Ordinarily I wouldn't even bother to say this, but recent experience has shown me that not every greasy-cuchara cook knows how big they should be.) The addition of a little red salsa moved them up the scale of quality, and if I were basing the entire review on this one dish, I'd give it four chili peppers. Three and a half, with the tortilla.

Sadly, though, the chilaquiles con huevo in my taco were the high point of the meal. The machacado taco was a disappointing version of the dish, machacado con huevo, that I have come to appreciate as much as chilaquiles. It was served in an equally bland corn tortilla, and while it was cooked properly, it had only a suggestion of the dried meat that gives the dish its name. Still, it would have deserved a rating, independent of all else, of three chili peppers, as overall it had good flavour, and fairly good texture.

Rick's tacos bring the ratings back down to merely average. His flour tortillas were more flavourful than my corn tortillas, but that's just because flour tortillas are intrinsically tastier than corn tortillas. These are run-of-the-molina tortillas. In the universe of flour tortillas, these rank right in the middle, below HEB and above Mission. The picadillo was seasoned, but artlessly, and was not so much moist as greasy. The fajita meat was barely seasoned, and overcooked, perhaps because the slices were cut too thick in the first place to cook through properly.

I thought the prices at Las Salsas would be better than they are. While coffee service, at $1.50, was reasonable, I thought the taco prices were well above where they should be. Small change, perhaps, but even putting aside the question of quality, $2.25 is about 30¢ too much for machacado, and $1.95 is about 20¢ too much for chilaquiles. The overall bill was about a buck more than it should have been. It becomes a question of where to draw the line. If the food had been better, I might not have minded the pricing excesses. But as it is, I do.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go take a Tums.

Booooorrring!

2011-10-10T11:33:00.000-05:00

La Cocinita Cafe #2
701 West Rhapsody

(at West Avenue)

In the last year or so, I've more or less given up on finding any really good tacos in Loopland. Every place I've tried in that great abysmal swath of subdivision and traffic jam has disappointed. A couple of places managed a rating of three and a half chili peppers out of five for the food, but one had lousy service and the other is so far out that I just never go there if I can help it. The rest of the places I've tried kind of suck for air.

But this morning, when my friend Rick picked me up at the auto-repair shop to take me home, he mentioned having spotted another taquería just off West Avenue, and we decided to try it. We still live in hope of finding someplace, anyplace, in the general area of his house where we can find good breakfast tacos. Alas, this is not that place.

Tucked into a small space adjoining a convenience store at the intersection of Rhapsody and West, La Cocinita #2 has the appearance of a promising mom-and-pop operation. It is intimately small, having a square dining area stocked with a dozen or so tables, yet without a sense of overcrowding. This, despite the fact that there were quite a few people in the place, even though it was hardly prime breakfast hours. The décor is unassuming, unabashed taquería-normal, except for two posters on the wall touting sports teams from Texas A&M University. (I know that, as an alumni of The (Other) University, I should disparage Aggies as vaguely second rate, but I've never been able to summon anything more than a low level of ennui about either school, usually expressed, if at all, in sarcasm. Perhaps not surprisingly, some people take umbrage at that.)

I decided to vary my standard order. I normally will order two chilaquile tacos when trying a new place, or one chilaquile taco and one machacado. The latter option was foreclosed to me, as this restaurant doesn't offer machacado. Instead, I went with one chilaquile taco, on corn, and one fajita taco, on flour. Rick stuck to his usual breakfast of one fajita taco and one picadillo taco, both on flour.

After a brief and amusing conversation with the waitress about the nature of fajitas, and the difference between "fajitas" and "fajitas rancheras," we got our coffee and spent the interval in discussion of the past weekend's trifecta: a lost crown, a leaking roof, and a car in the shop.* Fortunately, the food came quickly, before I had a chance to get seriously depressed about everything going suddenly wrong in the world.

But the food, when it came, only added to the general feeling that I should be suffering from some sort of Carteresque malaise, and that there's something wrong with me, because I'm not. Maybe it was the joy that comes to the heart of a curmudgeon when he realizes he will get to complain about things. In this case, I get to complain about the food.

It was just boring. I mean just absolutely, unequivocally, unrelentingly boring. No panache whatsoever went into its preparation. Both the corn and flour tortillas were utterly unremarkable, and they were the best parts. The chilaquiles were barely edible. They were prepared using stale tostadas, tossed into the mix late in preparation, resulting in thick, chewy, unpleasant wads of soggy, over-large tortilla chips lightly coated with most of the things that are supposed to make chilaquiles enjoyable: egg, veggies, and cheese. (The seasonings were absent, or at least were not present in quantities sufficient to advertise their presence.) The overall result was as near an abomination as I've ever found in chilaquiles of this potosino style.

Last city inspection: September 2011
8 demerits (pretty good)

The fajitas were nearly as bad. The meat was try, almost completely unseasoned (!), and as tough as the toughest undernourished longhorn steer could make it. The peppers and onion were cut in huge slices, dosed with a little oil, and grilled for as little time as could be managed. None of the all-important flavours were allowed to come out in preparation.

Even the picadillo was boring. It takes almost nothing — a few dashes of seasoning, maybe a few tiny chunks of potato — to make picadillo as perfect as it can hope to be, but that effort was not made. This was simply ground beef, grilled in its own juices and slapped into a tortilla.

I don't know how long La Cocinita Cafe #2 has been around. If it were in my own neighbourhood, or anywhere inside the Loop for that matter, I'd say it wouldn't last a year. But being out there between the Loops, I guess it can survive. All those people that made it look so promising a venue have no convenient alternative to the generally low taco standards in Loopland.

*and, just to make it worse, there wasn't any good soccer on TV. International weekend, you understand. Who can sit through Scotland v. Leichtenstein?

A Metaphorical Ornament

2011-10-07T22:38:00.000-05:00

Turquoise Grill
3720 North-West Loop 410

(on the inside of the Loop, in the shopping center

near the intersection of Fredericksburg Road)

"Turquoise" is an Old French word meaning "from, or of, Turkey." The semi-precious stone got its name from the fact that it first came to Europe by way of Turkey. Europeans, as ignorant of geography as any ordinary American schoolchild, believed Turkey was the source, not the middleman, of the stone.

What I saw of Istanbul

A friend of mine took me to Turquoise Grill for the first time two or three years ago. Having spent a short time in Istanbul, I was eager to try the local version of Turkish food. My own experiences with the cuisine were limited, for the most part, to chai (meaning, simply, tea, not the gussied-up concoction of sugar and spices one finds at all the trendier coffee houses of the Starbucks Era); doner (the ubiquitous street food that consists of a pita stuffed with meat — a food that, 200 miles west, would be very familiar to me as a gyro; but that's a cultural squabble that I'd rather not get involved with), and a single accidental visit to a commonplace cafeteria on Cumhuriyet Avenue, offering the Turkish version of dim sum (Lord, don't I wish I'd found that place on the first day instead of the last!). Being there alone, with no local guidance ("Don't worry," said everyone I know who knows Istanbul, "everybody speaks English there, you'll be fine." Many do, I suppose, but I did not find them. The only people I found who spoke English in a useful degree were the night clerk at my hotel and the counter attendant at the cafeteria, God bless him.), my explorations of that amazing city, and its equally amazing cuisine, were haphazard and confused.

Turkish food is very much like Greek or Lebanese food, as you would expect. After all, the things that go into traditional Turkish food would be things that grow around there, and while the distance from Istanbul to Athens, or from Istanbul to Beirut, may be huge in cultural terms, in agricultural terms it's like going from San Antonio to Waco: slight. Seasoning differs to some extent, but if you enjoy any Mediterranean cuisine, or any western-Asian cuisine (like Persian), you'll enjoy Turkish food.

On a number of visits to Turquoise Grill in the years since my first introduction, I've come to settle on Adana kebab (named for a city in south-central Turkey) as a favourite; normally I wouldn't bother looking at the menu anymore. But tonight, for some reason, I was in a mood to try something different. The place has a new menu anyway, and I wanted to see if they offered a dish I had recently enjoyed at the other Turkish restaurant in town. (They didn't.)

So this time, on a cross-cultural whim, I chose spaghetti. My wife, who apparently fell prey to a similar whim, chose a dish that was described on the menu as "Turkish lasagna." (I would tell you the names as they appear on the menu, but the restaurant's on-line version is not working properly on my computer, and I can see nothing of that page except the heading, "Salads.") To lead off the meal, I chose a soup made from puréed lentils in a tomato-based liquid, with interesting seasonings. It was delicious, almost lush: spicy without being piquant, more substantial than broth but not thick.

Turkish spaghetti, as presented at Turquoise, differs from what American palates are accustomed to, in the inclusion of yogurt and butter in a tomato-based meat sauce. The seasonings are also quite different, and the overall effect is quite good. The yogurt gives the sauce a creamy character, but otherwise the appearance of the dish is much like anything one would get around Mulberry and Spring Streets; and the seasonings are exotic but subdued, and stealthy: they suggest a distant place that is at once familiar and unknown.

The "Turkish lasagna," by contrast, bears no physical resemblance to the well-known Italian dish. This meal is presented as a single layer of small, curly pasta covered in a white sauce, mainly of yogurt, with the oil exuded by the ground meat floating in little pools on top. The seasonings are, again, quite different from anything found in the layered Italian dish, but still the food is very tasty in its own way.

The entire meal was accompanied by a light, thick, soft bread with sesame seeds and, it appeared, cracked pepper. I always enjoy a good bread, and this was much more pleasing than the bread I was served at the other Turkish restaurant in town.

Last city inspection: June 2011
only 3 demerits!

The main dining room at Turquoise is quite large and spacious; a smaller, more intimate open-dining room stands off to the side, along with a banquet room. The décor is attractive, not heavy-handed, and pleasant, particularly an attractive four-panel openwork screen separating the dining areas. Everything was kept clean and neat, though this might be in part because we were there on a Friday before sundown, when the local Turkish community is still celebrating its Sabbath. With few people in the place, the staff had no trouble keeping up with its chores. And this could also account for the excellence of the service, though I have been at much busier times and have never had reason to complain. (And yes, I do realize, as all who know me will attest, that I need no reason to complain. I am, after all, a curmudgeon.)

The prices are reasonable for food of this quality; the overall bill at a restaurant like this is always a pleasant surprise, since alcohol is not served. Not being charged the customary exorbitant restaurant prices for wine at dinner always makes the check, when presented, seem remarkably, and pleasantly, small.

Another Damn Good Taquería

2011-09-23T13:12:00.000-05:00

Carmelita's
2218 Broadway

(where North Alamo Street ends)

I haven't figured out, yet, why it is that almost all the taquerías in Loopland are so mediocre, while almost all the places inside the Loop are so good. Could it be that a certain amount of time is required for a taco house to acquire ... what? A layer of grease on everything in the kitchen? I don't think that's what it is.

There are, of course, a few mediocre places inside the Loop — two come to mind, in my own neighbourhood — but I have yet to find any — any — good taquerías outside of 410, until you get to Comal County. (If anybody has a suggestion, by all means, let me hear it.)

Today, feeling my curmudgeonly oats, I had a hankering to find a place not to like. I wanted something to grouse about, something mediocre or worse, something that'd make me want to rant about just how bad a restaurant could be. I had no place in mind, but just struck out at random, with my sidekick; we headed towards Broadway, because he had some business over there, and that was sufficient excuse.

The place we settled was Carmelita's, in a former fast-food restaurant in the triangle of land where Alamo Street runs into Broadway. The old Butter Krust Bakery is across the avenue, in the throes of renovation, and the ruins of Playland Park lie across Alamo. A promising setting for a culinary horror story, I thought.

Alas, no. I liked it.

It being our first visit to this place, which neither of us had ever heard of before (or, for that matter, even noticed on any of our frequent trips up and down Broadway), we both ordered what we consider our "usuals." For me, that's one chilaquile taco and one machacado taco; I asked for the former in a flour tortilla, the latter in a corn tortilla. My Kato went for one beef fajita and one picadillo, both in flour. We both had coffee.

All the windows in the place face north and west. I suppose in the afternoon it might get hot in the dining room, but they close at 3pm, and I doubt ghosts and burglars would complain. In the morning, the shade of the building and the trees outside make a pleasant setting. The dining room tables, chairs, floors and walls all appear clean, and the blue-and-white Poblano-style table tops add to that feeling. The whole place looks to have had a new coat of paint recently. (I don't know how long the place has been around, but it looked, generally, fresh and new; though I know it has health inspections going back over three years.)

The coffee was reasonably strong, without an acidic bite; the way we both like it. And it was hot but not excessively so; we've recently had some issues with scalding coffee, so that was a plus for Carmelita's. The service was cheerful and prompt, and everything was correct when it came. The staff were assiduous about keeping everyone in the place (and it was nearly full) supplied with anything they wanted.

The first thing I noticed on the menu was the price of coffee. Normally, I don't even look at this, and am always being unpleasantly surprised at what people charge for it. With the rise of the Seattle-style coffeehouse, prices for even ordinary coffee have steadily climbed, so that it's not unusual to pay $1.69 or so for what used to be described as "coffee service." Usually it's not really worth that, but people seem conditioned to making mental comparisons between diner coffee and Starbucks, where a single cup of coffee requires mortgage financing. That's not a valid comparison, of course, even if you like Starbucks coffee (which, I don't). But Carmelita's charges only $1.25 for coffee service (and I do mean service), and I noticed that their prices for my tacos were slightly less than I've become accustomed to paying elsewhere, no matter how bad they are. Not a big savings, but it adds up, especially when you eat them several times a week, as I tend to do.

Last city inspection: June 2011
26 demerits

The picadillo was good, but not great. I'd say the same about the chilaquiles. And the flour tortillas used on three of our four tacos were what Mexicans call regulár — ordinary, neither bad nor particularly good. Fortunately for this place's ratings, the other foods we sampled stood out as better than most.

The beef fajitas were leaner than is usual, yet not the least bit dry. They were served with a plentiful, though not overwhelming, quantity of grilled peppers and onions, and lightly doused with a delicious sauce. And my machacado taco was perhaps the second-best I've ever eaten, and it was wrapped in a good-sized corn tortilla, made in-house, that Goldilocks would have been pleased with: of even thickness, cohesive, heated through but not burned at any point, and more flavourful than is, strictly-speaking, normal — all qualities that will endear the things to anglos and hispanicos alike.

My good friend Kato, a/k/a Rick, who generally accompanies me on my taco quests, lives out in Loopland, so we've tried to find good places located in between our houses. It's getting harder and harder to justify going to some of them. There are so many more really good taco houses closer to downtown. Carmelita's makes it just that much harder to meet in between.

Only Slightly Over-Sold

2011-09-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

Gourmet Burger Grill
18414 U.S. 281 North

(on the northeast corner of the 281/1604 interchange)

On the lighted menu boards above the counter at Gourmet Burger Grill is a placard touting all the awards the food has won. They're mostly popularity contests orchestrated by the local newspaper or the local disreputable throwaway weekly rag. I didn't read through the whole list — it's quite long — because I don't really care about such things. (It's on their web site, too, if you feel even the least little bit curious.) Everybody has their own subjective standards by which a burger is to be judged, and I've seen enough mediocre things awarded "Best in S.A." titles to consider that crown an empty shell, a meaningless gimmick, a piffle. And I know that even reputable and presumably knowledgeable national authorities will sometimes ascribe an even loftier title to food that's merely a little better than average. No, the only way to judge food is to taste it, and compare it to what you think is superb. Today, I unleashed my skeptical taste buds on the Gourmet Burger Grill.

First, what makes it "gourmet"? I suppose they have in mind the fact that you can choose Kobe beef, or Certified Angus, or lamb or chicken, and you can choose your bread and cheese and sauce and all kinds of other things. Dictionary.com defines "gourmet" in its adjectival form as "involving or purporting to involve high-quality or exotic ingredients and skilled preparation." GBG does use, as far as I could see, high-quality ingredients, and I suppose lamb and Kobe beef are still sufficiently exotic to warrant the name. So, yeah, "gourmet" is a fair enough descriptor.

