Well, okay... Taquería Los Potrillos

There's a little taqueria on Starcrest, just east of NEISD's sports fields, that I'd been to once before. I have only a vague memory of that earlier experience; I remember that I had the migas, because they don't offer chilaquiles, and my impression is that I was unimpressed. I assume that, because I hadn't ever been back to it.

It's generally a little out of the way for me in the mornings. Rick and I go to the gym four mornings a week, usually -- we play racquetball two mornings a week, and two mornings a week we work out on the machinery ... although it gets easier and easier to find other, more pressing things to do on those mornings when we'd normally be straining at firming up those abs and biceps and what-not. And afterwards we go for tacos. Except, as anyone who's read anything in this blog likely knows already, there just ain't much in the way of good Mexican food to choose among out there in Loopland.

So I guess I'm settling, to a certain degree, when I say that this morning, Taqueria Los Potrillos impressed. Maybe it's because I departed from my quest for the perfect chilaquiles and ordered what turned out to be remarkably good potato, egg and cheese tacos (only 2 -- I'm trying to lose some weight; an effort limited in its success by my constitutional need for tacos).

The place is large and unpretentious, and noticably clean. The tables are far enough apart that you don't feel crowded, and there's plenty of space for servers or customers to move about it. The service was cheerful -- a marked variance with Los Roberto's [sic], which I blogged about yesterday -- and attentive. The chips and salsa they brought us right away were excellent; the chips were a fresh-made mix of corn and wheat tostadas, the salsa was picquant and fresh, with a roasted-pepper flavour that we both enjoyed. The coffee was excellent and the waitstaff replenished it regularly, without waiting for us to wave coffee cups in the air or go to the counter and ask about the possibility of another cup; again, a marked departure from other places I could name (again).

Rick went with the carne asada tacos; they're billed on the menu as "beef fajita," but it was carne asada, and he loved it. It looked pretty plain to me, but it was what he wanted. I, as I said, went with the quintessential breakfast taco combination, potato and egg with cheese.

I don't usually order it because, in too many places, it is served as an egg, unseasoned, scrambled on a dry grill, with a few chunks of too-far-gone boiled potatotes thrown in at the last minute. Or -- and here is the influence of national fast-food chains that have adopted this simple fare and dumbed it down to the mass palate -- a tasteless egg scrambled with those prefab "hash brown" potatoes made infamous by Arby's and McDonald's. But Los Potrillos have maintained the traditional way of fixing this dish, which properly done is every bit as good as chilaquiles. The potatoes are diced small, not shredded, and after cooking on their own are mixed in with the egg and seasonings, then folded into a tortilla -- flour, in my case -- sprinkled with sharp cheddar cheese, and served hot. Personally I might prefer jack cheese, or a mix of jack and cheddar, but cheddar by itself is acceptable. And, personally, I thought the tortillas could be a little better, but there was nothing actually wrong with them. And did I mention how good the salsa was? Yes, I did.

What does that mean?

Breakfast Taco Update: Los Roberto's (sic) Taco Shop

Breakfast tacos are the paradigmatic food of San Antonio. Oh, I know, some people think it's enchiladas, and it's true that those staples of Mexican food remain popular the length and breadth of this wonderfully lame city. But in my lifetime, they have been surpassed by the equally humble breakfast taco.

Breakfast tacos have a wide variety, from plain old bean-and-cheese or papas-y-huevos to more elaborate concoctions, including my favourite, chilaquiles. They are available for very small money in hundreds and hundreds of shops all over town, and have even begun appearing, in more mundane, even dumbed-down forms, in national-chain fast-food establishments like Taco Bell and Jack-in-the-Box, and other places that sell foods adapted to the homogenous and undiscerning palate.

So how is it that Loopland -- the wide swath of relatively new-built city between the Loop 410 and Loop 1604 -- can stubbornly maintain so depressing a dearth of quality comida tipica?

This morning my friend Rick and I made a second visit to Los Roberto's (sic) Taco Shop on Bitters Road. Last time we were there, I ordered a "Texas burrito"; I don't remember now what was in it, only that I didn't care for it. But I was willing to put that down to a poor choice on my part, so we gave them another chance to impress.

