Taco Quest moves south for the morning: R&R Coffee Shop

Most San Antonians never venture south of Durango Street. Most simply never leave their own little enclaves, slices of city that they're familiar with, comfortable with, centered on home and work and the few restaurants and shopping venues they are accustomed to. Many who are willing to leave that narrow comfort zone still avoid the South Side -- okay, maybe they will venture into King William or SouthTown and think themselves daring for doing so. But to most San Antonians the South Side is rife with evil, and everyone who goes over there gets knifed or robbed or shot in a drive-by.

This is, of course, a load of something not as nice as hooey. The Curmudgeon-About-Town goes over there from time to time, and not just to that haven of Consumer Culture that stretches from Hemisfair Plaza to Blue Star, the dominion of postmodern countercultural sophisticates, out exercising their sophistry. My favourite restaurant is out there in the great swath of working-class South Side (a place called Natalie's, on Cupples Road, if you care -- outstanding chilaquile tacos; I'm sure I've mentioned it in this blog at some point). But today's venture to the South Side was occasioned by the desire to see the hit movie "Avatar" in 3-D, which can be done on the South Side for $6.25; the North Side theaters are charging up to $14 for the same experience. (I expect to write about the movie in my other blog, The Other Curmudgeon). The plan, then, was to head over to the neighbourhood by the theater at McCreless, and find a mom-and-pop taquería for a late-ish quick breakfast before the show. So I and my faithful sidekick Rick, Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote-del-Taco, drove down I-37, past the Pale of Civilization, and into the exotic South Side.

We ended up at a place called R&R Cafe, on Clark Avenue, south of Goliad Road. (The "R's" stand for the initials of the previous owners; it's also listed as R&R Coffee Shop in the phone book and on line.) It's a small place, maybe as big as my living room and dining room combined, with I would guess ten or twelve tables, a counter, and a television hooked up to a satellite dish. (I know this because of the familiar "No Signal or Weak Signal" legend that appears on the screen from time to time; and I note that satellite television is as bad as digital cable about failing to synchronize the audio and video; I further note that satellite TV is every bit as inane as cable.) The waiter is the son of the family that operates the place, doing his share on Tuesdays and Thursdays, days when he's not in school; his aunt was cooking in the kitchen.

There's nothing pretentious about the place, it's just a small family business, serving food to the people in the neighbourhood. Formica tables, padded metal chairs; table numbers salvaged from some earlier restaurant; posters on the wall, and three strange little ceramic clowns above the drinks station. They seldom get people from as far away as I came, let alone my friend Rick, who lives way the f*** out in Loopland, near Ultima Thule. I will admit to some mild surprise that the waiter not only spoke English -- Spanish is very much the lingua franca below Durango Street, and I was hoping to practice my rusty command of that language -- but that he did it with no trace of an accent. Well, okay, he has the San Antonio accent, that slightly upbeat happy sort of accent that always puts me in mind of my next door neighbour; but no Mexican accent. You kind of come to expect it.

What does that mean?

The coffee was good, a hopeful start. The service was good, which was easy: we weren't very demanding, and the few other tables that were occupied when we arrived all emptied before we even ordered. I felt like something different from my usual chilaquile tacos, so I ordered potato and egg tacos with cheese, one also with bacon; Rick got his customary beef fajita tacos.

The waiter brought a small basket of chips and salsa. This was the only disappointing part of our experience at R&R Cafe: the chips were hot out of the fryer and still glistening with grease, but the tortillas used to make them were way too thick to produce top-quality tostadas; and the salsa was ... well, let's call it "old-fashioned." It was more like thin tomato soup, with some piquant seasonings in it. Thirty-five years ago that would have been considered normal; nowadays, no. If you like vintage salsa, go for it; but to my way of thinking, salsa has improved dramatically in my lifetime.

The tacos themselves were purdy darn good. The flour tortillas were fresh-made, of course, and perfectly-made, and filled with plenty of the things that make tacos irresistable, all of it well-prepared. Nothing too dry, or too bland, or strangely tarted up like onion rings at the Outback: just good, old-fashioned cucina tipica destined for the palate of an appreciative customer. And I know Rick liked his tacos as much as I did mine, because, for possibly the first time since I've known him, I didn't have to wait for him to finish. I won't say he wolfed his down, but there were teeth marks on the plate. Also, he told me they "had more flavour" than the ones he's gotten in other places. (They did look good, but he didn't offer me a taste. Bad Rick. Bad Rick.)

We were out of there for $12, including tip. Not bad.

More on tacos: La Potranca

Every now and then, after working out at the gym or playing a few games of racquetball, my friend Rick and I will head over to La Potranca, a taqueria on Jones-Maltsberger Road, north of Starcrest. After forays throughout the north-central area in search of the elusive taco de buen calidad, it was one of a couple of places between the Loops that we had settled on as being OK enough to go back to (the other being Tacqueria Los Potrillos, on Starcrest; see my December 11 post on that place).

I have to revise that assessment. After several more visits, I've decided that La Potranca is unacceptable.

The food is just okay. The chilaquiles recipe is close enough to what I think of as authéntico (I don't know why this blogger will let me put an accent over an e, but not over an i) to pass muster, but lately the tortillas are overcooked, which gives them the texture of wet cardboard. The coffee's good enough, too; not the best, but not the worst by a long shot. And the ambience is fine, actually quite a bit nicer than the places I've come to like best.

What kills La Potranca is the service. Normally if you get bad service one time in a restaurant, you figure it's probably an aberration; the first time we had mediocre service at La Potranca, it was, we believed, because school was out for the holidays and the owners' kids were working; and they didn't have the job down pat. So we went back, and service was fair the next time.

But the last several times we've been, it's like this: there are two or three people behind the counter, though I hesitate to say they're working. One appears always to be reviewing papers. One comes and goes as though making deliveries to the back door. One seems to stare into space, but he or she (it varies) may be watching something on the grill, or waiting for something to appear on the grill. And there will be one or two people whose function may be to serve customers.

What does that mean?

But when you go into a place with only about a dozen tables, and only three or four of them occupied, you kind of expect that one person can take care of those customers adequately. With a little ambition, a single "waitron" -- the politically correct term coined, unsuccessfully, by a friend of mine more than fifteen years back -- might even be able to suffocate the few customers with excessive attention. So why is it that we end up staring in the direction of the kitchen, hoping for a glimpse of someone with a coffee pot, or someone who might have access to a coffee pot? Why must we either wait with ebbing patience for someone to just glance in our direction, so we can hoist the coffee cup and convey the idea that we might like some more? Oh, yeah, we could get up off our fat asses (though I am on the verge of taking my belt in another notch; I shiver with anticipation, or maybe it's just the weather lately) and go over there, or we could make rude shouting noises, and believe me we've thought about it. It's what I'd do if we were at Timo's the little coffee shop down the street from my house, where the owners are by way of being friends of mine and I feel comfortable going into the kitchen my own damn self and getting what I want. I don't know these people at La Potranca, and they don't know me: I'm just a customer to them, who needs to be pleased enough to come back. And honey, that ain't happening.