But is it good? More importantly, is it exceptional? The simple answer is, yes and no.

The place itself is clean, uncrowded, and decorated with some small aplomb: claret walls with occasional advertising posters, a couple of televisions, an uncarpeted floor, a black techno-chic ceiling set high enough to keep the hard surfaces from making the noise level unpleasant. The tables are spaced to leave room for comfort and passage. The chairs at the two-tops on either side feel flimsy and seem designed without comfort foremost in mind. If you're of average size or less, and plan to spend your mealtime surfing on your smart phone, you'll be fine leaning forward in those chairs. If you plan to have a relaxing conversation, you might want to sit elsewhere. The larger tables have chairs that are sturdier, and slightly more comfortable.

You enter from the parking lot and make your way to the counter in the rear, with gigantic fluorescently-lit menu boards above. There are those exotic items; others are more commonplace, but not ubiquitous, like sweet-potato fries and tots. In addition to an array of burger and burger-like products, they have salads, real salads, and a daily soup; unusually for a burger joint, there's also a wine list, and a selection of somewhat elaborate desserts. You can even order your burger wrapped in lettuce instead of bread.

Your order is taken by a less than ebullient employee. I think it would be unfair to call him, or the other young man we noticed, surly; let's just say they both seem preoccupied, no doubt concerned about making our dining experience pleasant. They aren't rude or cold, merely ... unsmiling. Perfectly efficient. It's like placing an order with Mr Data, and having it delivered by Mr Spock.

Having ordered, you choose your table and spend a few minutes scoping out the crowd. I noticed, to my surprise, that, at the age of 49 (again this year), I was the second-youngest patron in the dining room. There was a young woman at a table along the wall, but the rest of the crowd, which filled more than half the available seats, lived through the Cuban missile crisis. For some reason, I'd expected this borderline-New-Age burger house to be most popular among people who came into the world after Elton John came out. It apparently isn't, at least not at lunchtime.

Last city inspection: April 2011
A perfect score!

The food itself was good enough. My hamburger meat, ordered medium rare, was exactly that way, which surprised me. I've gotten in the habit of ordering meat cooked medium rare so that it will be served medium. Had I know this kitchen actually understands the difference, I'd've ordered it medium. Well, that's a point in their favour. And the condiments were all good quality items, and fresh, from the lettuce (green-leaf, I think, or was it Romaine? I don't remember now) to the red onion. The cheddar cheese was less sharp than I would have liked, while the bacon (applewood-smoked, of course; that's de rigeur these days) was cooked right to the deliciously chewy edge of crispiness. My friend's burger, the day's special, was similarly adorned, though he was disappointed to find that the bleu cheese on it seemed but a suggestion.

The french fries we both ordered were very good, with an aroma of freshness that made me think they had been fried in oil unsullied by any previous use. I do wish, though, that they'd been allowed another half-minute in there, to give them just a bit more crunch. The buns were smaller than their contents, which I suspect is an intentional device aimed at making the burgers look bigger than they are. The burgers are plenty big; the unintended consequence of the buns' size is that they look down-sized and puny.

When I first looked over the menu, I thought the prices were a little on the high side. That is the difference between presumption and informed consideration. These burgers ain't cheap, but in my opinion, you get a good value for the prices asked, on most items, at Gourmet Burger Grill.

Whiskey and Steak

2011-09-01T22:50:00.001-05:00

Josephine Street
400 East Josephine Street

(next to 281; parking under the freeway)

Their web site says that tree growing in the dining room is 500 years old. I don't buy that; it doesn't look a day over 450. But then, you know businesses are always stretching the truth.

Josephine Street has been around for about 30 years, though I've only been coming for about 20. I don't believe a thing has changed in all that time. The place has an admirable consistency for those who would be regulars; and judging from the people-watching I did there this evening, that'd be just about everybody. I haven't been out for dinner on a Thursday night since the demise of the old Thursday Evening Supper Club in 2001, so maybe it's not as unusual as it seems to come to a place on a weeknight and have a 30-minute wait for a table. But Jo St is just that popular.

It's not hard to see why. The service is casual and unhurried, but effective and extremely friendly, as though the customers were old friends they don't see often enough. The atmosphere is warm and familial, making the other customers seem to you like friends of friends. The buzz in the room never ends, but neither does it intrude. There's music playing, but you'll never follow it and probably won't even notice it. It is, in short, almost a perfect atmosphere for a casual restaurant.

I wish I could say better things about the food, but — strangely, for a restaurant — it's the weak point of the Jo St experience. Their draw is "whiskey and steak," and that is, fundamentally, what they offer, though you can also get chicken and pork and sandwiches and such. Josephine Street, though, doesn't approach it the way the fancy steak houses do. They're serving lower-grade meats, not that USDA Prime stuff you shell out bodily extremeties for at the fancy places. This is just meat, like you'd maybe buy at HEB and cook at home. You can probably do it about as well, but you'd miss the ambience. Josephine Street is a social, even a sensual experience; the food is secondary. (The booze, it should go without saying, is not.) Not great stuff, just good enough that you like it enough to want to come back.

Last city inspection: January 2010
33 demerits (a lot)

They do, on the other hand, do their vegetables better than a lot of other places. Tonight I had the steamed broccoli with my cracked-pepper rib eye (today's special, a 12-ounce steak for $15). The steak was on the fatty side and the cracked pepper was, well, just that. But the side order of broccoli was about as good as a vegetable can get in a restaurant. It was steamed to exactly the right point, bright green and still crispy, and doused with a little lemon juice; I tasted no oil or butter on it. It was even nicely presented, upright in a small bowl, as though it were a monochromatic bouquet of flowers.

Used to Be Good

2011-09-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

Lulu's Bakery & Café

918 North Main Avenue

(behind the Rodeway Inn, by I-35)

Lulu's menu opens with a little self-congratulatory pat on the back about the big-time publicity they got when a Food Network show called "Man vs Food" visited them. The host of that show, a man, it would seem, of unrestrained appetite, ate an entire giant cinnamon roll and a big ol' chicken fried steak dinner. And the menu makes prominent mention of the fact that Lulu's chicken fried steak was voted the best in town, not once but twice.

The most recent such win was in 2003. I don't eat chicken fried steak all that often — three times this year, and that's a lot, for me — but I do know something about it, after a lifetime spent gorging myself on this Lone Star delicacy. And now that I've had Lulu's (again, the last time being about eight years ago), I'd say there's a good reason why they haven't won for eight years.

We arrived at the peak of the lunch rush. Because of its location on the fringe of downtown, close to the medical offices clustered around Baptist and Metropolitan hospitals, and because it has a good-sized parking lot, it's a popular lunch venue. The parking lot was full, as were almost all the tables. We took a seat by the window and waited for someone to come bus the table. And waited. And waited.

They seem to have plenty of help, with five or six 20-something women in black shirts going in and out of the work area, but it seemed an undue amount of time before one of them came to us with menus and noticed that the table needed wiping down. By the time she got back to take care of that, we'd had time to read the blurb on the menu attributing Lulu's success to a mix of home cooking and Southern Hospitality. We decided before we left, having had to ask first for napkins, then for utensils, that our waitress had not read up on that part. If I had to describe her, I'd say she was a little on the surly side, but maybe "distracted" would be equally accurate, and kinder. So let's say she was distracted, there being so many people for her to deal with. (By the end of our time there, she had even begun to display a sense of humour, saying that if I was too full to walk to the car they could rent me a wheelbarrow.)

We started with iced tea and an order of onion rings. The tea is served in those giant 40-ounce plastic glasses, and didn't that go down good in this hot weather we're getting so resignedly used to. The onion rings were plentiful, and large, and they had a good, seasoned wheat-flour batter laid on thickly. Surprisingly, the onion rings weren't at all greasy, but they were chewy rather than crispy.

I mentioned to my friend that I was thinking of trying the tortilla soup, which the menu hypes as "the best you'll find," or some such nonsense; but I didn't want soup and onion rings and chicken fried steak and green beans and corn. I asked the waitress if I could have a cup of soup instead of the corn, but she made one of those faces that mean "no, I don't think I can do that." So I was kind of surprised when she brought us both a cup of soup (which, incidentally, we weren't charged for).

It was definitely not the best tortilla soup around. It's not even in the top five. In fact, I'd say it's closer to the bottom five. The only good quality it had was that it was spicily seasoned. Other than that, the broth was thin and salty; the vegetables, cut in large chunks, had been cooked to death; the cheese was all in a lump at the bottom; and the tortilla strips, which are presented dry in a pile on the platter next to the soup, for you to add as you please, were stale enough to raise the question of how long it takes to petrify a tortilla.

Last city inspection: October 2010
37 demerits (that's a lot)

My friend chose the grilled chicken sandwich, with fries. The chicken breast was indeed grilled, and juicy, yet oddly lacking in flavour. It was served on a bun with too much mayonnaise, a large pile of wilted, aging lettuce leaves, an equally senescent slice of tomato, and some pickles. The plentiful fries would have been good if they'd been cooked a little longer. They were cut as steak-fries, and had a good potato flavour but not the least whisper of crispiness about them. They were too much like particle board after the glue dissolves.

My plate was the erstwhile award-winning chicken fried steak, served with corn and green beans and a large dinner roll. The chicken fried steak seemed admirably Texas-sized, until you cut away the inch and a half of empty batter on each side. After that, you're left with a respectable sized piece of meat, but definitely not Texas-sized. More Illinois-sized, and when's the last time somebody bragged about that? It reminded me of those "black hole awards" that Consumer Reports shows on its back page: large containers for small items. The meat is of the traditional toughness — chicken fried steak is po'-folk food, after all — but tenderized well, so it is eminently edible. The cream gravy was unusually thin but quite good otherwise.

The dinner roll was of the type that entices. It looks delicious, fluffy, with a little crust and lots and lots of soft, yeasty bread. Looks, as they say, can be deceiving. The dough has been kneaded too much, and then not been allowed to rise long enough; making the roll dense and chewy instead of light and fluffy. And it has the taste of those rolls you got in middle school (though it did taste better than that.)

The green beans were well-seasoned and well-drained; I always hate it when they're served in a little bowl full of liquid that always ends up splashing if a bean drops off the fork. Unfortunately — and this is a common problem with veggies like this — they sat too long in hot water to retain any crispiness of texture. They still taste good, but, like the green beans you got in middle school (with the roll), they don't feel good. Ironically, the corn I had not really wanted (but chose as the least bad option for a side dish) was ... well, I won't say it was good; let's just say it was the dish that most closely approximated its paradigmatic form: it was innately corn-like.

Lulu's is open late — 24 hours a day, I believe — and it was one of the first places in town to offer Wi-Fi. But after all these years, it's lost a lot of the characteristics that once promised to make it a Place To Go. You can still get large servings of food pretty cheap, but you really are getting what you pay for.

A Good Deal

2011-08-22T12:25:00.000-05:00

Mr Tim's Country Kitchen
620 South Presa Street

(in just south of the Alamo Street crossing)

Between the hammered-metal ceiling and the painted-concrete floor is a restaurant that successfully emphasizes its down-home Last-Frontier philosophy. The breakfast food available here is largely simple fare, properly done. Eggs, pancakes, biscuits: these things are hard to screw up (I can say that, despite recent experience?), but also hard to really excel at. Still, everything we tried at Mr Tim's was as we expected, and a little more.

Last city inspection: August 2011; 16 demerits

On arrival, my first thought was that I would not be happy with any place that not only offers liver and onions (all viscera being Number Two on my personal list of Five Foods I Will Not Eat Under Any Circumstances), but brags about it with a large sign on the front window. I was relieved to find that no one in the place had ordered liver, which has, to me, a distinct and revolting aroma.

Not that there were many people in the dining room; at 10AM on a Monday, with school back in session, I suppose all the parents in town were at home reveling in the restored privacy, or at work. They weren't out having a late breakfast. Mr Tim's has, effectively, two dining areas: the original one, and a closed-in former patio (I'm guessing) out front. (A small outdoor seating area right between building and sidewalk remains, but only large enough for a couple of tables.) We were almost alone among the 18 tables. We apparently snuck in below the radar of the staff, as it was a short while before anyone came to greet us with menus and utensils, but once they knew we were there, the service improved to a level that could be described as better than average, without doing violence to the words.

The breakfast menu is full of run-of-the-mill offerings: you've got your eggs, your pancakes, your breakfast meats, your bread choices ... the kind of stuff you can get anywhere breakfast is served. This is, first of all, a traditional place, and those are the things Americans traditionally eat. But there are a few indications, too, that Mr Tim's is just a little out of the ordinary: "Texas Style French Toast," for example (not on the online menu, but on the card), and bragging-rights cinnamon rolls. These things stake Mr Tim's claim to excellence, and we mainly found that a claim worth considering.

We agreed to split one of those cinnamon rolls. I haven't had an oversized cinnamon roll since the height of the fashion passed in, oh, 1986. The steroidal offerings I've seen in various pastry cases around the country have never been much of a temptation to me, but I thought, in the interest of science (let's call it), I should at least try one; so we agreed to split one. We should have brought at least four more people for that. Most of it now rests in my refrigerator, in a Styrofoam go-box, where it will prove the devil's plaything until I've destroyed it. It was, to quote the man across the table from me, "a biiiiiig-ass cinnamon roll."

It is huge. I'd say it's probably eleven inches square, and about two and a half inches high; not so high as those monsters you see as you walk in to Lulu's (which, I believe, is Mr Tim's main competition for the local Cinnamon-Roll Crown), but surely as filling. The rolls at Lulu's are made from strips of dough turned on edge and wound around many times; Mr Tim's makes theirs with thick ropes of dough wound less tightly. While I'm sure each style has its partisans, I'm of the opinion that the lightly-wound ropes make for a lighter, less-dense roll, with a texture more like cake than biscuit. Certainly the cinnamon roll we sampled is a light, almost spongy creation, with a hint of almond extract and healthy doses of cinnamon and a full, but not excessive, slathering of sugary glaze, sufficient to cover the entire plate-sized roll with the stuff, and to form glaciers in the creases of the dough.

We made the mistake of ordering a regular breakfast, too: eggs, hash-browns, and biscuits, plus my table-mate had bacon. The eggs were cooked perfectly to order, which just goes to show that it can be done. The hashbrowns were the most unremarkable part of the meal: not bad, just not worth getting excited about. They were just like the hashbrowns you get at, oh, The Waffle House: shipped in dehydrated form, rehydrated in the kitchen. Ho, hum.

Rick and I part company over the biscuits. He likes his biscuits flaky, in the Southern style; I like those, too, but am just as happy with the chuck-wagon style biscuit served at Mr Tim's: heavy but not dense, with enough structural integrity to stay intact when you use it to clean your plate. In fact, as I think on it now, I'll say I prefer that type of biscuit, as being more utilitarian than the flaky variety. I might not serve it to the Ambassador, but it's what you need when you're eatin' under the stars out on the range.

And it's hard to beat Mr Tim's for value. Whether a giant cinnamon roll is worth $5, I can't say, but laying that to one side, the rest of the prices are certainly on the low side. Any regular reader of this blog knows how important that aspect is to me, and if anything will prompt me to recommend a place to others, it's the feeling that you get a good deal when you go there. You get a good deal at Mr Tim's.

There Is Substance

2011-08-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

Tre Trattoria
4003 Broadway

(in the Boardwalk, between the Witte Museum and Hildebrand)

Every now and then one likes to splurge. Personally, I prefer to splurge now (and it's always "now"), but my innate cheapness and a lack of limitless resources, plus a vague awareness of things like body shape, cholesterol count and the middle-age medicinal trifecta keep me from a life of unbridled culinary libertinage. Still, every now and then I will at least make a show of splurging.