Los Robertos is a typical small restaurant of the mom-and-pop variety, which despite the shopping-center location offered the promise of distinctive food prepared to old family recipes. Rick went for the carne asada tacos; I tried the chilaquiles plate, which came with potatoes and beans. (I've noticed -- and I think I've even mentioned it before in this blog -- that more and more places seem to be abandoning Spanish rice in favour of potatoes, especially at breakfast. Besides being, to my mind, inauthentic, the potatoes-and-beans combination lacks the nutritional value of rice-and-beans. Since so many people eat so many of their meals away from home these days, this is an ominous development. But that's another gripe.)  Rick's tacos were "just okay -- no more than two and a half out of five." They were overloaded, he thought, with guacamole and pico de gallo.

My order was not as impressive. The chilaquiles themselves were about as good as his tacos: too many tortilla chips, cut too long for comfort, and not enough of the other good things that make the dish my favourite. The tortillas were fair, and the beans were actually the best thing on the plate. And the coffee was on the high side, qualitatively. If I left it at that, the place would actually be worth going back to if I were in the area at meal time and didn't have any strong desire to experience true quality.

But the potatoes were absolutely the worst I've had in years and years and years and years. They were plain ol' straight-cut french fry potatoes, frozen I suspect, and cooked an insufficient length of time in old oil that wasn't hot enough to do the job properly. And they were served almost cold. It amazes me that the cook could think that anyone would like potatoes prepared that way. I even tried adding salt to them, to make them palatable, something I almost

never do, but it was no use; they were just too badly prepared.

A sad day for Mexican food in San Antonio.

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What's this?

It feels so uncharacteristic to me to have something nice to say about anything, but yesterday I took a ride on the river taxi up through the new Museum Reach section of the San Antonio River, opened last June, and despite my best casual effort I can find nothing to complain about.

The city spent, oh, probably way too much money putting in locks on the river, dredging out mud, building walkways and stairs and laying in landscaping (most of which survived the record heat and drought of this past summer). Private money paid for the art installed under all the bridges, some of which is very nice, some of which is merely not ugly -- given recent form on the matter, a definitely pleasant surprise -- and some of which is magically whimsical. Pictures of the art and the river are in this gallery (along with lots of other pictures; the river art is about 2/3 of the way down).

We started our trip at the River Center. For $15 each, we took a "yellow" water taxi from there, through the Horseshoe's southern (downstream) section, past the familiar sites of the Arneson River Theater and La Villita, the new-ish Westin and Contessa Hotels, the Tower Life Building and the Granada, and into the Diversion Channel; then north along the River Walk Extension, past IBC Plaza and the old Milam Building, and of course all the hotels along there -- including a new Embassy Suites being built between Travis and Houston streets -- to a transfer point at the Brooklyn Street Bridge. There we changed to a "red" water taxi, which took us through the new lock (it raises the boat nine feet) and up to the turning basin at Josephine Street. The river walk itself extends all the way up to Brackenridge Park, another couple of miles, but the navigable part ends at the turning basin. (Beyond, the river passes through the Brackenridge Golf Course; would you want to be in an open boat, passing through there? Can you say "target practice"?)

We had a very entertaining guide for the Museum Reach section, a grandfatherly type named Rusty, who told funny stories about the places along the way. I don't know that he had his historical details entirely straight, but who cares? It was fun to listen to. How they found 15,000 pounds of broken beer bottles at the Brewery, and how a couple of 90-year-old former brewery workers told the city that, back in the '40s, they had three batches of beer go bad, so they just tossed it all in the river out back; and when it dammed up the river, they sent a couple of guys out with axes to break the beerjam. How the gates of the lock originally closed watertight, which left small fish flopping around on the ledge just inside the lock, which in turn prompted grackles to divebomb the barges in the lock; so now the gates leak just enough to wash the little fish off the ledge. How the original patriarch of the present Cortez family, trustees of the know-how of making concrete look like wood, refused to teach his daughters the secret, and instead taught his nephew. (His work is all over town, from bus benches in Alamo Heights to arbors along the river to the entry to the Sunken Gardens -- which by the way should be reopening soon, after about 25 years.)

The most interesting public art under the bridges along the Reach is "sonic" art. As you approach the bridge you hear what sounds like a lot of birds, but there aren't any birds. There are microphones placed at certain points along the riverwalk, and the sound of the birds in those places is played under the Jones Avenue Bridge. It really creates a great atmosphere in that section.