Today, in furtherance of those impulses, my friend Rick took me to lunch at Tre Trattoria, one of local-celeb-chef Jason Dady's places (the others being Bin 555; The Lodge in Castle Hills; and another location of Tre Trattoria, downtown in the Fairmount Hotel). (Oh, and there's a barbecue place, too....) I had only been to one of his places before, though certainly I know his name; but as a curmudgeon, I won't let myself be too impressed by celebrity, until I'm personally certain there's some substance to it. My two visits to Bin 555 had not assured me that such was the case. The first visit, at lunch time many years ago, is all but lost in the mists of time, except for a feeling of not being greatly impressed; the second visit, for dinner about three years ago, I remember mainly for the company of a charming and amusing couple, new friends who might have become best friends, had they not gotten a divorce a few months later. Chè sarà sarà.

So. I had never so much as seen Tre Trattoria. It's tucked away in the back of the Boardwalk, an eclectic jumble of shops and offices and restaurants that seem to cater to the Gucci-B crowd. I suspect, in fact, that Chef Dady calls his outpost "Tre Trattoria Alamo Heights," even though it's in San Antonio, in order to encourage those folks in the belief that, yes, it is okay to cross Hildebrand Avenue, but only long enough to have lunch; stay any longer and they're likely to be infected with bourgeois leanings, and want to park on the street overnight, or vote Democratic.

Tre Trattoria has a large, well-accoutered south-facing outdoor dining area. No surprise that it had about it an air of desuetude: San Antonio in August is never a place to have lunch al fresco, this year more than most. Still, I thought longingly how nice a place it would be, if we could just knock thirty degrees off the temperature. Maybe in September....

Inside the expensively decorated dining room (which, sadly, already strikes me as dated rather than trendy), the youthful staff did their best to make us feel comfortable and welcome, but you could just about tell that they, with their designer jeans and ubiquitous tattoos, weren't accustomed to being better-dressed than their clientele. Rick was in his National Sarcasm Society T-shirt, and I was sporting a Liverpool team shirt. I don't think that was what discomfited them; maybe it was the shorts and tennis shoes. Still, they were tactful, graceful, accepting and patient. When a couple of overdressed blue-haired '09-ers came in and took the adjoining booth (the rattle of jewelry attracted our attention), well, weren't we put in our place.

The menu is the sort of thing you've come to expect at poncy places, but it's nowhere near as pretentious as most other fine restaurants. There were no designer names on the various ingredients, nor gushing descriptions of sensations attributable to eating them. There were a few translations of Italian words, though others were left un-translated. (Myself, I don't know what "Gremolota" is, but neither do I care). The wine list is moderately extensive, but neither of us was interested.

Many of the entrées on the menu are available in larger and smaller portions. What presumably is a full he-man serving comes at one price ($15 for the pasta dishes, which was where my attention dwelt); a smaller serving is available for less ($10). And for lunch, the restaurant offers what they call a "Chef's Quick Bite," consisting of a serving — the smaller serving — of the main dish, preceded by soup or salad. These replace the Pranzo listed on the older on-line version of the menu. They have no price listed, but our waiter told us they were $12. We both chose from those options.

Last city inspection: March 2010
14 demerits

Both of us opted for the soup, a creamy white-bean concoction seasoned with celery and brown butter. How was it? Well, imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, and after lunch, I stopped off at the Gucci-B for a can of cannellini, and went home to try and duplicate what I'd had. (Came pretty close, considering that I'm not about to spend the time needed to clarify and brown butter; and I used nonfat yogurt instead of cream, and the white wine I used is of the cheapest variety available. I should have puréed the beans longer, and I should have let it reduce longer, but the aroma and taste are not entirely unlike what Tre Trattoria offers. All things considered, though, I'll spend the money for theirs.)

My entrée was pappardelle with rustic pork ragu, fennel and lemon. Rick chose the pan-seared gnocchi with creamy gorgonzola. Both were delicious, and there was some debate as to which was better. Like the legislative and executive branches of government, we both claim victory in that debate, but only I really won.*

Pappardelle is a wide ribbon of pasta, like lasagna noodles after a long interview with the Inquisition. It is difficult to store and transport, as it is very delicate in its dry state, and so isn't often seen at grocery stores. It is an excellent pasta, though, where there is a thick sauce to put on it. (If I had a pasta maker at home, it would only be so I could make pappardelle myself. I'd use it for other stuff too, and probably enjoy routinely having fresh, home-made pasta, but I would only buy a pasta machine for that one purpose. Which is why I don't have one.) The Neapolitan-style ragu had a pleasing intensity, and the pork was served in plentiful, large and insanely tender chunks. The tastes of fennel and lemon were both subdued, as I would have requested had I been asked. If I had to complain** ... well, I can't really think of anything. Maybe too much salt.

Rick's gnocchi was clearly of the home-made variety, deeply redolent of fresh potato flavour and lightly overlaid with a very thick sauce of Gorgonzola cheese in cream. I thought the searing of the gnocchi had been carried just a bit farther than was necessary, as some of it was nearer black than brown, but the taste was not diminished. If anything, it could have done with another quarter-cup of the luxurious sauce. And his dish did have too much salt.

The table service at Tre Trattoria was excellent, but ... well, I have to wonder why they call these lunch specials "Chef's Quick Bites" if they're going to take so very long to come out of the kitchen? After ordering, we finished our soup, went through two plates of really quite outstanding bread — a light, crusty baguette — and had time to contemplate the chandelier (derivative), the furnishings (interesting), and the artwork (uninteresting, except for a photo of some tomatoes) and the other customers (enough said) before commenting on how loooooong it was taking. We are both retired and had nowhere to be, so we weren't really in any hurry; but you just know that the idea of a "Quick Bite" was to get working people in and out quickly, without their feeling rushed. We felt abandoned, or would have had not the waiter made occasional passes to reassure us. The long delay is the reason the "service" rating is not much higher.

* Proof? You want proof? History is written by the winners.

** And I do.

That's odd...

2011-08-12T18:07:00.004-05:00

Cha-Cha's
5616 Bandera Road

(just inside Loop 410)

It's been about ten years since I was last in Cha Cha's. I used to go for breakfast with a friend who particularly liked the place, and another couple we used to hang out with liked it for dinner. I don't remember feeling particularly strongly about the place one way or t'other, so when I happened to be on that side of town and looking for a place to eat breakfast, there it was, nestled in by Zarzamora Creek, across from the Sushi-B. Why the hell not.

Emiliano Zapata
one of the Great Men of
Western Civilization

Here's what it was like: my friend and I were the only people in the place. That's not too odd; it wasn't really prime breakfasting hours, though it seemed a little odd to be so entirely alone in such a well-known place. We were seated promptly by a cheerful waiter who was fascinated by my friend's T-shirt, with its colourful depictions of various coleoptera, and whose mustache I found oddly interesting, insofar as one side went up like Hercule Poirot's, while the other side went down like Emiliano Zapata's. One is a favourite literary character, the other is a favourite historical character. That has nothing whatsoever to do with this restaurant; I just found it curious.

I found something on the breakfast menu called huevos texanos, which I had never heard of. The Moustache informed me that it was eggs topped by a chili gravy such as they use on enchiladas, with onions and yellow cheese. That sounded good, so I ordered it, with coffee. My friend Rick ordered huevos rancheros.

The coffee came, in a French press. This may make for "attractive after-dinner presentation," and it may be a simple mechanism, but not if you don't know how to use it. It seems that the Mustache didn't. He put before me a cup filled with grounds. After a second try he took the device off to the kitchen, where apparently resided someone with greater experience. Eventually the coffee returned, sans press and sans grounds. We sat back and awaited our breakfast, diverted by the vaguely pornographic ads in the local throwaway weekly rag.

Soon, though, the Mustache returned to tell us that he had been roundly chastised by the cook because he didn't ask us how we wanted our eggs prepared. We both asked for them over medium, which satisfied him, and he left.

A minute or two later, the other employee approached our table and said, without elaboration, "Huevos texanos." I somehow expected more, but after just a moment realized he was asking who at our table had ordered that dish. I admitted my role in the scene, and he asked me, again, how I wanted my eggs. I said "over medium." He looked at Rick and said, with a moderately thick accent that required some concentration to decode, but was not at all unintelligible, "You want eggs over medium too?" And Rick admitted to that preference.

Shortly after this scene, our other employee returned and said, again, "Huevos texanos." I looked at him, and at Rick, and finally realized that he was again asking who, at our table, had ordered this apparently very difficult and demanding dish. I again identified myself, and he said, "With onions on top?"

The Metropolitan Health District has no
inspection listed on line for this location.

It occurred to me that this was not a trick question, so I answered in the affirmative, and he left me to return to the mild pornography of the throwaway rag. Before long, though, he returned yet again, this time bearing two dishes. He stood by the table uncertainly, and finally said, "Huevos texanos?" For a third time I identified myself as the destination for that dish, and it was placed before me. I sampled the sauce, which I found disappointingly thin, but pleasingly flavourful. The eggs were fully covered by it, and the rest of the plate was completely covered by refried beans and fried potatoes in small chunks. Flour tortillas were made available as well. Rick's huevos rancheros looked almost indistinguishable, except that his sauce was chunkier than mine.

I sampled the beans, which were good; they were neither dry nor runny, and I'm happy whenever I get refritos that don't have the soapy taste of lard. The potatoes were actually very good: cooked in very hot oil for close to the perfect length of time, they had a little crunch on the outside and lots of softness inside. Rick confirmed that he shared these appraisals of the side-dishes.

"Over medium" is, it appears, a concept unfamiliar to the cooks at Cha Cha's. To me, and to Rick, it means that the whites are fully set and the yolks are completely runny. My egg whites were runny. Rick's were hardly cooked at all. Describing what we got as "over medium" would be to stretch that term beyond credibility, kind of like a Virginia Republican congressman describing elements of Obama's health-care proposal. I thought about sending it back, but it's not like an undercooked steak; you can't just scrape off the sauce and throw a couple of fried eggs on the grill for another minute, not after they've had a knife taken to them; and neither of us wanted to wait for another batch to be prepared. We made do, not entirely satisfied by, nor repulsed by the error.

We got a refill of coffee, poured this time from a styrofoam cup.

Despite the lack of frying-time for the eggs, and the peculiarities incident to their delivery, and despite the technological issues with coffee preparation, the flavour of both our breakfasts and the coffee was good overall, right down to the flour tortillas served on the side. The place is clean, pleasant and comfortable, and the prices are in the range that I consider reasonable for what you get.

Smelling the Roses

2011-08-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

Pete's Tako House
1022 North Main Avenue

(where Lex & Main come together)

There are a few regular commentators on Urbanspoon whose opinion I feel is reliable. That's not to say that I agree with them; quite often I don't, but I find they write about restaurants with sufficient precision (and, to be honest, much greater conciseness than I generally try for) that I can tell where I will likely agree or disagree. One of those commentators is "Lepricano," a guy who spends too much time in New York and Las Vegas to be completely trustworthy, but who seems nonetheless to have a solid real-world foundation for his opinions.

I came across his comments on Pete's Tako House this morning while trying to decide where to have breakfast, and his evaluation, agreeing with a previous comment expressed by a writer I don't know enough about, convinced me that this place is worth a visit.

Let's be honest: I've been passing by Pete's Tako House for twenty years, and was never the least bit tempted to stop in. For one thing, I almost always passed by in the late afternoon, after it had closed. For another, it always had a derelict and shuttered look to it (well, it would, being closed and all); and the neighbourhood it's in doesn't, in the evening hours, inspire great feelings of security: it is surrounded by offices that are deserted by 6PM, and by gay bars that, whatever they may be like on the inside, look from the outside like perfect spots for a drug deal.

Last city inspection: October 2010
26 demerits

But here it was, late morning, and I'm in the mood for tacos. I summon my personal Kato/Robin/Tonto and head off towards downtown.

During the daytime, with cars in its tiny parking lot, Pete's doesn't look nearly as forbidding as it used to on the way home from work. It stands on a point of land jutting into the jumbled intersection where Main and Lexington Avenues separate (or come together), and where Maple Street ends (or begins). I wouldn't call it welcoming, exactly: it still has the aura of a converted gas station (which, maybe, it actually is); but it doesn't scare me off.

Inside is a dining room that's small even by taquería standards. It has about a dozen tables, close together, yet somehow their proximity to one another doesn't have the same discomfiting characteristic that I've noted in other places (most recently this week, at Magnolia Pancake Haus). Taquerías are supposed to be like this; exactly like this. Menu board on the wall; cash register in the back, keeping the kitchen company; random pictures on the wall veering from art to camp to commercial; a thrum of noise from machinery and conversation that never overwhelms, like white noise.

The waiter greets us as though we were regulars; he is cheerful, gregarious, welcoming, and efficient. We have our drinks in a moment, he answers questions about the food succinctly, and our orders are placed. We barely have time to admire the architecture of the retirement home looming over Crockett Park in the distance, or comment on the photograph of the Pope-mobile passing by on the street, before tacos are placed before us. Mine are in corn tortillas, wrapped tight in foil; Rick's are in thin home-made flour tortillas.

The quality of the food is kind of like recent stock-market averages: it's up and down. Rick's flour tortillas are, he swears (and if I had a stack of Bibles, I'm sure he'd swear on them), the best he's had in a long, long time. He thinks the picadillo is a little underseasoned, not quite as good as he had at Blanquita's; he calls his bean-and-bacon taco outstanding. He offers me not a taste, so all I can do is report his opinion. I will say that his taco fillings looked good, though.

My tacos are chilaquiles and machacado. The chilaquiles are disappointing, not because they're bad — they're not — but because they don't live up to the billing provided by the comments on Urbanspoon. The ingredients are correct, the tortillas are on the well-made, high-quality side (for corn tortillas; what can I say? yo soy gringo), and the eggs and chilaquiles themselves (the actual fried corn-tortilla pieces that give the dish its name) are cooked just right. But I thought the texture suffered from excessive hurry in the kitchen; the pico needed to be left in the pan, or on the grill, maybe half a minute longer, to break down the cell-walls in the onion and pepper. As it was, they were too crunchy to be satisfying. One of the things I love about chilaquiles, when they're made the way I like them, is the range of textures. If the pico isn't allowed to soften sufficiently, that range is curtailed, and that's what I found at Pete's.

The machacado, on the other hand, was outstanding. In most places, the machacado (the dried, shredded meat that gives this dish it's name) is kind of like gas-station jerky: tasty and chewy. Here, the meat is just like what I find in Mexico. Here it is actually dry. It is finely shredded and has a texture that is closer to wood than steak, and yes, I know that sounds just awful, but that's what it's supposed to be like. To eat it, you must chew slowly and thoughtfully, and that's the beauty of a well-made machacado taco: it forces you to slow down and relish the flavours, enjoy the textures, appreciate the qualities of what you're eating. I suppose if I ate nothing but machacado tacos from Pete's Tako House, I'd be as thin as that guy Jared who eats at Subway, because I have to eat it so very slowly.

Really, that's a good thing, a very good thing.

Nascent Local Tradition

2011-08-09T17:07:00.000-05:00

Magnolia Pancake Haus
606 Embassy Oak

(behind the Embassy Theaters, just off West Avenue near Bitters Road)

Looking over the menu at Magnolia Pancake Haus reminded me of a place in New Orleans, the Ruby Slipper, where I had what I thought of at the time (and still do) as "the best breakfast ever." Mostly because both places are known in their respective locales as great breakfast spots. The Ruby Slipper, though, is a neighbourhood eatery deeply infused with a mix of Old N'awlinz Tradition and New Age Cutesiness; Magnolia is a straightforward restaurant that has no real neighbourhood around it, more an IHOP without the homogenization and mock sophistication. Its menu takes its cues from favourite dishes discovered in other places around the country: San Francisco, Chicago, and so on. (And on that score, by the way, the manager would do well to visit the Ruby Slipper.)

Magnolia, which has relocated from its old digs across the parking lot, loses nothing from the move. The old location was clean and new and sparkly; the new location is that as well, and probably larger. Last time I visited, after the move, I was disappointed because (a) the tables were so close together I felt myself almost a part of the conversation at three adjacent tables; and (b) there seemed to have been some decline in the product coming from the new kitchen. It just didn't taste as good as it always has before.

Whatever the problem in the kitchen, if there was one, it's been resolved. As for the table-placement, this morning I was in the front dining area, which has two rows of booths with tables placed in between, and everything has enough separation to make me feel comfortable. I didn't see the layout of the back dining room, where I'd eaten before, to see if they've maybe lowered the density of seating there. If they haven't, I won't want to be in there. But that's just me; some people like community seating.

The food: Yes, it was very good. I went for the Jambalaya omelet, in vague homage, perhaps, to that Ruby Slipper breakfast. The eggs were fluffy to the point of being almost too thick, folded around the filling of seasoned rice, chicken and sausage in a suspiciously precise manner. (I say "suspiciously precise" because the eggs had not cooked into the filling in the least, which makes me suspect that Magnolia has some kind of device in its kitchen that allows its cooks to actually prepare omelets in the shape of a taco, then put the filling in afterwards. How else to explain the machine-like neatness of the folded eggs?) Over the top was a reddish-brown sauce with cheese in it that, yes, did seem redolent of jambalaya seasonings, but looked more like enchilada sauce. Despite appearances, it was quite tasty in a way appropriate to the dish.

The two pancakes that accompanied the omelet, though, were the high point of my morning. (Usually, that's damning with faint praise, but this was a particularly good morning all around. Surely not because I took my wife to the airport this morning; more in spite of that.) The pancakes were light, fluffy, and slightly sweet. They were so light, in fact, that I could have poured an entire pitcher of syrup on them without overflowing the too-small plate they were laid on. But that much syrup would still have been a travesty, an indignity to which such wonderful creations as these pancakes should not be subjected. The pancakes, actually, were better in some ways than what I had at the Ruby Slipper, a comparison that means nothing to you, perhaps, but speaks volumes to me.

I've already mentioned how clean the place is, partly because it's very new. There is a sort of suburban sterility to the atmosphere of the place, as though it has consciously tried to capture the ambience of a Sheraton Hotel lobby; though the idea that anyone would go for that on purpose is not to be believed. So let's just say that it's suburban-modern, kind of like the "hominess" you get in a contractor's model in a new subdivision. Nice enough, but definitely nothing special. Not the least bit lived-in.

Last city inspection: August 2009
29 demerits; that's a lot.

The service is pretty good. I probably marked it up higher than it should have been because I sat there for a while wondering when the waiter was going to bring more coffee, then felt like an idiot when I realized he had left one of those insulated coffee pots on the table. In a normal mood, I'd mark down for that: to me, it means that the management is determined to get by with fewer staff than a decent restaurant should have; kind of like, you know, IHOP. Name one really good restaurant that uses those things. Go ahead, name one. You can't, can you?

The prices are, I would say, at least twenty percent higher than they ought to be. Breakfast for two people, with coffee, tax and tip, was $25. I didn't notice the price of coffee, but I'll bet that's a big part of the excess; though I also thought the price of my omelet was higher than it should have been. It was good, but it wasn't that good.

Down-Home Chi-Chi

2011-08-04T17:32:00.001-05:00

The Esquire Tavern
155 East Commerce

(between St. Mary's and Soledad)

From the outside, nothing at the Esquire has changed since the last time I was there, exactly twenty years ago to the day. (I remember, because August 4th is an important date in my family, and 1991 was a Year Of Momentous Change.) Back then it was the kind of place where you expect to hear the smash of a beer bottle being converted into a weapon. It seemed crowded with shirt-and-tie guys who loved rubbing shoulders with the dregs of society, who were present in, it seemed, just sufficient numbers to attract the free-spending shirt-and-tie guys. It was then, and is still, an Institution in downtown San Antonio, but now that it's been re-imagined as a sort of New Age Haven, it no longer has to rely on such dross as a tenuous connection with a well-received Television Event to attract attention.

Once you step inside, you realize that ... well, nothing's really changed there either ... except ... it feels different. There are still a few guys holding up the bar (yes, the famous Long Bar) in the middle of the day, just enough of them to make you wonder about people who have nothing else to do that time of day. (What do you mean, "People like me"?) They've been cleaned up, though: they no longer look scruffy and dangerous; now they look ... well, like us ordinary folk.

The back part of the very deep room is the dining area. I notice that there are a few tables on the balcony overlooking the River Walk, but honestly, even in the shade with a fan going, it's too damn hot in August (especially this year) to even think about shirking one's responsibility to soak up as much artificially chilled air as one can. Yet I see that one table is occupied, presumably by aliens from Mercury who find Earth intolerably chilly. Or tourists from Up North who want a "it was so hot" story to tell their friends when they get back home. Or locals who are carrying I-can-take-it one-upsmanship just a tad too far.*

The indoor part of the dining area is plenty big, and even though it's the lunch hour on a work day, there aren't many people clogging it up. The booths are of the old-fashioned variety, with high backs and wings to add to the feeling of sinfulness. Your boss will really have to look hard to find you in there; leave your cellphone on your desk, "accidentally." So will your girlfriend's husband. The place has a comfortable feeling of privacy about it, even if you're not playing hooky or cheating on a Significant Other. There are televisions on the wall above the bar, for the truly bored, but the sound is off so they don't interfere with others' enjoyment. And everything is dark: the wood, the floors, the huge mirrors on the walls, the wallpaper, the ancient ceiling; everything is well-lit, though, by the light streaming through the glass wall that is the Riverwalk end of the room. I could see well enough to read our local throwaway weekly rag, which piqued my interest this week with a cynical political piece about our Saintly Governor and some poor shlub who was wrongly executed some years ago. Well, mistakes happen, and those editors over at the throwaway weekly rag, they just don't appreciate irony.

The menu is printed on both sides of a six-by-eight card, and features fru-fru-sounding appetizers, sandwiches, salads.... All the usual stuff, except nothing is usual here. The Esquire takes particular pride in having everything that can be home made home made, right down to the ketchup and mustard and pickles. It makes for an interesting, albeit brief, topic of conversation, but I don't know that it affects the taste of things all that much.

Still, the tastes were generally pretty darn good. They don't carry the only beer I like enough to cross the street for, so I stuck with water; though I was fleetingly tempted by the Mexican Coke and home-made carbonated water, mainly as a novelty interest. The $2.50 price tag on each was all it took for me to dismiss that whim. For that amount of money for colored water with sugar, the waiter would have to stand behind me and massage my shoulders. I know, of course, that most people in the world simply shrug their shoulders at the thought of paying eight or ten times the value of a thing; if they didn't, Coke, of any nationality, would cost thirty-five cents and there would be fewer foreclosures.

The menu starts with a section called "Plates." I think, by that, they mean everything from tapas to entrées. I toyed with the idea of a plate of fried peanuts, but instead asked for the deviled eggs; I vaguely remember hearing something about the deviled eggs, though I don't recall whether it was good or bad, or whether it was from a reliable source. My table-mate ordered a jalapeño bean burger, medium-well, and I picked the Big Red Short Rib Empanada.

Sadly, the Big Red Short Rib Empanada, easily the most intriguing menu entry I've seen since bananas Foster pain perdu, is no longer a regular feature at the Esquire. For reasons of economics, perhaps, or as the result of a time-and-motion study, they are now only available on weekends. My fallback, an instantaneous decision made with inadequate reflection, was the sirloin burger with smoked Gouda cheese.

The deviled eggs were good. Not great. Presumably the kitchen staff did not lay the eggs themselves. (Maybe they have their own chickens, on a spread outside the Loop.) The eggs were boiled perfectly well, not the least bit rubbery but still possessing sufficient structural integrity to be easily managed as finger-food. The filling, while a damn sight better than what I got yesterday at a much less attractive trough on the South Side, was a little disappointing. The taste was good, and the pink peppercorns decorating the tops made for an intriguing appearance and a pleasant counterpoint, but the texture was simply too smooth. It had all been over-mixed, leaving nothing for the tongue to grab on to.

My friend's jalapeño bean burger was, he said, very good. According to the menu, it contains organic beef, cheese, refritos with ancho, jalapeño aioli (which would seem out of place on beef, but wasn't) and roasted jalapeños. At ten bucks a pop, it'd had better be good.

My cheeseburger was only nine dollars. "Only" nine dollars. I have to wonder if a restaurant in downtown San Antonio, which is full of people who make their livings as hotel maids and security guards, can survive with prices like that. Most of the higher-paid people, the city employees and county employees and lawyers and bankers, will likely prefer places with higher visibility value; places like The Palm and Bohanon's and Biga, where they get to be seen spending too much money. Oh, sure, on occasion they'll drift into the Esquire and have a quiet lunch with some lobbyist or developer or defendant or mistress, but I don't know if it'll be often enough to keep this very good restaurant going. A shame, really.

No city inspection.

Anyway, my burger was also very good, except that I regret having chosen the Gouda. Somehow, the smoky flavour of the cheese had issues with the excellent flavours of beef and veggies and that home-made ketchup and mustard. Also the home-made sesame-seed bun was toasted to within an inch of its life. Another ten seconds on the heat and I'd've been sending it back.

I have resisted the urge to consider the cost of parking in the "value" rating: we paid $5 to park for an hour at the garage a block away, which was only worth it because of the heat. I figure, though, that the Esquire's clientele isn't going to be driving downtown to eat, so parking won't be an issue for them. They'll be walking over from the office, in their shirts and ties, hoping to rub shoulders with a 21st Century version of the demimonde. The place looks right for that, but turns out to be a nice place anyway.

*I'm betting on the locals; the look of the Esquire from the outside, as others have noted, is generally sufficient to scare the tourists away.

I Kind of Like It.

2011-07-22T21:13:00.001-05:00

Boehler's
328 East Josephine Street

at 281, near Pearl Brewery

In the interest of full disclosure: The owner of this restaurant is a friend of a friend; I've met her probably once (it might be twice; I forget), and I'm fairly certain she is not even that familiar with who I am.

A lot of people — OK, not a lot of people; a few people, with access to media outlets and an interest in the local cultural scene — were incensed when Liberty Bar was forced out of this famously leaning building a while back. The rumours were that the new owner of the building jacked up the rent, that she tried to force them out, that she wanted to put a taco stand in the back, that she was just trying to capitalize unfairly on (a) the newly resurgent Pearl Brewery and (b) the goodwill that Liberty Bar had built up.

I don't know what the truth was, nor do I really care. Despite the recent news from Washington and Austin, I'm still enough of an old-fashioned Republican to believe that a property owner, absent contractual obligations to the contrary, should be free to do as he or she wishes with his or her property, within the law. As I understand it, Liberty Bar's lease was up, and if the owner, who recently inherited the property, wanted to "jack up" the rent, either because the value of the place justified it or because she wanted to do something else with it, she should go for it. If she benefits from others' efforts to redevelop a deteriorating eyesore like the Pearl into something trendy and chic, good for her; if she benefits from the goodwill of her ancestor's recent tenant, again, good for her. She owes them nothing for it, especially in this case: when her long-deceased ancestor bought this property, put up this building, and opened his tavern on the site back in 1890, he named it Boehler's Liberty Tavern (or Bar, or something like that). So if there is goodwill to consider, she is just receiving it back from those who have borrowed it.

Now that the Liberty Bar is (apparently) thriving in its new Southtown digs, and Boehler's has survived its first year, all this matters not at all, even to the people most immediately concerned. I only include it to set the stage (and to say my equally irrelevant piece about property rights).

I hear through friends in the periphery of the restaurant business that somebody with outstanding culinary credentials was the chef at this place, and that either Boehler's lured him away from somebody else, or somebody else lured him away from Boehler's. I don't know; who can keep track of these people? I am proud to say that I am not among the clique that thinks of well-trained, successful chefs as celebrities, even though I sometimes watch the Food Network and the Cooking Channel, and I know who both Alton Brown and Bobby Flay are, and think one of them is interesting. No, well-trained, successful chefs are fodder for the gossip mill, just like every name partner in every imploding law firm, or every self-destructive televangelist, and every schlocky self-promoting probationer in Los Angeles County. Beyond that, they're not really worth the ink they get. So, let's stop wondering who's in the kitchen, and talk instead about what's in the dining room.

The entry is on the side. There's an awning there, to tell you it's the entrance, because otherwise you might think it was the back door. The first thing you see is the ladies' restroom. There's a small patio area out back, and a maitre d's station to the left that you see as you wonder if you came in a service entrance. When we arrived, someone that I'll assume is a busboy took it upon himself, with reluctance, to hand us menus and invite us to sit wherever we wanted. The dining room isn't large, and only a couple of tables were occupied. We chose a place near the street end, but not by the large neon-lined rhomboid windows.

We immediately noted how warm it was in the place. It being a time of near-record heat, and unprecedented strain on the national power grid (not that that has anything to do with us here in Texas), we assumed the owners, in a noble gesture of civic duty, had raised the thermostat to conserve energy. But no, it was just that our arrival had coincided with the demise of the restaurant's air conditioner. It was tolerable, although by the time we left it had grown warmer, and I would hope that by now, an hour and a half later, either the thing's been fixed or arriving patrons are being warned of the impending discomfiture.

The décor inside seems to have been interrupted at some point. There are icicle-style Christmas lights around the ceiling, burned out in places, and a couple of unremarkable wall hangings. The walls themselves seem to have been painted whatever colour was on sale at Lowe's that day; or maybe the owners thought they were going to have one kind of restaurant, then ended up with another instead, and accidentally. They seem to have decorated for the low-end of chic, then decided to go more high-end at the last minute.

The menu, in keeping with the décor, strives to be both haute cuisine and down-home. Either way, the prices seem quite reasonable. The people at the next table were doing the burger thing, and boy did those burgers look good. But I was more interested in trying something a little more challenging than a fancy hamburger. I went with the pecan-crusted schnitzel; my wife opted for the green chili and chorizo meatloaf. Both come with a well-assembled salad (with good quality dressing) and mashed potatoes; hers is accompanied by sautéed veggies, while mine gets a healthy dose of red cabbage. Bread was not offered.

The presentation of the dishes was artful, portending a quality that I was skeptical of delivery. But the schnitzel was excellent. With a slightly sweet sauce, and a full coating of roasted pecans, it carries off powerful flavours with more than a little style, and fully justified the audacity of the arrangement. My wife reports that the meatloaf was equally up to its setting, though I'll confess that, after taking a bite of my own dish, I could taste nothing of hers. Its flavours, against my pecan crust, were too subtle to be discerned. Still, I know her to be a good judge of such things, so I will take her word for it that all the requisite flavours were present and in good balance. I will say, though, that I thought her meatloaf's texture was too reminiscent of purée to be truly outstanding: I could not tell it from the potatoes.

Last city inspection: May 2010
A perfect score

The slant of the dining room's walls and floor — the building looks like it's about to fall over, but it's looked that way for decades and refuses to go — gives Boehler's a degree of charm that helps some to offset the increasing warmth, the nè questo nè quello character of the décor, the uncertainty of the staff (an uncertainty not shared, I'm happy to say, by our actual waiter), and the cuteness of the drinks list ("girly drinks" on one page, "drinks for real men" on another). But if I'm to go back (and I probably will), it won't be because the walls are crooked. It'll be because the food is pretty good, the prices are reasonable, and the place, generally, has promise. There are some glitches still to be worked out (I know restaurant people don't like to hear them referred to as "bugs"), but I'm fairly confident that, in a few months or years, Boehler's will still be there to enjoy again. I certainly hope it will.

The Two-Wheeled Variety

2011-07-19T09:41:00.000-05:00

Last city inspection: October 2010
Only 3 demerits!

Frank's Hog Stand
801 South Presa Street

at Perieda, in Southtown

I thought at first that the name of this place was a paean to the former iconic occupant of the space, the now-defunct Pig Stand. That restaurant was revered locally for its historical importance, though judging from its eventual and agonizingly-protracted failure, its food was better in the popular memory than it was on the plate. The eponymous owner of the new occupant, though, was among those who grew up with the Pig Stand, and when the building went vacant, he bought it and created this 21st-Century version.