The bridge just north of the San Antonio Museum of Art -- the one with the fish -- is now home to a colony of Mexican Free-Tail bats; currenly a small colony, but it'll no doubt grow, and given the attractive setting along the river, will in time probably become more of a draw than the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin.

The entire experience was a pleasure from start to finish. I wholeheartedly recommend it, especially at around sunset on a clear day. I only wish I'd thought to take a jacket.

Tough Times

It's very difficult to maintain a comfortable level of curmudgeonly displeasure at this time of year. When the hellish heat of summer gives way to the mild days of autumn, it's hard to bitch about the weather. When the rain comes down in buckets after so long and unremitting a drought, it's hard to gripe about the leak in the living room ceiling. When the parched dead earth springs at last into its jungle mode, it's difficult to acheive the proper degree of irritation about yard work. When the English Premier League season is in full swing, it's hard to be upset about every game Liverpool loses. When the few television shows we find worth watching start their new seasons, it's hard to focus on the near-total dearth of intelligent writing coming out of Hollywood. (Or London; we like British mysteries too.) And when it's cool and clear and beautiful like today and yesterday and the day before, it's hard to be too upset about the fact that I really have nowhere to go with the top down.

Yes, autumn in South Texas is a difficult time for curmudgeons. I grouse about having to replace some damn sensor in the Jaguar's engine, but my heart isn't in it. Liverpool loses to Sunderland -- Sunderland! -- and I can't really hold the requisite grudge. I make an effort to be unhappy about the weeds in the front garden, and the amazing fungi that sprout so suddenly, but I just can't sustain it. A mediocre episode of The Big Bang Theory fails to support my unhappiness, and even the ceaseless farce of Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches can only momentarily infest my psyche.

O! how I long for the winter! The short, dark days, when it seems no pleasant thing can take place. Those are the times when my cold curmudgeonly heart can truly come alive!

Musings on the dire taqueria situation: Thousand Oaks Cafe

This problem with the lack of good taco places in the suburbs continues to concern me. The other day ... maybe it was yesterday, I don't know: the days all seem the same when there are no good breakfast tacos readily available. Anyway, it occured to me, as I drove along Thousand Oaks Drive from 281 to Perrin-Beitel (to be disappointed yet again, this time at the Thousand Oaks Cafe, where mediocre food is served up by a resolutely unhappy waiter, in a setting that takes ordinary one step farther down the scale of quality), that there has to be some correlation between the age of development in an area and the dearth of quality Mexican food.

And by "quality" Mexican food, I mean, of course, Tex-Mex served in a family-owned business, with mamacita or abuelita in the kitchen, overseeing everything. Nothing less will do.

Where I live, in the old part of town -- my house was in a far-flung suburb back in the 1930s, about two miles from the Alamo -- excellent taquerias are thick on the ground. Outside of Loop 410, where few things existed before the British Invasion, and most things are no older than Hannah Montana, there are almost none. Oh, plenty of restaurants, sure: a few national or regional chains, and fast-food on every corner, some if it even purporting to be of the Mexican variety. Almost every major intersection has two or three strip centers, and every one of them has a restaurant of some kind in it.

Therein, I suspect, lies the problem: I'll just bet you that every one of those chain restaurants has an exclusivity clause in its lease, so that the landlord cannot rent to another restaurant business. This, if it is in fact the case, would tend to squeeze out the family restaurants, because exclusivity has a cost, and the family places, unless they're already established somewhere else, probably can't or won't pay the higher rates the landlord can claim from the chains.

Now, you understand that I don't object to this arrangement on principle. I'm something of a limited-capitalist myself, and it seems a valid working of the market to have these sorts of arrangements. And they only ensure limitation of competition within the strip center; there'll be another lousy restaurant across the street.

No, I decry the result because of the damage it does to the general public: most newcomers to San Antonio settle in those cookie-cutter suburbs that define Loopland, where seldom is heard a discouraging word (and if one is heard, it would have to be "traffic"). They live their lives in these same vapid environs, occasionally straying down a freeway to the Loop itself, or maybe even as far as downtown or the Quarry; and they are simply not exposed to the greatest culinary tradition this wonderful city has to offer. They grow up thinking that Taco Cabana is Mexican food. Or worse.