The hogs of the name, though, are the motorcycles that form the theme of the décor and menu, from the Easy Rider mural on the back wall to the chopper-clock by the cash register. The ubiquity of the entire theme could be overwhelming, were it not for the light and self-mocking touch with which it's applied. No one can feel out of place in Frank's Hog Stand, no matter what form of transportation one uses to get there. There are even signs in the front window assuring visitors of that: "Biker Chicks Welcome," for example; and "Losers Welcome."*

The greeting from the pierced and tattoo'd waitress with the partly purple hair was as cheerful and welcoming as the array of signage promised. Though at that moment we were the only people there, it wasn't long before the place started to fill up, mostly with people who seemed to be habituées of the place, judging not from their stylings — I saw nary a nose-ring nor lip stud among them, and any tats they had were concealed by sober office-worker costumes — but from their evident comfort and familiarity with the place and its staff.

Our cheerful waitress got us started by offering to brew coffee, something she had never done before, it seemed. Frank's Hog Stand starts offering breakfast later this week, on the 18th, so she felt she needed the practice. She did well.

The menu, as I said, centers on a motorcycle theme, carried out here with greater determination and, I think, cleverness than certain other theme restaurants in town. These amusing names for the food were effective: against better judgment, we split an appetizer (a term so inappropriate, in the circumstances, as to be ironic) of Rusty Nuts: tater tots drenched in beef and bean chili and Velveeta cheese. The beans in the chili had imbued rather too much seasoning, and were a slight distraction, and of course Velveeta has that unique taste that assaults the palate right up front. Once you acclimate yourself to that taste, though, it can be accepted and ignored, though never forgotten or enjoyed.

The result of this indulgence was that I couldn't eat my entire sandwich. It was a pulled-pork sandwich on a hoagie, with melted swiss cheese and trimmings, fries on the side. Rick went for a cheese-steak sandwich, also with fries. The French fries at Frank's are the thick, wide steak-fry variety, and very well done. (Just to be clear: I mean they were cooked just right, not that the were cooked beyond virtue.) Rick's cheese steak was real good too: lots of well-seasoned meat and cheese, onions and peppers on a nicely toasted hoagie roll.

My pulled pork sandwich was, sadly, the only disappointing feature of our visit. Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with it: the meat was a good quality, and there was plenty of it, and of the cheese and trimmings as well. Unfortunately, I was surprised by the fact that the pulled pork sandwich is made with barbecued pork, and a sweetish variety of barbecue to boot. Had the menu mentioned that, I would have ordered something else. Barbecue is a touchy enough dish that, on principle, I don't bother with it except in places dedicated to its production; and I avoid sweet-tasting barbecue as a matter of personal preference. And I certainly don't like having it sneak up on me like this. So it was with no regret that, after sharing the Rusty Nuts with Rick, I left half my sandwich (and some of my fries, which I kind of did regret) uneaten on the plate.

* I can't resist the temptation to be similarly, if insincerely, self-deprecating by saying, That lets me in. But possibly "Losers" is just biker-speak for people with extra wheels.

And Now For Something Completely The Same.

2011-07-08T15:10:00.002-05:00

El Mariachi Loco
610 Isom Road, at Ramsey Street

What's not to like about this place? It's like being at a friend's house for lunch, on a day when the whole neighbourhood is over. The place is clean, simply furnished, and the whole family chips in to see that everybody gets what they like. Glasses are kept full, tostadas are replenished, salsa pours forth like manna.

Well, a slight exaggeration. True, the service is good, in the way that local news broadcasts are good. And having the young daughter of the family helping out adds a dollop of cute-factor to the whole lunch experience. Mom, I'm guessing, didn't think that fifteen tables in a small room could be quite that much work, and I expect that either a regular helper was MIA, or the Texas Republican Party's job-creation strategy is about to prove its worth.

Well, here's the deal: the service is good, although when I say that I mean it's not bad. The ambience is that of every run-of-the-molino family-operated Tex-Mex restaurant in Paradise South. In other words, not bad. The prices are right where you feel like they ought to be. It's the food that lets this place down a little.

Last city inspection: January 2011
11 demerits

It's not really bad food; it's food that inhabits that strange vague region between "good" and "bad." It's just, you know, food. The right things, more or less, prepared without great skill, in too much of a hurry (I suspect), and served as fast as mom can bring it out to you. The chips were so-so; the salsa looked good but turned out to be ordinary. The tortillas were acceptable, but just barely: one was burned, another hardly warmed. They looked like flour but tasted like corn, and not good corn, tortillas. The peppers and onions in my food were undercooked, and the cheese ... well, was there cheese? Yes, yes, I'm sure I saw cheese in there; I just didn't taste it. My lunch partner swore his dish was very good, very good, but from his detailed description of the experience under torture, I'd say his standards have gotten lax in my absence. His food was so-so, too.

Reliable. Reliably Good.

2011-07-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant
4515 Fredericksburg Road

across from Crossroads ... uh, Wonderland of the Americas Mall.

You really can't read too much into the fact that, after a week and a half abroad — during which the only Mexican food I had was a laughable German imitation, at a place that happened to be showing the soccer match I wanted to see on its big screen — the first place I'd go to for lunch is Garibaldi's. I mean, yeah, it's pretty good, but it's not, you know, great.

It appears the City of San Antonio is
ignorant of the existence of this place.
No health inspection record found.

I discovered this converted all-you-can-devour steak place, oh, a few years ago, when I needed a taco fix. In my own neighbourhood, good taquerías litter the ground like those cigarette butts environmentalists are always warning against, the ones that persist for hundreds of years (which makes me wonder, where are they all? Shouldn't they be piling up in the streets and alleyways by now? But I digress). But in the area of town that starts, oh, a few blocks inside Loop 410 — the area fondly known as Loopland — they get to be a little on the sparse side. This location (there are a few around town) is, therefore, almost an outpost of good Tex-Mex.

One thing I particularly like about Garibaldi is their corn tortillas. Now, I'm not really that big a fan of corn tortillas. Flour tortillas are more to my gringo tastes; but corn tortillas are better, nutritionally. Unfortunately most corn tortillas taste to me like the box that pre-fab taco shells come in. At Garibaldi, though, they are just thick enough to do their duty, very soft, and with a slightly buttery taste. Garibaldi's is the first Tex-Mex place I ever found were I liked my tacos on corn as well as I did on flour. Call it a sentimental favourite.

The coffee is good here, too. Nothing fancy, none of that rot-your-spoon industrial-strength Seattle coffee shop stuff, just plain ol' caffeine in suspension. The staff makes sure you have it timely and in good quantity, as they do everything else.

I've been to Garibaldi's maybe two dozen times, both for breakfast and lunch. I've always had excellent service, and always felt the prices were a little bit on the pleasing side. The food has, too, although nothing about it stands out enough to give it that extra half-chili-pepper rating. Whether it's chilaquiles or chili relleno, it's made fresh with good quality ingredients, and prepared by someone who knows their way around a cocina. It's reliable, and I mean that as strong praise.

Not the Place for Breakfast

2011-06-20T17:53:00.000-05:00

Los Barrios Restaurant
4223 Blanco Road

(just south of Basse Road)

I can't recall a time when my favourite Tex-Mex restaurant was some place other than Los Barrios. It's beaten the odds by staying around a long, long time — at least 30 years — and by remaining high in quality that entire time. The only reason I don't go there more often for dinner is that I hate to wait that long for a table. Despite multiple expansions, including the addition of a really nice patio area, with high walls à la Lomas to keep out the traffic noise, the crowd on Friday evenings is out the door by the time I can drag myself the three or four miles up Blanco to their doors.

But today, my friend Rick and I went there for breakfast, something I'd never done. (And Rick believes he'd never been to Los Barrios at all. Poor boy: he doesn't get out enough.) Technically, Los Barrios isn't open for breakfast during the week. We got there right at 11AM, and were almost the first customers of the day.

It was a slightly eerie feeling, being so alone in that large, pretty, fairly elegant dining room. Considering that, no matter what time of day, in all the years I've been going to Los B, I've never seen it less than half-full, I felt like I had entered a parallel universe. It gave me a chance to reflect on just how nicely decorated the place is: the colours of the walls, in the dining room and the patio; the signage; the floors, the plants are all like what you would expect to see in the finest restaurants in San Angel or Coyoacán. Really, everything except the tables, which are nice but not that special, and the area that was the original dining room at this location, enclosed in a low wall and maintaining a feeling of separateness, as if to show just how far Los Barrios has come from its humble beginnings (which are even more humble than that dining area indicates: before moving to this part of Blanco, they opened in a sort of hut downtown).

With so few people there at that hour, we expected to have exceptional service. We were a little disappointed. The service was good, even a touch better than average; but it was about as good as we'd get at Los B during a moderately busy time. Our coffee cups weren't refilled quite as quickly as they might have been. The water we asked for took just long enough to appear that its eventual arrival was briefly in some doubt. The check was a bit slow in coming, too. Those things being said, the service was attentive and accurate, and otherwise timely: we got seated immediately (I'd have been shocked if it had been otherwise), and got menus right away; our drink orders were taken at once, and the drinks, and chips and salsa, were delivered speedily. The chips and salsa were replenished before I'd even noticed that they were running low.

I wish I could say the food was exceptional, but that would be unmerited hyperbole. It was good, certainly better than average, but not exceptional. The chips were average, the salsa runnier than usual and lacking its usual piquant edge; though it had an excellent colour and flavour. The coffee was oddly reminiscent of the 1970s; I'm thinking it was the slightly bitter aftertaste that took me back to that time, a remnant of a memory now lost. Not that it was bad, mind you, just that it was ... old-fashioned. Like the cups it's served in.

The breakfast section of the menu is sparse: chilaquiles plates, machacado plate, flour tacos three-to-an-order, and so on. The prices shown there struck me as high for Tex-Mex breakfast foods. I ordered two machacado tacos, Rick two beef fajita tacos. Neither was on the menu as such, but it was no problem. It's a sign of an experienced staff when they aren't phased by such orders (I'm always amazed when I'm told that I can't have some dish that's not on the menu, even if all its ingredients are there in other places). The waitress at Los Barrios didn't bat an eye, didn't have to "check and see if they can do that."

The tacos that arrived were on the high end of good. I thought my machacado tacos had a very good texture, and an excellent flavour other than being a little too salty for my taste. I unfortunately poured too much salsa on them (lacking a spoon), causing them to drip. I hate that: the first one fills the plate with liquid, and the second one gets soggy. There were plenty of napkins on the table, but I didn't think to lay one on the plate to absorb the juice from the salsa. Duh! Rick's fajita tacos were, he said, probably the best he's had anywhere, but I have to discount that some. They were probably only very good, based on his expanded description of their attributes; and after he'd finished lauding them in some detail, he came upon a punishing chunk of gristle.

Last city inspection: September 2010
8 demerits

And then the check came. Now, I can't deny that the presentation of our tacos at Los Barrios was a cut above what we'd've seen at, say, Manny's Taco Shed: the bit of lettuce-and-tomato salad off to one side, the guacamole decoration with the tostada tower. But when it comes to breakfast tacos, that stuff is lipstick on a pig. And even with the window dressing, $6.50 is way too much for two fajita tacos, and $5.00 is too much for two machacado tacos. (Coffee, at $1.50 per bottomless cup, was about right.)

Well, Los Barrios didn't earn its well-deserved reputation for excellence over the breakfast table. I still think it's about the best Tex-Mex around for lunch or dinner, in all aspects of my ratings. But for breakfast ... well, there are lots and lots of taquerías around, many of them excellent. I'll go there instead.

A Promising Burger Joint

2011-06-17T21:15:00.000-05:00

Daddy Macky's Burgers and Beer
1725 Blanco Road

(just north of the new traffic circle, in Beacon Hill)

Surrounded by well-known competitors, Daddy Macky's Burgers has its work cut out for it. It shares the line of shops with Casbeer's, a venue rightly known more for its music than its greasy-spoon food. (I haven't been there in quite a few years myself; I know another place opened in Southtown with the name Casbeer's, but didn't really follow the dust-up. Maybe they don't have music anymore; I know they still have food.) Across the street is a classic Tex-Mex restaurant, the quintessential Blanco Café. And just a block or two down the street is the burger joint that Daddy Macky's aspires to be, in fiscal if not culinary terms: Chris Madrid's, the perennial list-topper for burgers in S.A.

After two and a half years, Macky's still has work to do, but the fact that it's survived that long, so close to such competitors, and in a location with little in the way of parking, is a sign of promise. It deserves to survive, and even prosper. The burgers are already better than the ones for sale down the street, and the steak fries and onion rings are top notch. The grilled chicken sandwich was pretty good, maybe a little greasy, but people seem to be okay with that; go figure. My only gripe with the food, in fact, was the overwhelming flavour of mustard on a burger ordered without mayo. If the cook is going to use such a heavy hand with the yellow mustard, the management would be much better off putting yellow squeeze bottles of the stuff out on the tables, à la Timbo's and the Armadillo. If I put too much on my own burger, I can't complain.

Gilette Stadium, Foxboro, Mass.

The area where Macky's really suffers is the ambience; or the total lack of it. The place is large, too large for the furnishings; a corner near the front is given over to a stage area, so they probably have live music on occasion, or plan to anyway. Maybe they rearrange the tables to provide an area for dancing; if so, they'd do well to leave the tables in that configuration, rather than looking like Gillette Stadium during a New England Revs match. The kitchen area at the back of the room looks spotlessly clean, as does most of the oddly-mixed items lined around the walls: mounted deer trophies, a juke box, a salad bar, a front door from Home Depot (?), and some things I couldn't identify. The bathroom was recently cleaned and reasonably well maintained as well.

No city inspection on record.

The strong point is the service. This is particularly remarkable in that there was only one person working the entire room. Not that there were that many guests, just five or six tables, but they were so widely separated in the huge room that the young man was getting enough exercise for both of us, plus my dog. He was barely able to keep up with the workload, yet he did so, and I even noted that, when he cleaned a recently vacated table, he actually wiped the entire tabletop, and the seat cushions, and the bottoms of all the containers kept on the table. This is a man who takes pride in doing his job well. He should look into cloning.

Twinkies All Around

2011-05-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

Big Bob's Burgers
2215 Harry Wurzbach

(just south of Rittiman Road)

Noting that Big Bob's Burgers is about to open a location near my neighbourhood, on Hildebrand, it was almost pre-ordained that when my friend Rick and I found ourselves on Harry Wurzbach looking for a place for lunch, we would pull into the parking lot of their bright yellow ramshackle building. We arrived just at 11.00, early enough that the neon "Open" sign hadn't been turned on; we were the first customers of the day for them

The menu is straightforward: burgers, fries, tots, onion rings. Three kinds of cheese are offered for the burgers: Swiss, American, and cheddar. I opted for the cheeseburger combo, with cheddar cheese, fries and ice tea — which is available sweetened and unsweetened. (That's three times in a week I've had ice tea; it's also three times in three years. I must be trending.) On an impulse, I ordered a "deep fried Twinkie," having heard of similar silliness (I understand deep fried Mars bars are popular in Scotland). Rick chose the bacon cheeseburger, with Swiss, and onion rings.

The service was excellent. The young lady behind the register was friendly, engaging, and informative. The manager (possibly the owner; I don't know) was solicitous of his customers, going from table to table making sure everything was satisfactory. (The place is popular with soldiers from nearby Fort Sam; we were about the only people not in uniform; although I was wearing my camouflage shorts from Wal-Mart, so I'm sure I blended right in.) He was particularly interested in my take on the deep fried Twinkie, and told me he'd gotten the idea from a place in Las Vegas.

The prices are about right, for the most part. I thought $1.95 for the fried Twinkie was a little on the steep side, but I'm not going to get worked up about it. The combo price is a pretty good deal at, I think, $6.50, and the á la carte prices are in line with similar places.

The city's health inspectors appear to be
unaware of the existence of this place.

While we were waiting for our orders to come out, I had a chance to note that the dining room was not very carefully tended. There was food on the floor under some of the tables, including ours, and since the restaurant had just opened, it must have been there all night. Someone needs to check up on the closing crew. (On the other hand, it does offer evidence of a lack of scavenging vermin in the place....) And the floor beneath the soda fountain looks like it hasn't heard the whoosh of a broom since Lieutenant Eisenhower brought his bride to dine. (Having noticed this, I was particularly interested in the city's food-safety inspection report; but I couldn't find that the place has ever been inspected.) The rest of the place, including the restroom, seemed indifferent clean, as a certain English bard or Danish prince might say: that is, clean but not sterilized.

I'm sorry to report that the burger was only fair. It was of a good size, and properly cooked, and the sesame seed bun was reasonably fresh, as were the dressings of lettuce, tomato, pickles and onion. The correct cheese was present in respectable quantity. But the whole package just lacked that special burger flavour that I always look for, that grilled taste that lets you feel you're in somebody's back yard, feet up on a box, waiting for someone to bring you another beer. The burger was strangely bland.

The fries weren't bland, but they weren't good. Deep fried in oil that needs badly to be filtered or changed, they came out with the flavour of seasoned salt and old grease. The seasoned salt I could live with (though I regard it as a passing fad, and would prefer to be given a choice not to have it), but the old grease flavour is not what I look for in my french fries.

Rick's burger was about the same, though he did like the bacon's flavour. And his onion rings were definitely in the top half of their class. The quantity was up there, too: I left most of my fries on the table because they were lousy; he left some of his onion rings because there were just so many of them.

Surprisingly, that deep fried Twinkie was the high point of my visit. Not that I would get it again, but it was definitely an enjoyable splurge. It came out looking like a flabby, undercooked corn-dog, on a wide popsicle stick, golden-brown with just a hint of darker colours around the edges. I admit that I haven't experienced the taste of a Twinkie in, oh, dozens of years, but as soon as I touched it to my tongue I could identify that remarkably memorable taste of sponge cake and preservatives that is the hallmark of the eternal kiddie treat. The filling, however, melts in the heat and puddles at the bottom. While this gives you a pleasant charge of sweetness when you get down that far in your devouring, it also gives you an unpleasant burning sensation as it dribbles out onto your fingers when the feeble cake shell is breached. Be warned, but enjoy.

A Sense of (Disposable) History

2011-05-20T17:39:00.001-05:00

Clear Springs Restaurant
1692 South Texas Highway 46
New Braunfels

(in the community of Clear Springs, at the turn-off to the New Braunfels Municipal Airport)

There's something about a really old building put to a new use that makes people feel comfortable. Psychologists might explain it with reference to our disposable culture, I suppose, but when you get right down to it, who cares why it's so? At Clear Springs, that disposable culture goes up against our sense of history; I'm not sure which side wins.

(photo from restaurant's web site)

Here's what you do: take a big ol' barn of a place that was around the last time Comanches attacked; bring it up to code; decorate it in the instant-relic style of a Cracker Barrel restaurant; line the rustic-style tables up as though it were a church hall, and fill the place with gimcrack souvenirs and the familiar aromas of frying, and swing wide the doors. That's pretty much what these people have done. They have four other locations around Texas, including in San Antonio proper, as well as the Gruene River Grill and Auntie Pastas in New Braunfels. Most of their other restaurants also inhabit "repurposed" old buildings, but ... well, I guess you can't find such things just lying around everywhere.

We started off with an order of onion rings. We hadn't intended to; but as we sat down the waitress suggested that or fried pickles, and somehow it just seemed like the right thing to do. I'm glad we did, if only so I can say what they were like: they were good, with a light, crisp batter, and they were plentiful, piled high up on a (disposable) tray. I enjoyed every sinful one of them, and though I may say I regret the unnecessary calories, you'll know better than to believe me. When I say that I regret not having tried the fried pickles, I'm being a little more honest. Just a tad.

The menu reads like a who's-who of fried food. Because we'd split the order of onion rings, I decided that was enough fried food for a man just over a year from his first heart attack; so I ordered the grilled chicken, which is almost the only thing on the menu that isn't fried. And it's probably only there as a sop to people who believe all that healthy-eating crap that spews out from nanny-groups like the American Medical Association. Or for people like me, who acknowledge the truth of that stuff but generally implement it only in the everything-in-moderation sense. Well, a large half-order of rings was my moderation for the day. Rick, whose cardiac event was far enough in his past for him to pay it no mind, went with the chicken fried steak. I really wanted that chicken fried steak.

My side orders of choice were green beans and garlic mashed potatoes; his were coleslaw and french fries.

Restaurant inspection reports in New
Braunfels are not available on line.

I tried hard to convince myself that his chicken friend steak was lousy, but really it wasn't. Maybe it wasn't a great chicken fried steak, but it was a good one. It had a fine-grained batter with moderate seasoning, maybe fried a touch too long, and it was tasty. Certainly better than my grilled chicken, but the chicken, too, wasn't as bad as I wanted it to be. It was acceptable, a large-ish chicken breast with nice grill marks and a slight crunch to the edges. Unfortunately, the (disposable) utensils provided were no match for the chicken. Other than that, I can't complain,* which in the context of a restaurant is pretty faint praise.

The side dishes were, for the most part, a step above the main dishes. My green beans were good enough to be fattening, and the garlic mashed potatoes were certainly fattening, and garlicky, and creamy-good. Rick's french fries were fried just to his liking, and seasoned lightly. The cream gravy for his steak was some evidence that yes, some cream gravy is better than other cream gravy. Only the coleslaw was in the range of mediocrity. Oh, and both dishes were decorated with a cold, hard slice of buttered Texas toast that could have been used as a coaster.

The service was good; personable in an aw-shucks-we-all-jes'-folks-here way; our waitress confessed to being born in (gasp!) Illinois, but she was appropriately apologetic for the fact.** She and her colleagues did their job in a solid way, not in any great hurry but not vanishing inexplicably at any point; though I did feel like I waited a long time for a refill on my ice tea at one point. Essentially, the wait staff put the customers at ease, made them feel welcome and comfortable and content.

* Obviously, I can. Some may recognize this as irony. Others won't get that.

** I can sympathise; I, too, was born in exile.

Smack-Dab in the Middle of the East Side

2011-05-17T18:16:00.001-05:00

Angelica's Restaurant
311 North New Braunfels Avenue

(a couple of blocks south of Houston Street)

A small bit of business required my presence on the East Side yesterday, and as is my custom I made it an opportunity to sample a new restaurant in that part of town. The North Side may have a near monopoly on upscale glitz and trendiness, but the other parts of town are home to innumerable excellent small restaurants featuring any number of cuisines. My mood, however, mandated Tex-Mex or, as we loosely call it in these parts, Mexican food.

San Antonio is justly famous for Mexican food. There is, to be sure, an increasing number of excellent Mexican restaurants in other parts of the country, especially at the high end, but no other place in the USA can touch San Antonio for the sheer number of good taquerias and enchilada houses. They are scattered across this city like tinsel on a Christmas tree decorated by small children. And even within the genre of Mexican food, there is variety based on the origin of the kitchen's mastermind. Most people don't appreciate it — most of us go just to eat and enjoy and leave. We are Neanderthals most of the time. Even I, the Curmudgeon-About-Town, have been known to just eat and not appraise.

Well. It would have been a good idea, maybe, if I'd taken that approach at Angelica's.

We arrived at the height of the lunch rush. We thought it was a good sign that the parking lot was just about full. Imagine our surprise when we walked in and found the place all but empty. Seems there was some kind of sales meeting going on in their private dining room, which accounted for all the cars out front.

The menu was unremarkable: breakfast on one side, lunch on the other. A quick scan told us that the prices were unremarkable as well, which is generally a good thing.

I suspect that the waitress was new to the job. When my companion ordered beef fajita nachos, she had to copy it off the menu. I made life simple for her by asking for the Daily Special, which on Mondays is steak mexicana. She acted as though she had never heard of it, even though it's a regular enough Monday special to be printed right there on the laminated menu card. We both went for ice tea.

The tea arrived first, two Texas tumblers filled with sweet tea that had that unmistakable tang of Lipton's. You either like it, or you don't, or you don't care. I don't care. I don't generally drink iced tea (though I had it again today, elsewhere, so I'm on something of a binge, I suppose), and Lipton's is fine with me. I do realize, however, that there is a fringe group of foodies out there who believe that artisanal ice tea is an art form to be sought out. They will not appreciate the tea at Angelica's.

Next to arrive was a bowl of chips and salsa. The chips were on the thick side, and still warm from the fryer (or maybe a heat lamp) and not too greasy, but neither were they especially flavourful. Let's just call them routine. The salsa was better than that, but still was nothing special. A shame, really; it's so easy for Mexican restaurants to entice return business with a notable bowl of salsa.

My friend's nachos arrived in good time. He politely waited for my food to arrive, despite my recommendation that he begin. He eats so much slower than I do (everyone does) that it's well he had a head start.

Some time later the waitress put in front of me a plastic basket containing one crisp taco. I looked at it and tried to recall what I'd ordered. Off the top of my head I couldn't remember but I was pretty sure it wasn't a single taco. In a moment it came to me, and I informed the waitress that I had ordered the steak mexicana. She looked at me as though, again, she had never heard of the dish. "The daily special," I said, wondering if maybe English was not in her purview. I tried to think of the Spanish for "daily special," but since much of my rusting command of that language comes from ordering in Mexican restaurants, where the accepted phrase is "el daily special," I was at something of a loss. But she took the taco away and left with a quizzical expression before I could complete the task of mentally translating the phrase.

At this point my companion decided to eat, and bless him, he offered me some. So I got to try the beef fajita nachos.

In the world of nachos, there seem to be two schools of thought: one, that the nachos should be carefully laid out, the chips precisely touching or evenly spaced, with a dollop of each ingredient carefully centered on the chip; the other, that the ingredients should form sort of a mound or jumble, filling the plate higgledy-piggledy in a sort of culinary riot. I personally prefer the latter, and so does the kitchen at Angelica's. It was a large platter covered with a veritable pile of chips dosed with refried beans, peppers, onions and seasoned meat, and decorated with one mound of guacamole and another of sour cream.

Last city inspection: February 2010
28 demerits

They were fair. Nothing remarkable. The chips were the same not-quite-flavourful ones that had filled the bowl of tostadas; there was a smear of beans and lots of green pepper and enough onion, and the meat was a reasonably good cut reasonably well seasoned. The guacamole was good, the sour cream perfectly ordinary. Yet overall the nachos lacked flavour. They cannot be described as bland; nothing in Mexican cookery is bland; that's why I like it so much. They were just ... limp.

My food eventually arrived. The steak was a good cut of meat, cut in very small strips and finely prepared; the sauce was tasty and had good body. The rice and beans that accompanied the dish were, like so much else, unremarkable. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised to find number-ten cans of Gebhardt's refried beans in the kitchen dumpster. The corn tortillas I'd requested were made of flour, and not, I suspect, in the kitchen. Well, they were okay, too.

I don't know how long Angelica's has been around on New Braunfels Avenue, but overall, I'd say I regret having passed up three or four other taquerias on the way there. It was, after all, six or eight blocks out of my way, and that, it turns out, was a waste of precious gasoline.

This is cool.

2011-05-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

I used to have a poster on my office wall called The Earth At Night. It was a composite of night-time satellite photographs of the entire globe, seamlessly joined. I used to love staring at it, picking out places I'd been, or places I wanted to go to, marvelling at the spread (or lack thereof) of development, wondering about the darkness of central Africa and the Amazon basin.

If you get off on that kind of imagery, check out this link.

Just a Little Better than Average

2011-05-13T18:17:00.000-05:00

Las Pichanchas
450 Fredericksburg Road

(at Colorado Street, near Five Points)

There are probably more than a thousand small Tex-Mex restaurants in San Antonio, many of them, like this one, open for breakfast and lunch. There are probably fifty such places within half a mile of Five Points, catering to the local lunch trade. Most of them are run-of-the-mill, tacos and enchiladas the way mamá used to make them. You could probably try a different one every day for months and not have a single really bad meal. (You would, though, put on ten or fifteen pounds, unless you spend the rest of your day digging or swimming or doing something else that requires a lot of energy. Judging from the folks I see at local eateries (and in the mirror), not many of us are doing that kind of work.)

And if you run one of those thousand small restaurants, it's really tough to make yours into any kind of a destination. You have to do something better than the taquería on the next corner does; you have to be cheaper, or more convenient, or more welcoming, or you have to make your food better somehow.

Las Pichanchas does some of that, in small ways, which is why it's become a local success. It's one of the larger Tex-Mex places in the area, yet when I visited before the lunch rush peaked, it was hard to find a seat. And not just local workers were eating there: residents of the area were there with their children. Lots of them.

Most people who eat there probably walk over. I say this because the parking lot could never handle as many cars as it would take to carry that many people. And yet, even though it was the one very rainy day of 2011 (so far), I had no trouble parking right in front.

The interior is done up in typical Tex-Mex-Restaurant style: walls of various brilliant hues that might lift the soul of tus padrones but would cause grinding of teeth among the Architectural Digest crowd. (There's a point for Las Pichanchas.) A few pictures on the wall, nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, the only intriguing thing about the place is the sign over the women's restroom: "Enter at your own risk." I maybe should have asked about that....

The waitresses are all dressed alike, in what seem to be an approximation of parochial girls'-school uniforms, guaranteed to upset Sister Mary Rose: too-tight white blouses and too-short plaid skirts. But the customers don't seem to mind. Maybe because, well, how can I say this tactfully? I can't, I guess. The waitresses are effective and friendly and capable, but Catholic school girls they ain't. The management's odd clothing choice for its staff seems intended to emphasize a lewdness that the personnel, thankfully, lack. As a result, it makes for a tacky look, whereas, if they just dressed normally, they'd likely appear reasonably attractive.

The food was good, as was the service. Particularly noteworthy was, believe it or not, the salsa that was placed on the table when we arrived. It seems to be a blend of salsa picante and chili con queso. Whatever it is, it's delicious, and deserves better than the chips served with it, which weren't particularly bad, but were far from what they could have been.

Last city inspection: February 2011
20 demerits

My lunch partner went with enchiladas verdes; he got a plate with good Spanish rice and refried beans, and two well-made chicken enchiladas, topped with a good salsa verde and more sour cream than was absolutely necessary. (Can there be too much? Probably, but not here.)

I, on the other hand, went for chili relleno, one of my customary favourite Tex-Mex dishes. It came with the same refried beans, which were good enough to be ordinary, and the same Spanish rice, which was a little better than ordinary, and unlike so much Spanish rice in restaurants like this, had not been sitting around on the stove long enough to dry out. The chili relleno itself was done with journeyman quality: stuffed with a reasonably good picadillo, coated in a tasty egg batter, and covered with enough cheese to give it what it needs in the way of flavour and texture, without being profligate. The plate was also host to a larger-than-expected lettuce and tomato salad, which struck me as being unusually fresh. Drizzled with some of that delicious salsa and tucked into a flour tortilla (I ordered corn, but got flour, I guess because I'm a gringo and everybody knows gringos always want flour tortillas), it makes a nice accompaniment to a good meal.

It would, in the end, have been so easy for Las Pichanchas to come out even better in my evaluation: Had the chips been fresher, or thinner, or crispier, or in any way superiour to what one accepts as ordinary, maybe there'd be another half a chili pepper there. Had the waitresses not been dressed so peculiarly, maybe there'd be another half a pepper on the ambiance rating; had I gotten the corn tortillas I'd asked for, instead of the (good but not great) flour tortillas, there'd almost certainly be another half-pepper on the service rating.

But as a place for a quick, tasty, reasonably-priced Tex-Mex lunch, it's probably the best place around Five Points.

Ho Hum.

2011-05-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

Galatas Cafe
2011 Austin Highway

Galata Tower, Istanbul

The most interesting thing about this place is its name. I thought it was odd that a Mexican restaurant would be named for a neighbourhood, however charming, in Istanbul. Turns out it's not. No, according to the waitress, "Galatas" is something from the Bible: "You know...John? Paul? It's like...from the Bible."

I figure it must have to do with Galatians, the community in Asia Minor that St Paul wrote to. You know, the one that's famous for the verse, "For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbour as yourself." (Galatians 5:14) (Nobody ever seems to talk about verse 5:12, "As for them, I wish they'd go all the way, and cut their own nuts off." I wonder why; it seems a most un-Christian sentiment these days, and surely worthy of at least some discussion.)