Years from now, when they're telling people about growing up in San Antonio, they'll sigh and nod and say, "Yeah...it was okay."

And the city will suffer.

Thousand Oaks Cafe

Chilaquiles For Dummies and Aficionados

Chilaquiles are the best breakfast food In The Whole World. I've tried them from Morelia to Midland, and while there are probably a dozen significant variations in the recipe, they're almost all good -- even the kind that looked like tomato soup that I had at a house in Monterrey once.

The exception seems to be in the far northern parts of San Antonio. I don't know, the infestation of lousy chilaquiles may extend beyond, even to Comal and Guadalupe counties, but in the past few months I've embarked on a quest to find decent chilaquiles in that part of town, and have failed repeatedly. The latest disappointment is Zarazua's, on Sunset. This place has been around in one form or another for about 35 years, according to an old advertising calendar on the wall, yet somehow they've not mastered the essential art of chilaquiles. Theirs consist of small chips of corn tortilla, lightly fried and then smothered in plain ol' scrambled eggs. Boring.

I suspect that the people who own mom-and-pop Mexican restaurants in that area are losing that bit of their heritage, a tragedy that I feel compelled to try to avert, to whatever poor extent I can. Maybe they didn't grow up eating chilaquiles; maybe their people were from a part of Mexico that lacked some ingredient (that's hard to believe) or maybe their moms and abuelas just thought it was too much trouble to make (that's even harder to believe). I just don't know.

But what can I, a poor consumer of this delectable creation, and an Anglo to boot, do to stem the withering of Mexican culture? I would prefer not to go into the kitchens of north-east San Antonio and lecture cooks on how this dish is supposed to appear, feel and taste.

No, all I can think of to do is to post, for the perusal of cocineros anywhere, the recipe that I use myself when I make chilaquiles. This is easy for me, since I happen to have written it down a couple of years ago for some friends in Toronto, and I have it here on my computer:

Chilaquiles a la moda potosina

(Chilaquiles in the style of San Luis Potosí)

½ tsp cooking oil
1 corn tortilla, shredded
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded & chopped
½ green bell pepper, chopped
½ red bell pepper, chopped (optional)
½ onion, chopped
½ tomato, seeded & chopped
4 eggs*
black pepper to taste
salt to taste (optional)
pinch of chile powder (optional)
shredded cheese (cheddar, colby, or jack, or a blend)
4 flour tortillas
salsa

* egg substitute can be used in place of one, two, or three of the eggs. The flavour will be only slightly less intense; the appearance, consistency and texture will be unaffected. If plain egg whites are used, the colour will suffer.

a note on quantities: this recipe serves 2 people. For larger batches just increase the quantities in proportion. As with all really good recipes, the quantities of the ingredients are approximate, and flexible. Experiment with it, looking for tweaks that suit your own preferences.

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a medium-sized skillet. Toss in the shredded corn tortilla and let it fry, stirring. It will cook quickly, so pay close attention. When it starts to brown on the edges, toss in the peppers, onion, and tomato. If you want your chilaquiles a little spicier, throw in the chile powder too. Saute until tender, about 3 minutes, stirring frequently.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs (or egg substitute) and pepper, and salt if desired, in a bowl. Pour over the vegetables in the skillet and reduce the heat to the low side of medium. Let that cook, stirring occasionally to keep it from burning on the bottom, until the eggs are set to your satisfaction.

While that cooks, heat the flour tortillas on the stove burners, being careful not to let them burn. Stack them on a plate and cover with a towel.

Sprinkle the cheese over the egg and vegetable mix and turn off the heat. Stir in the cheese, spoon the mixture onto a platter, and serve with flour tortillas, and salsa on the side.

There: that's all I can do, I think, short of causing scenes in kitchens all across the suburbs.

Zarazua's

Return of the Purple Garlic

The title of Best Pizza In Town is back where it belongs, on Austin Highway at Rittiman Road. And no, I don't mean the Pizza Hut there, I mean the place next door, the revived Purple Garlic.