But I digress.

Once the issue of the name is resolved, I find I have no further interest in this restaurant. The service is attentive and friendly without being particularly effective; the atmosphere in the place is perfectly ordinary for such family-run taquerías, and the prices are unremarkable: good enough so you don't feel ripped off, not so good that you'd be back because of them.

The food, unfortunately, is less than satisfactory. The home-made corn tortillas were perhaps the thickest I've ever had. Maybe somebody's abuelita made them that way, but that'd be about the only thing I can think of to recommend them: they have no flavour to speak of, not even the subtle, very mild flavour that one usually associates with corn tortillas. They were just there holding the filling, not adding anything of their own.

The flour tortillas, also made in-house, were better in texture and appearance, and according to my friend Rick they had a good flavour. I would have asked for a taste, but after my own meal I wasn't inclined to have more. And you would think that Rick would know by now that he should offer me a taste of everything, since he can't easily bring himself to describe things without great prodding and intense interrogation. I may have to look into this waterboarding technique that the CIA finds so effective.

But again, I digress.

The chilaquiles were, oh, so-so. No, that's being too kind: they were bland. The quantity was good, even generous, but the quality was lacking. The machacado was similarly bland, and had the added unpleasantry of a huge chunk of gristle. And, I'm sorry, but the meat in that machacado taco was not machacado — shredded dried beef. It was, maybe, fajita meat cut in chunks and thrown in with the eggs and what-not.

Last city inspection: December 2010
13 demerits

And as for that what-not, the veggies that give both chilaquiles and machacado con huevo their substance and appeal: the cook in this restaurant's kitchen is in waaaaaaay too much of a hurry. It only takes a minute or two of sautéing to give the onions, peppers, and tomatoes the texture and flavour they require to do their job. These veggies may have spent fifteen or twenty seconds in the pan before the eggs were introduced, and then it's too late to make it right. The objective, for a restaurant cook as much as for those of us who do it at home, is that delicate balance between crunchy and tender, the moment when the cellular structure of the onion has broken down just enough that all the flavour of the oil or butter can seep in and all the flavour of the onion itself (or the pepper, or the tomato) can get out. If you just toss it in the fat for a few seconds, all you're doing is warming it up, and if you then serve it to a customer, you're serving, essentially, raw onion and raw peppers and raw tomatoes — a salad — with scrambled eggs. That's not what your customers want, they want you to invest just that minute or two needed to produce, if not a work of culinary art, at least a journeyman product.

Rick says the picadillo was good. It wasn't greasy. It looked unremarkable to me, and again he didn't offer me any. I really need to have a word with him about that.

It Only Seems Pretentious

2011-05-06T21:28:00.002-05:00

20nine Restaurant & Wine Bar
255 East Basse Road, Suite 940

in the Quarry, on the side closest to 281

A quick scan of the online dinner menu for "20nine" convinced me that here we had a truly pretentious wannabe-upscale eatery, appropriately placed somewhere in the citadel of pretense, the Quarry. I mean, really: "Berkshire Pork Cheek Tostadas braised in Ancho Chili's [sic] with Cheddar, Red Onion and Cilantro"? "Grilled Flatbread: Laura Chenel Goat Cheese, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Basil and Parmesan"? I was licking my lips at the prospect of ridiculing this sort of fatuousness.

Unfortunately for the Curmudgeon, I really liked this place. It's not pretentious if you actually deliver on the high-flown promises you make on the menu. Even my wife (who, having just returned from California, was all primed to spot pretentiousness) found that 20nine lives up to its potential.

For starters, 20nine is different from the other wine bars I've been to in town. They are all, with no exception I've discovered, places to drink overpriced wine while snacking on stale water crackers and under-chilled or over-chilled cheeses of unremarkable character. 20nine, by contrast, is as much a top quality restaurant as it is a wine bar, and much to my surprise its prices for both wine and food were not bad. (In fact, it turned out that we were there at "happy hour" — I hadn't been to a happy hour since I gave up indiscriminate boozing years ago. Stumbling onto this unexpected bonus made the prices better by 25%, hence the favourable value rating.)

In addition to the unusual menu, 20nine offers an extensive wine list (of course); but, even better for the oenodilletante, they offer groupings of wines at reasonable prices. So instead of a six-ounce serving of one wine, you can sample three similar wines in two-ounce servings. I went for the "Road Trip #4, Whimsical Wines": a pinot grigio, a pinot gris, and a pinot blanc. The wife, who is partial to red wines, went for "Road Trip #10, Spanish Wines".

I'm not going to comment on the quality of the wines; I'll leave that for people who actually care about such things. When I read that a wine has "aroma of grapefruit, green apple, honeysuckls, white peach, apricot, lime and floral notes. With [sic] flavors of melon, mineral, lively citrus, stone fruit and honey," I just roll my eyes (and not just because whoever writes for this restaurant has real issues with punctuation). I don't taste any of those things, not even vaguely. It just tastes like wine. One was a little sweeter than the others, and one was a little lighter. Other than that, it was wine. Wine is wine; it's good, or it's not good, and beyond that I just don't care. Well, these were good, even if I didn't taste "bright lemon zest and tropical lime curd" or "pear, banana, peach, anise and honey notes". Those of you who buy into all that wine-talk, go, enjoy, make up descriptions for your friends.

Last city inspection: May 2010
9 demerits
(they actually count the gnats?!?)

Now, the food. Ooh.

The online menu (April 2011) is out of date, apparently; there have been some changes. We selected fried risotto balls stuffed with Gouda as an appetizer; the wife ordered grilled chicken pasta for her main dish, and I agonized over my choices until I finally selected a jalapeño and beef pizza. (Our waitress's favourite pizza, she confided, as though they weren't really allowed to have favourites.)

While we waited for the appetizer to arrive, our waitress brought a small tray of bread with butter. The bread was a very good, mild sourdough, crusty and yeasty, but the butter was excellent. I cannot remember when I've had a more creamy tasting butter, and I had the waitress ask in the kitchen what kind of butter is was. Unfortunately I've now forgotten the name of it, which I didn't recognize, but believe me, as someone who's tried butters in a lot of civilized and uncivilized places, this butter was vastly superiour to others.

We also passed the time wondering about the cardboard coasters on the table, bearing the legend "Don't Go Home Alone." This didn't really seem like a pick-up bar; and it's not: the slogan refers to the house's practice of selling all its wines by the bottle or case or something, and they want you to take home a bottle, not the hot '09-er chick or dude you met over a glass of Nobilo '06 at the luxurious bar with the kitschy wine-box footrests.

I would never have thought that fried risotto balls stuffed with Gouda cheese could be the highlight of any week. They were.

The grilled chicken pasta is a plate of aricchiu in a savory sauce, with cherry tomatoes and thinly sliced chicken. My first taste of it hit on something somewhat bitter, with a strange aftertaste, but it must have been some stray bit of spice that fell into the dish, as several other trials produced nothing but the most exquisite flavours. I would gladly trade a slice or two of pizza for some more of that pasta dish.

Our waitress — Jennifer, by the way; credit where credit is due, she deserves to be mentioned by name as an accomplished practitioner of her craft — has excellent taste: the jalapeño-beef pizza was delicious. A thin sourdough crust topped with mozzarella (not, perhaps, the fabulous house-made mozzarella of Dough Pizzeria, but a reasonably good version), red onion, tomato, and sliced jalapeños — not the pickled kind you get out of a can, but fresh, unprocessed peppers cut as precisely thin as only a very sharp mandoline can manage. And beef: good, hearty chunks of it (the menu says ribeye and tenderloin, but honestly, I didn't pause to evaluate that claim). The overall effect was nearly as good as you can find in the best pizzerias in town.

On its web site, the restaurant promises that its "European sized portions enable our guests to save room for dessert." Don't be misled, as I was, into thinking that the portions are small at all. After splitting an appetizer, I have more than half my pizza sitting in the fridge downstairs, to see me through breakfast and lunch tomorrow; that was no personal-sized pizza, but a full-blown pie; and my wife has at least half of her entrée for similar purpose. And we did not have room for dessert.

Well, that's not actually correct: we could have squeezed some in but could not agree on which one to split. I narrowed my choices down to three; she narrowed hers down to one, but it wasn't among my three, and we weren't willing to splurge to the point of ordering two desserts. Especially after all that food.

When I go back to try the bread pudding with white chocolate and cranberries in a vanilla sauce, maybe I'll remember to ask about the butter again. And maybe I'll ask why their logo incorporates the Interstate-Highway shield, instead of the California State Highway triangular sign; after all, the place is named for California Highway 29. I'm just anal-retentive enough to fixate on that.

Thai in the 'Burbs, II

2011-05-02T17:37:00.004-05:00

Thai Lao Orchid
18410 Highway 281 North, Suite 115

(in the Legacy shopping center at the northeast corner of 281 and 1604)

It's not so very long ago that only sophisticated world travellers knew there was such a thing as Thai food. I've been around some in my time, and am at least sophisticated enough to know when to extend my pinkie finger, and when not to (even if I don't quite know why), and I had never given it a moment's thought until I stumbled upon a Thai buffet in a now-defunct restaurant off San Pedro, oh, maybe 20 years ago. (My, how time flies.) In the intervening years, though I have not been to Thailand, I've had enough Thai food to form opinions about it, and to compare the quality of one house's to another's.

What was, not so long ago, exotic and rare, is becoming commonplace, a phenomenon first observed (in my lifetime; dare I date myself so much?) with pizza and Chinese food back in the 1960s. The difference is that, in the case of Thai food, the move is not so much a down-market move as an upscale-downmarket move. Thai Lao Orchid is an example, though only one of many here in town. My favourite food-finding website, Urbanspoon, lists 61. That may not be precisely accurate, but it'll be close.

Take a rental space in a just-built pretentious suburban shopping center; deck it out in murals and décor that could be Mexican, or Italian, or South Asian. Add a few odds and ends of indisputably Asian influence: the copper fish on the wall, the Chinese curtain. As the owners of this place clearly recognize, it doesn't really matter, so long as it's attractive (it is) and bright (it is) and neutral in a religious, political, and social sense (it is). This will encourage good feeling among customers while not distracting them from what should be their focus: the food.

Last city inspection: July 2009
9 demerits

Thai Lao Orchid gets it right. The good variety of appetizers may be a little pricey, but the lunch specials ($8.95, including soup, rice where appropriate, and a choice of beef, chicken, pork or tofu) are just about right.

The soup of the day was chicken and rice. Not the kind of salty guck you have in that aging can in your pantry, but a delicate, almost clear lightly-seasoned broth with slightly-mushy rice and finely sliced scallions. It's a small serving, which is to say it is just enough to whet the appetite, and it accomplishes that task admirably.

My choice for lunch was the Number 7. (I'm sorry, I don't remember what it was called.) Wide noodles served with stir-fried vegetables in a rich but not thick sauce, with thin slices of beef. I thought the carrots should either have been sliced thinner or cooked longer, but the texture didn't detract from the overall experience of the meal. There was plenty of ginger and spice (I ordered it medium-spicy, out of an abundance of caution), and the presentation was excellent.

My friend's order was spicy stir-fried vegetables, Number 4. He got it with chicken and asked that cashews be added as well, and he asked for it fairly spicy, 7 out of 10. (I always find these demarcations of seasoning a little too precise to be real, sort of like TSA's regulations for liquids in carry-on luggage.) His dish was served with white rice. He thought it was very well done, he said, and I can take him at his word, as his dish would not have required washing, were it not for other, less silly government regulations.

The service, as is often true at Asian restaurants, was very good. I know it's not fashionable these days to ascribe cultural reasons to such things, but there must be some cultural reason why Asians seem to always excel at whatever they attempt, be it waiting tables or making electronic devices. Or graduating from college. Maybe it has to do with all that "Tiger Mom" stuff.

Better Creole Food

2011-04-22T22:03:00.002-05:00

Big Easy Cafe
5170 Randolph Boulevard
(road construction locally makes Randolph one-way northbound)

After my disappointing excursion to the Southside a couple of weeks ago, in search of good N'Awlinz-style cooking, I decided to try this Northeast-side outpost of creole after reading a few mixed comments about it on Urbanspoon. Big Easy is the creation of a family of Katrina refugees who found San Antonio a better place to be than New Orleans Post Katrina. And who can blame them.

I went with a friend who was off from work because it's Good Friday. I guess a lot of people were off work, because there was almost no traffic on the drive over. Construction has Randolph Boulevard down to one lane right now, but luckily it was going in the right direction for us; the return to the freeway afterwards involved a short detour up to Weidner Road.

Neither of us is Catholic, so we had no problem ordering the red beans and rice with sausage and a link of andouille, which came with salad. Next time, though, I'll know to let him order first, so I can sample something different. After I placed my order, his instruction to the waitress was, "I'll have the same thing." Anathema to a foodie.

The salad was good: a mixed green salad out of a bag, I reckon, reasonably fresh and livened up with a sprinkle of fancy-shredded cheeses and a little seasoning that gave it a more special taste. It was served in clam-shaped white bowls that seemed — I don't know why — in keeping with the New Orleans theme, but were unsteady on the table; a problem I've noted at other restaurants as well. I don't know about most people, but I very much dislike having to hold a salad bowl down with one hand, to keep it from dumping its contents onto the table or my lap.

The red beans and rice were thoroughly authentic New Orleans, right down to the excessive salt. It was well-cooked, but not overcooked. The cooking liquids seemed a trifle thin to me; I prefer that rich, dark water that beans and sausage produce; this seemed more like the water the rice was boiled in. Still, it had the flavour I expect of red beans and rice, and the quality of sausage was excellent. The same sausage was served in a split link over top, and it was genuine andouille, with all the flavour that entails.

Last city inspection: May 2010
28 demerits

The dish went down perfectly with a big glass of swamp water, and when time came for dessert, I was primed by yesterday's enticements at another local eatery, where I nearly dislocated my shoulder from patting myself on the back, having resisted temptation. My will-power can only do so much. And so I succumbed to the offer of bread pudding with what the waitress called rum sauce, but which clearly was a far, far better concoction than that: a sugary burnished pecan praline sauce. I would have thought it could not be gotten outside of New Orleans East, the only place where I've ever had it before. Even the bread pudding without the sauce was delicious, firm but not dry, satisfying in every way.

(Just for the sake of comparison, I ordered red beans and rice at the City Diner in New Orleans a few days later. See my review of that restaurant on The Other Curmudgeon.)

Why Urbanspoon?

2011-04-22T19:21:00.002-05:00

I've referred a number of times, in this blog, to a web site called Urbanspoon. Recently this blog took over the number-one spot on their "blog leader board," and it occurs to me that some people might think there is some tit-for-tat or quid-pro-quo going on here. There isn't.

I've tried half a dozen ways of finding and sorting through all the restaurant options in San Antonio, including locally-owned web sites, but about a year ago I settled on Urbanspoon as the best. (I say I settled: I've actually tried a couple of others since then, but remain convinced that Urbanspoon is the best.)

First of all, places are easy to find on that site, whether by name, by price range, by neighbourhood, or by cuisine. The information is updated regularly, and kept timely by, I assume, an army of people like me who jump on the "feedback" button every time something turns out to be inaccurate. Other web sites will list places that have been gone for months.

Secondly, the listings appear to be comprehensive. I've found perhaps four or five places, all relatively new, that weren't listed on Urbanspoon, and they were up on the listings within a couple of days of my feedback.

Thirdly, the ratings (the percentage of people who "liked" the restaurant) is right up there, front and center on each restaurant's page. Yes, people are often of the ovine sort, easily persuaded that restaurant quality is directly related to its advertising budget; lots of people like Olive Garden and Jim's, and I even maintain a genuine friendship with one person whose favourite place is ... nnggaaghmmf ... Saltgrass. But even allowing for the undiscerning and careless preferences of the great mass of people, such ratings are probably the best way available for determining whether a place will appeal to you, short of actually trying it.

The rankings, on the other hand — those lists on the left-hand side of the Urbanspoon home page offering quick links to the "best fine dining," the "best casual dining," and so on — are less reliable. This is partly because they don't seem to be based on the votes each place has gotten. It seems to be the result of some algorithm taking in both the favourable votes and the total number of votes. I've noticed that the more votes a place gets, positive or negative, the better it does in those rankings. Thus, Chris Madrid's, with 1437 votes, does better in the rankings than Big Easy Cafe, with 323 votes, even though 90% liked Big Easy, while only 86% like Chris Madrid's. But then, Chama Gaúcha, the absurdly expensive Brazilian steak place, has fewer votes than Chris Madrid's, and a lower rating than Big Easy, but finishes first in the rankings.

(You might think that this sort of calculation would give an edge to national chain restaurants, that suck people in with all those expensive prime-time television ads, but it doesn't seem to. I can't tell if Chama Gaúcha is a big chain — their web site freezes up on me, so all I know is there's one in Downer's Grove, Illinois — but I know they do a lot of local advertising on TV. But for all the advertising that Landry's various formula restaurants and Olive Garden do, they don't crack the list.)

Lastly, Urbanspoon is a site that allows me to find restaurants easily in just about any city in the country, including small towns. (Try looking up Fredericksburg or Dime Box on those other sites.) I've used Urbanspoon in places from Washington State to Washington DC, and found it in every case to be reliable, thorough, and easy to use. If I seem to be favouring that site over others of a similar nature, that's why: I think it's the best there is.

Why, Yes, as a matter of fact, we can use another Italian place in town

2011-04-21T22:04:00.001-05:00

Cipriano's Italian Café
6825 San Pedro (just south of Oblate)

When we say "Italian restaurant" in this country, we usually don't mean "Italian"; we mean "Italian-American," as in red-and-white-checked tablecloths and Mulberry Street and Chico Marx's character. The misapprehension caused by this shorthand way of speaking is generally insignificant, and serves the useful social function of keeping food snobs in a state of apoplexy, which helps keep them from disrupting our daily lives very much. For the snobs, a category which, yes, sometimes includes the Curmudgeon-About-Town — and for those who merely know Italy and prefer its flavours to those developed by our immigrant ancestors after they got off the boat and found that nobody, but nobody around here understood the treasure that is garlic — there are a few genuine ristoranti italiani scattered around the country, including one or two right here in good ol' San Antonio. About as many as the market demands.

The rest of us — I include myself, because I'm only occasionally a food snob — are perfectly happy to chow down on what I think of as New York Italian (pronounced "Eye-talian") food, even though it's about the same among the Italian immigrants of other places, like my sometimes-immigrant kin in Louisiana. And for that we have a number of good places to choose from — again, about as many as the market demands — and some of which even manage to excel at some particular or another.

I stumbled across another one of those good places today, a little (11 tables, with the suggestion of another small dining room beyond an accordion door) strip-center café of eight months' vintage in a vaguely tawdry stretch of San Pedro: tattoo parlour next door, faded motel across the avenue, lots of concrete, no hint of roadside landscaping since the road was widened years ago. Inside, the place has been done up pretty nicely, with a bit of charm and grace that I didn't suspect from the outside. And it was well staffed with friendly people who knew they had some quality products to offer, and were justly proud of it.

Cipriano's red sauce — let's get this out of the way — is nothing really special. It's all tomato sauce and seasonings, with a little too much oil and none of the body provided by vegetables and wine and tomato paste and hours of simmering. For some reason it makes me think of Calabria, but it's really more Napolitana. (Sorry: overcome by a moment of snobbishness there.) It's reasonably good, it coats the pasta well, and it does full justice to the excellent breads they serve. (And considering my recent run of so-so breads at Italian places, I should probably say more about that. But, uncharacteristically, I'll forbear.) If the pasta had been a little more al dente I'd've been happier with it, but it was close enough that we're talking mere seconds in the water.

One of the specials today was a shrimp salad, which my tablemate ordered. The salad was large, and loaded with all the best things: shrimp, of course, in good number, and marinated artichoke hearts and hearts of palm, and it looked fresh and sounded crispy. I can always tell when my friend really enjoys a dish, because a quietness descends over the table as conversation comes to a stop. I don't believe he said two words, except in terse answer to specific questions, until the last drop of dressing was wiped from the bowl. That, good reader, was a salad thoroughly enjoyed.

The city has not yet inspected this
restaurant.

I was pleased with my lunch, too, despite the quibbles I've already noted about the pasta and sauce. And there is one other, relatively minor, thing to complain about (and Lord knows, I like to complain). The menu refers to my dish as having "four sliced meatballs" on it. What it actually had was two meatballs, sliced in half. Fortunately, they were very well-made meatballs, not over-large but substantial, with excellent seasoning and texture and none of the cheap filler material one so often finds in ... ahem ... medium-priced Italian chain restaurants. I enjoyed them immensely, yet felt cheated at having "four sliced meatballs" in only the hypertechnical sense.

But I'll tell you what: after the soup, nothing else really mattered. The cream of potato soup with (Italian) sausage was so very good that we could have been satisfied with anything. It was, it really was, a great soup. I gave some thought to ordering another to take home, but decided that I live close enough, a straight shot of about three miles down San Pedro, that I can just come back any ol' time.

Pretty sure I will, too. And next time I'm going to save some room for dessert.

2011-04-18T18:42:00.000-05:00

Grocery prices have been fluctuating a lot lately, mostly in an upward direction. Here is a comparison of prices at two large grocery chains in San Antonio. (I realize I'm not comparing that many items, and that most people buy a lot more processed, canned, and frozen foods than I do; but maybe this information will be useful to you.)

Product — HEB Price — Walmart Price

sweet onions — 0.98 — 0.48

asparagus — 2.64 — 2.74

broccoli crowns — 1.48 — 1.87

green beans — 1.58 — 0.97

(however, I considered Walmart's green beans to be of unacceptable quality)

zucchini — 1.98 — 1.98

small grapefruit — 0.33 — 0.54

cantaloupe — 1.48 — 1.34

fat-free milk — 2.08 — 2.08

nonfat yogurt — 1.96 — 1.96

egg substitute — 1.98 — 1.50

(I note that while I was charged $1.50 at the register for this at Walmart, the price on the shelf tag was $1.97. I've noticed fairly often that the register prices at Walmart are lower than the shelf prices.)

non-dairy creamer, flavoured — 2.58 — 2.78

cranberry juice — 2.42 — 3.18

unsweetened applesauce — 1.98 — 1.68

saltine crackers — 0.98 — 0.98

graham crackers — 3.28 — 3.28

Triscuit crackers — 2.00 — 2.48

(HEB has a house brand of these that I find to be equal in quality to the national brand; they are $1.48.)

canned stewed tomatoes — 0.50 — 0.63

Total HEB price for these items: $30.23

Total Walmart price for the same items: $30.47

These prices are from the HEB at Lincoln Heights (Broadway at Basse) and the Walmart on Austin Highway.

Big Deal....

2011-04-16T10:56:00.001-05:00

This morning, when I checked the leader-board for San Antonio on Urbanspoon, I found that this blog has taken over the top spot. I don't know how those rankings are calculated, or even what the "Views" number it appears to be ranked by means — it doesn't seem to bear any relationship to the number of visitors the blog registers — but still, it's nice to be Number One, even if it's an empty title, and transient.

That, plus a Manchester United victory over Manchester City in the FA Cup semifinal that's about to begin, will really make my day.

Eccezionale cucina tradizionale italiana

2011-04-15T20:50:00.000-05:00

Piccolo's Italian Restaurant
5703 Evers Road
(between Loop 410 and Wurzbach)

The first time I went to Piccolo's, many years ago, I was impressed. It was the first Italian restaurant I'd been to in Texas that didn't use the same tomato-based sauce for every dish. Everything we had that night was excellent; everything I've had every time I've been has been well above average. If it wasn't for the fact that, to get there from my house, I have to get on two freeways and fight the outbound traffic (which, now that all that construction on 410 is finished, isn't as much of a big deal in fact as it is in my mind), this would be a regular haunt for me. Instead, with a number of Italian places, some pretty good, almost within walking distance, I seldom get out that way.

But when I do go, it's always good. It's not much to look at: it never has been, and over the years it's gone from comfortable to comfortably dilapidated. The place is small inside, and it seems like all the smaller tables are right by the kitchen door (they're not, it just seems that way), and the hard wall surfaces produce a bit of a din of conversation — though nothing like the cacaphony one finds at some of the trendier Southtown places — that sometimes crescendos to an unpleasant level. But the service is good, the staff are knowledgeable about the food on offer, and the prices for food and drink are reasonable. Plus they have exceptionally good food.

Tonight's choices were redfish Livornese, with a side of pasta with butter and garlic sauce, for the missus, and lasagna for me. We were immediately served fresh, hot garlic bread expertly made from small rolls, and they kept coming. (A blessing, and a curse....) Our wine choices arrived promptly (along with another basket of bread), as did our salads, which, I have to say, are the only part of the meal that was less than perfect. There's something about salads in Italian-American restaurants: it's almost like there is a cultural antipathy to them. The lettuce was machine-cut in strips like pappardelle, and dumped on a plate with a single thin wedge of tomato. The dressing, a creamy Italian, was tasty, but still the salad was a bore.

last city inspection: March 2011
7 demerits

The main dishes make up for that, though. The fish was flaky and tender, with a good flavour that penetrated the tomato-based sauce. It had a hint of hot pepper, just enough to give it character, not enough to distract or disrupt the experience. The butter-and-garlic sauce on the side pasta was light and subtle, providing both flavours clearly without the odious slathering of liquid dripping from the waving ends of pasta, such as one finds at certain popular national cosidetto-Italian chains.

My lasagna was particularly good. Unlike at other places, lasagna at Piccolo's is a sort of oozy thing. That sounds weird and disgusting, I know, but trust me: it's damn good. Instead of sitting up on the plate like a Napoleon, it slumps down and spreads out until it fills the plate. It looks odd, but the taste — squisito!

Comfort Food, Indeed

2011-04-14T17:59:00.001-05:00

Landmark Cafe
701 Montana Street, at South Pine

It's an odd place for a coffee shop; but then, it's an odd coffee shop.

Located on the second floor of a restored house, smack in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, the Landmark Café is definitely not the bastard offspring of Starbucks; it's more like the unplanned late-in-life child of Mother's, plopped down on San Antonio's East Side in a nice refurbished crib. There are no half-caf lattes or exotic brews here; it's a coffee shop like Jim's is a coffee shop, only much better.

It's simple food at reasonable prices — "comfort food," the waiter called it, and he's right. The breakfast menu features biscuits and gravy, eggs and sausage, pancakes, and grits; for lunch, it's soup, salads and sandwiches.

We both started with a small bowl of Loaded Baked Potato soup. The name was an understatement. We each had the thought of licking the bowl, and had we been alone in the room we might have done so. Well, Rick might have; I'd've had mine wrapped up to go, as I'm too publicly fastidious for that sort of outré behaviour. [Imagine the appropriate emoticon here.] It was rich, and creamy, and far better than any actual baked potato I've ever had. Makes me wonder what the tortilla soup must be like, but that's for another visit.

Rick went for the Montana Street Sandwich: turkey, ham and Swiss cheese with tomato, lettuce, and a chipotle mayo that is the sort of thing Weight Watchers dream about -- applied in generous quantity but with a deft enough hand that a Weight Watcher (like me, at times) could eat it in good conscience. It's the sort of sandwich your gourmet-chef mother fixed for you at home on Saturdays.

Last city inspection: June 2010
29 demerits
(listed as "William's Land Mark")

I, on the other hand, chose the Brisket Sandwich. I could have tarted it up with onions or pickles, but I had it plain: just the meat and a little sauce on delicious lightly toasted bread. My late ex-mother-in-law, who was the doyenne of brisket cooks (and mac-and-cheese, but that's beside the point), never served a more perfect brisket.

Unusually, we decided to try dessert as well. It was late in the afternoon, nearing the house's 3pm closing time, so the two cakes on offer had been sitting out in covered glass cake-takers at least one whole day. Yet they were both still excellent. Rick's was the butter-pecan cake, a flavour I'm not wild about, but I was not satisfied with just one taste, and had to manufacture a reason*, on the spur of the moment, for a second. I went for the chocolate cake, and ooh ooh OOH was it chocolate-y. Yet neither cake was overly sweet. They were made for the house by a local woman with a deft hand and the good sense not to try to add another hue unto the rainbow.

* the difference between a reason and an excuse is that you believe a reason.

Dinner In Turkey ... Almost

2011-04-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

Mediterranean Turkish Grill

8507 McCullough

(in the shopping village; enter from Rector Street)

It is a phenomenon observed and reported on everywhere, and for as long as I can remember: waiters and waitresses who have given exemplary service, from the time you take a table at a restaurant until the last entrée is served, suddenly disappear, leaving you to sit waiting to complete the transaction by paying the bill. Where do they go? What do they do? Are they huddled in the back, peeking through the kitchen door, as though they feared us? Are they hiding in the walk-in freezer, out of some sense of shame? I just don't know.

Anyway, it happened again tonight, at the Mediterranean Turkish Grill, a fairly new Turkish place in town. Since I've always enjoyed the other Turkish place in town, I thought I would give it a try. It seems easier to get to from where I live, though it's not really. It's just more in a slice of town that I frequent more.

It's an unassuming little place, two units in a standard strip-center building, with four or five tables for four, and, uncommonly for an American restaurant, quite a few more tables for six or more. This is a good sign in an ethnic restaurant, for it means that it expects to get a lot of its business from members of the ethnic community, who haven't been in the US long enough for their traditional extended-family bonds to atrophy. It usually means the food is authentic.

When first seated, we were brought bread and oil. The bread was thick and fluffy, and looked delicious, sort of like naan on steroids, or focaccia without the oil. It was, however, strangely tasteless; and dipping it in the seasoned oil didn't do a great deal to help it. The oil in the dish is so deep that, in order to get to the seasonings at the bottom, you have to swirl the bread in it. You end up with a lot of oil and a little season.

Luckily, though, we didn't rely on the bread to occupy us until our main dishes arrived; we ordered Lahmacum, which, according to Google Translations, literally means "pizza." (It's listed under Pideler, which the same source says means "pita.") It consists of a tortilla-thin crust covered with a mix of ground beef, lamb and vegetables. It's not listed as an appetizer but it performs that function admirably. And at $2.85, it's also much cheaper than the appetizers on the menu.

For our main dishes, I chose Adana kebab, a grilled-meat dish that I was familiar with from my one trip to Turkey six years ago, and from my visits to the other local Turkish restaurant. My wife went with Lamb tava, which was called a casserole on the menu but was really more of a stew. Both were delicious.

The city of San Antonio has not
yet inspected this restaurant.

Adana kebab is simply ground beef and lamb pressed into a kind of small log; it comes off the grill with a slight crustiness that gives it a marvelous texture, and the seasonings are, to my taste, the paradigm of Turkey. True, they're about the same kinds of seasonings you'd find in Greek or Lebanese food -- differences between any of the eastern Mediterranean cuisines are subtle -- but in this context, it almost is enough to transport me back to western Asia. It is served with a large pile of fluffy basmati rice mixed with pine nuts, some sliced and seasoned onion, and a German-looking serving of sweet cabbage.

Lamb tava is served in a small crock, with rice on the side. It is a dark, rich stew, with chunks of nicely cooked lamb meat and vegetables in a thick seasoned broth. I gave some thought to offering to swap my Adana kebab, but decided to stick with what I had when I took another bite. I don't know why lamb in Mediterranean restaurants is so much better than in other places.

After we'd finished, we turned our minds to dessert. There were four listed on the menu, and two of them had struck chords in us. We had just about decided to split a serving of rice pudding (sutlac), but when, after a long, long, long hiatus, the waitress returned, she brought the check and neither asked about dessert nor stayed long enough for us to request it. We took that as a sign from God, paid the (quite reasonable) bill, and went to TCBY on Broadway.