The place started, the first time, years ago, maybe in the early 90's? I don't know; we discovered it one Thursday night (I don't actually remember that, but we used to have a group called the Thursday Night Supper Club, so it stands to reason), and tried it, and really liked it. Maybe they use a little garlic in the crust; I'm going to say that's what it is, but there has to be more to it than that.

Over the next few years I think I tried about every combination they offered, and loved them all. The pizzas are all thin-crust, none of that faddish deep-dish stuff for these people. And unlike every other pizza place I've ever been to more than once or twice, the pizza at the Purple Garlic was perfect every single time.

Then, tragedy struck. The owner got divorced. Apparently -- this is what I heard, anyway -- she got the business and the name, but he kept the recipes. (I'm guessing that the recipes were his before they got married.) She kept the place open for a while, but it was no good. We tried it a couple of times then, and stopped going. Then, a year or two later, we heard the place had re-opened out in the 'burbs; we tried it there, but apparently (again, I don't really remember) it wasn't worth the drive. We took our business to Volare's, on Broadway in Alamo Heights, which was very good pizza, and which would usually deliver to our house, sometimes without argument. But Volare's prices went up a couple of times, and the shop changed hands, and things were just never as good as before. Where we used to get pizza 3 or 4 times a month, we stopped eating it altogether.

Years passed, and then we both discovered, independently but at about the same time, that the Purple Garlic was suddenly back in its old location, next door to Pizza Hut (which drains off all the customers who wouldn't know a decent pizza if it was wrapped around their faces, still hot from the oven). Can this be, we wondered, the real Purple Garlic, restored to life after its long illness?

Why, yes it can! And it is, it is! Mark Cerroni, the man with the secret recipes, has bought the name back from his ex-wife, and re-opened in the same place he used to operate. He has a partner this time, a familiar-looking man whose name has slipped my mind. The partner seems to be the house oenophile, and he plays the role of Public Face, greeting the customers and checking on how things are, working the room in a casual, friendly, informal way, putting everyone into a mellow mood; kind of like your Aunt Mary during family get-togethers, but without the scolding.

They've opted, this time, for a cross between table service and counter service: they give you a menu, you take it to your table, decide what you want, then place your order at the counter. They bring it out to you. With the wine stash off to one side, and the fountain drinks off to the other, and people generally uncertain about the logistics of ordering, it makes for a little confusion at the register. I reckon they'll work that out in time. But otherwise, it's great having the Garlic back where it belongs.

Purple Garlic

Loopland taquería situation update

The quest for decent tacos in Loopland continues. Since my earlier posting (August 18) I've tried five or six more places, but have still found nothing that compares with the best tacos in town.

The closest thing to acceptable breakfast tacos I've found so far, in that dreary stretch of suburbia between the Loops, is Ruthie's Mexican Restaurant, 11423 West Avenue, near Churchill High School. There used to be a Las Palapas restaurant in that location. The ambience of the place is formica with a soupçon of inefficient air conditioning, but it's clean, at least; the service was good, as was the coffee. The chilaquile tacos were unusual in their seasoning, interesting and tasty without being what I consider authentic (and I think that, after some 20 years as an aficionado of chilaquiles, I know something about what it should taste like). The worst sin in a chilaquile taco is to make it dry. These were definitely not dry; in fact, they sort of went too far in being moist. But the ingredients were all there, and reasonably well prepared.

The filling of potato, egg and cheese taco was slightly better than your average breakfast taco. There was, again, some kind of seasoning in the mix that I did not try to identify but simply enjoyed. Again, not mainstream authentic, but good. The filling of the bean and cheese taco was also correctly done, as was that of the potato, bacon and cheese taco.

What keeps these tacos from being in the top half of the class is the flour tortillas. They were just a little too dry, too chewy, too thick, as though they'd been prepared much earlier and had been sitting wrapped in a towel for an hour in a warm oven. I can understand that if I'd been there during the breakfast rush, but this was at about 10 AM, when there's time to prepare fresh tortillas to order.

Ruthie's

Quasimodo in an apron: Flap Jacks and Trattoria Lisina, and a day in the Hills

Now that it's cooled off enough to go riding in the Hills with the top down -- it didn't hit 100 degrees today until nearly 2pm -- my friend Rick and I decided to head up to Wimberley. He's looking for a new light fixture for his dining room, and I happened to know of just the place to find something as far out of the ordinary as he can get his wife to go along with. In all honesty, if the place was here in town I'd've just told him where it was and let him go on his own; but I didn't want to pass up an excuse for driving along the winding roads west of Interstate 35.

Along the way we stopped for breakfast at a place in Sattler called Flap Jack's. Normally, breakfast tacos would have been the preferred cuisine, but we'd already tried the one place we knew of around there; and while it was good, it wasn't one of those places we were willing to make Our Own. Plus, Rick wanted a bathroom, and I wasn't sure the taco place had one. It's more a taco stand than a restaurant; if memory serves, they have a porta-potty out front. That, I think, helps keep the place from being over-run with tourists. That, and it's location just a few miles from the Middle of Nowhere.

Flap Jacks looks like a respectable place from the outside. Inside, it looks like a modernish restaurant destined for that exalted status of Local Dive within my son's lifetime. I expect it'll make it that long. The menu was clearly assembled by someone with a phenomenal sweet tooth, or someone who expects their clientele to have one. I finally gave up trying to choose between the Snickers Flap Jacks, the Almond Joy Flap Jacks, the Peanut Butter Cup Flap Jacks and the Double Chocolate Flap Jacks -- and 30 or 40 other choices offered on the first two pages of the menu. By the time I'd read through the list, I'd decided I'd had enough sugar for a morning. So I went Mainstream, and ordered The Skillet, which isn't Flap Jacks at all. (You understand that I don't normally call them Flap Jacks; they're pancakes to me, and calling them Flap Jacks makes the whole experience seem just a tad contrived, kind of like watching Breaking News on Fox.) It's eggs scrambled up with bacon or sausage, hash browns and I forget what else, and served with toast ... and a flap jack.

Rick also ordered the Skillet, but I don't know what his thought process was. He got his with sausage, I chose bacon. Both were very good, but the star of the meal was, surprise, the flap jack.

I don't normally consider a short stack of two pancakes a meal. That's a side dish, in lieu of bread. I don't normally get pancakes at a restaurant anyway, because toast is so much more convenient with eggs. But this pancake -- okay, this flap jack -- was fantastic. For starters, it was cooked perfectly: just a hint of crust starting to form along the edges, top and bottom, but still moist inside, the fine edge of done-ness. And it was more than half an inch thick. It's cooked in a ring on the griddle to keep the batter from running out and thinning the eventual pancake, but it's also unusually light and fluffy. I'm sure they must have an illegal alien (pardon me, an undocumented worker) chained to some large piece of equipment in the kitchen, forced to whip air into the batter day and night, and maybe they use some ingredient to help that process along. I don't know; if they do, it doesn't affect the taste, which had just the right hint of sweetness to it. And they offer a choice of maple syrup, which was good, and butter-pecan syrup, which was really good.

Even the coffee (fresh ground right on top of the brewing machine) was excellent at this place. And the waitress managed to hit just the right balance between down-home friendly and get-it-your-own-damn-self efficiency. We felt like she must already have known us.

That was a good start to the day. It got better, though.

We went to Wimberley, to Star Antiques on River Road, which seems to be lighting's equivalent of a no-kill animal shelter. Two smallish rooms contain hundreds of lamps and chandeliers and bric-a-brac, and the back room, where air conditioning doesn't go, has three or four aisles of unrefinished stuff. My wife and I found chandeliers here for the porches of our house, after 15 years of searching; that's why I was pretty sure Rick would find something of interest.

He left there with photographs of a dozen or so fixtures to show the wife, and an anniversary present; I took possession of some of the bric-a-brac, in the name of Christmas Shopping and Something For the Back Yard; not having an Occasion coming up to justify my shopping needs. Well, Cup Day, but I've already got something for that.

Then a quick stop at the town square, where nothing really interesting was, for a change, and on to lunch, which turned out to be the high point of the day.

I had come across Trattoria Lisina while putting together a winery tour for my car club; it stands on the grounds of Mandola Winery, a fish-out-of-water Tuscan building put up a few years ago by a group of people backing Damian Mandola, who made a fortune (it appears) in the restaurant business, notably with Carraba's, a chain of Italian restaurants. I'm sure he's a nice guy; I'm sure all the people involved in the business are nice people. But, what can I say, I'm jealous of people who make a lot of money with something as basse-classe as a chain restaurant, which is to dining what Target is to shopping: I loathe it, and wish I'd thought of doing it.

Anyway, so it appears that wife Trina and the distaff part of the investment group decided they needed their own business, and so they opened Trattoria Lisina in an adjacent building. Having heard good things about the place from people whose opinions mean nothing to me, I went with low expectations.

I come away impressed. The meal for the two of us was about $70 with tip and a bottle of Mandola wine. (We both ordered the same, glasses of pinot grigio, and the waiter pointed out that for the same money we could have a bottle of the stuff. I don't care about wine -- pour some rubbing alcohol in a bottle of water and throw in a little food coloring, and I'm satisfied; but I know a bargain when I see it.) My cannelloni were very good -- not excellent; I won't go that far, but very good: stuffed with a tasty mix of ingredients, cooked to the right texture, and covered in a finely-tuned blend of cheeses. Rick went with a panini of Berkshire pork, which was good but not great, but who would notice when it shared the plate with a salad that he enjoyed so much that I had to ask: "So, is it really better than sex?" (It wasn't, but it was a question he had to think about for a worrisome length of time before he could answer with any assurance at all.)

Dessert is not something I normally do at lunch, but cannoli was on the menu. I can't pass up cannoli. Rick went with some too-chocolaty mousse cake that really should have been allowed to sit a few minutes to warm up. The cannoli shells are made at Mandola's Market, a sister-business 30 or so miles away in Austin. They were the only imperfection of the piece, as they lack the freshness that is essential to a truly exquisite cannoli. But the innards made up for that. Our waiter, Jett, thought it might have too much orange zest, and I admit that one bite at each end had surprising orange flavor to it, but I can't complain. It is the best cannoli I've had since Ciao Lavanderia dropped it from their menu, and easily the third-best I've ever had (after Ciao, and that place in New York that I can never remember the name of but can always find, on Mulberry Street, or maybe it's Mott Street, in Little Italy).

Even the decor of the place offers little for a curmudgeon to latch onto. Oh, sure, it's too-new and too-clean, but a few years will take care of that, and let's face it, there's really no way to age a restaurant that will pass muster for even the most half-hearted curmudgeon. The claret-coloured acoustic cieling was actually a nice touch, and all the place needs is a deft smattering of artfully-done and understated leaded glass in some of the higher windows (Trina, and Lisa: if you're reading this, let me know; I may be able to throw something perfect together for you.) In designing the place, the ladies gave appropriate thought, it seems, even to the bathrooms; the baby-changing table is lined and all eventualities are anticipated. The fixtures are a little on the Home-Depot side, but still a few cuts above the franchise-restaurant level.

It was while Rick and I were critiquing the place after lunch that I learned something new. He was ticking off the positive attributes of the place, based on his years of experience in the food business, and one of them was that "the staff are fairly attractive." This took me by surprise, but he swears that appearance is the first criteria in hiring wait staff at upscale restaurants. "Oh, sure," he said, "at Denny's you hire anybody who'll show up to work, but at places like this, it's appearance first, ability second."

I hadn't give that idea a thought before. I admitted that, yes, one very seldom encounters Quasimodo in an apron at any restaurant that has any pretension at all; and even Timo's, the too-cool-to-be-trendy coffee shop down the street from me seems to have pretty waitresses and one undeniably pretty young man in the kitchen. But a cursory survey of my dining experience indicates that Rick speaks right on: ugly people are not hired to wait tables at nice restaurants.

Well: so. I have only one complaint about the place, and that is with their placemats. They are attractive, made of a good quality paper with a nicely printed picture of the place on the left-hand side, but on the right-hand side they have a mistranslation of the lyrics to Deep In the Heart of Texas. It's intended to say, in Italian, "The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas," an accurate and appealing sentiment; but what it actually says is, "The stars at night are big and bright in the deep heart of Texas." Also an accurate and appealing sentiment, but not quite the same thing. (I initially assumed that they must've translated it on line, but I checked before I wrote this, and found that Babel Fish translated the line correctly. So I guess they just did it off the cuff, without really thinking about what they were doing.)

Le stelle alla notte sono grandi e luminose in profondità nel cuore del Texas.

Best Burgers

I don't care what anybody says, Fatty's has the best hamburgers in San Antonio. Possibly the world.

I've been to the Armadillo, which occupies the space that once housed Little Hipps, and tries not quite successfully to duplicate its food and ambience. It's OK, but Fatty's is better.

I've been to Luther's ... no contest.

I've been to Sam's Burger Joint ... no contest.

I've been to Chester's ... not even in the same league.

I've been to Jim's; there was a time when Jim's Frontier Burger would have given just about anybody a run for their money, but that was long, long ago. Lately, Jim's is just the faintest of also-rans.

I've been to Timbo's, a lunch spot off Broadway tossed together by former employees of Little Hipps. It does no better than the Armadillo in duplicating the Little Hipps Experience.

I've been to Five Guys, the trendy Philadelphia chain that seems to be all the rage among the local newspaper's reviewers. It makes me question the reviewers' judgment. Nowhere near as good as Fatty's.

And finally, I've been to Little Hipps, many, many times before it closed a few years ago. Yes, it was the paradigm of the hamburger in San Antonio for decades, and yes, it was very, very, very good.

But Fatty's is better.
Much, much better.

The Hunt is On: Taco Quest

There appear to be no good taquerías in San Antonio north of Loop 410. Ordinarily, this would be of no great concern to me; it would just be another attribute of the homogenized, pasteurized, suburbanized anytown-America that infects northern Bexar County. But lately, I've been making regular trips to that traffic-clogged wasteland, and have found myself searching for that staple of San Antonio cuisine, the taquería.

There are, let me say, taquerías here and there, sprinkled across Loopland. There just aren't any good ones, at least not in that slice of dross that creeps out across US 281. I've found a place on Bitters Road which has some interesting things to offer, but not including a good breakfast taco. I've found a place at the Brookhollow exit, which I hope never to go back to. And a place on West Avenue, advertising on one of those nylon ready-in-ten-minutes signs that it was voted Best Tacos in San Antonio by readers of the local newspaper; I suspect the sign was stolen. The breakfast tacos there were perhaps the worst I've had anywhere.

Breakfast tacos are the paradigmatic San Antonio food. People all over the country are familiar with what they consider Mexican food -- and let's face it: there are so many authentic types of Mexican food that the very label, "Mexican," approaches meaninglessness -- but it's only here in the Alamo City that the breakfast taco has acquired iconic status. It isn't unique to the city; it wasn't created here; the ingredients are easily obtainable throughout North America (though I had a hard time finding flour tortillas in Toronto), possibly the world. But it's here that the breakfast taco has reached its artistic acme. It is here, in these dusty overheated streets, that the tortilla, the egg, the cheese and the salsa have come together with other occasional ingredients to become ... drumroll, please ... The Breakfast Taco.

There are perhaps 20 taquerías within a mile or two of my house. Hildebrand Avenue alone, in the reach from McCullough to Fredericksburg, must have at least that many. It boasts a small café that fooled Bon Appetit magazine into thinking the best tacos in America were to be found there, but all the places along that street (and I believe I've tried all of them) have, with a single exception, outstanding breakfast tacos. You can't swing a dead armadillo downtown without hitting a good taco place. Southtown and the Barrio are aflood with outstanding taco places. And I will say that, based on my fairly wide-ranging experience, the best breakfast tacos I have ever had were at a little place on Cupples Road, near Highway 90, called (I think) Natalie's (close second: Lula's, on Travis Street, especially now that Little House Café is no more).

But the point is that, in San Antonio -- in old, established, slightly decayed, vaguely decadent, tolerant, unruffled and unhurried San Antonio, the parts that were here before freeways -- good, really, really good tacos are as ubiquitous as prickly-pear cactus.

But when you get out to the Loop, something happens. The food changes, and the nature of the restaurants change. Somewhere between Oblate and Isom, chilaquiles lose the scrambled eggs; chorizo becomes plain ol' Jimmy Dean sausage; tortillas get thicker, and Velveeta replaces melted cheese. Tex-Mex restaurants, some of them, aren't even open for breakfast: viz., Panchito's on West Avenue. The very cultural architecture of the city is choked off, it seems, by the circle of Loop 410, and what little gets through is but a pale, undesirable imitation of the city's defining cuisine.