No Okra, Please: Podna's Catfish & Po-Boys

A few years in South Louisiana taught me some things about Cajun food. Some of those things I still remember, like how to fry up a mess of gator, how to eat crawfish, where to find good gratons, and where they make good boudin. I'm only an honorary coon-ass, but I can still appreciate quality in Cajun food.

I can also tell the difference between Cajun food and Creole food. Creole food is what we used to have when I was a kid in New Orleans. Cajun food is what kids eat in New Iberia and Delcambre and Breaux Bridge and Mermentau. Dishes might share the same name, but they are different enough that most people can tell. The gumbo that you get on Carrollton Avenue is as different from the gumbo on Bayou Lafourche as a Saab is from a Lexus.

This talent for distinguishing one from the other does me little good in a place like San Antonio, where both are often sold together and neither is done particularly well. But there are a few places around town where you can get food that is, if not thoroughly authentic Louisiana cookin', at least tasty. Unfortunately for me, most of them are on the fringes of the city, i.e., outside Loop 410, so I rarely get there. 

But there is Podna's Catfish and Po-Boys, on Austin Highway between the Spectrum Health Club and the Wal-Mart. Nothing fancy about this place, it's just a sandwich shop, but it's got the basics of Louisiana cooking down. It presents itself as a Cajun place, but it's not; it's creole.

I've been there several times, and have been happy with it on each visit. I haven't tried the catfish (cher, if it didn't sleep in the bayou last night, I don't want it), but the po-boys are wonderful. My favourite is the shrimp po-boy, dressed. (In Louisiana tradition, if you want lettuce and tomato and all the other fixin's on your po-boy, you just order it dressed; if not, you specify what you want.) Be sure to add a little of the delicious home-made remoulade sauce, in the thoroughly déclassé squeeze bottle on your table. The bread is huge, maybe twice the size of baguettes used in other places, and just crusty enough to hold together and make that satisfying noise when you press it. (If you've seen the animated movie Ratatouille, you know what I mean.) The cooks at Podna's have learned how to tell exactly when to remove the shrimp from the fryer, making it crisp and hot and not greasy at all. The french fries are cooked with similar precision, though they are sprinkled with a little seasoning -- I'm guessing Tony Chachere's -- that I could do without. (I could probably get them without if I thought to ask, but the truth is I have never ordered fries there; I just always seem to share the table with somebody having fries with their meal, and get to taste them.) The hushpuppies are good, too; but then, you really can't mess up hushpuppies except by letting them go stale. And the red beans and rice ... well, it takes me way back. I can honestly say it's much better than I can make at home.

When it comes to ambience, there's not much to say. It's a plain ol' fast-food place, except for the purple, green & gold table coverings and the mish-mash of Orleanian memorabilia: Mardi Gras beads, Who-Dat shirt, a few other references to the Crescent City culture. (When I lived in Acadiana, if you mentioned New Orleans, you were sure to get this response: a slow shake of the head and the regretful line, "Dem people in N'awlinz, dey sho know how ta paaaarty." Which is true.) Still, the place is clean, and bright, and if not tastefully decorated, it at least is evocative of its spiritual home on the Big River.  

Some of the people who work behind the counter sound like they come from the bayou. I don't have any trouble deciphering their Cajun accents, but at least one friend who accompanied me on a visit there had to ask me for translations. Usually that's not a problem, though; there are plenty of people working there who speak English like the rest of us, and if all else fails, you can show them the menu and point.  One piece of advice, though: don't order a regular-sized po-boy unless you plan to have half of it the next day. It's that big. (I can also affirm that the shrimp po-boy, dressed, makes great leftovers.)

San Antonio Goes Uptown

A while back, somebody started publishing another one of those ultra-glossy upscale magazines about my home town: San Antonio Magazine. I remember when the only way you could find articles about overpriced cutting-edge crap was to read Texas Monthly; but that was 30 years ago. Now, every mid-sized burg in the country seems to have its very own ad-stuffed publication, alerting the public to local manifestations of every moronic revenue-producing trend to spring from corporate creative minds. 

(I find, at the check-out stands at HEB, that this isn't even the only local-interest glossy; there's another called S.A. Living, or maybe Living S.A. I don't recall. I only remember it at all because it once had a cover story about the ten highest-priced local homes, and the prurient snob in me was obliged to look and see if my own house was listed. It wasn't.)

Anyway, the difference between San Antonio Magazine and all those others, is that SAM comes to my house. I don't know why; a while back it started arriving, and I have plenty of room in the recycling bin each week, so I don't much mind. In fact, I now get two copies every month.

Every now and then there'll be something of interest. Maybe an article on what great people we all are down here in Paradise South. Sometimes, though, it upsets me to see things like that in print, because, what if people in Dallas or Houston read it, and decide to come live in San Antonio. A great place to live, it may be, but we do have enough problems of our own, mostly caused by people moving here from Dallas and Houston. (Perceptive readers will recognize that the phrase "Dallas and Houston" is actually a euphemism for a far larger, far more ominous source of transplants.)

Next month's issue, which came this week, features the "Best of the City" listings. It's not enough that the local newspaper and the local alternative newspaper come up with similar lists each year, or that the various lists are generally indistinguishable. It's still always fun to see what people come up with.

SAM's list is chosen by its editors, who get to play Bruce Almighty because, well, they own the printing press. Readers can only hope they're not on the take. There are also readers' choices listed, right there, in little tiny print at the bottom.

OK, I'm really only interested in the restaurant listings, and that only so I can see what's new, and disagree with what's not. This list is mainly predictable, with names that have become familiar recently, mixed in with a few places that have stood the test of time (which, in the food biz, is, like, nine months). There's only one place I've never heard of, and will have to go check out: G&G Mobile Bistro. Several others have been around a while, but haven't yet found their way onto my been-there-done-that list: Mina and Dimi's, Il Sogno, Le Midi, and La Gloria Ice House. This last, along with The Friendly Spot and, to a lesser extent, La Tuna, seem to have really captured the local imagination, as presented by this and other hard-copy publications. Maybe they just have better publicists than the many other new places in town.

Then, there are all the other categories. Some of them make me curious about aspects of city livin' that I no longer bother with, now that I'm all grown up. What, for example, makes Sam's Burger Joint the Best Live Music Venue? What makes the Lion and Rose a better sports bar than ... well, I can't think of another one, but I'm sure they're out there. And why bother having a category for Best Performing Arts Venue? If they want to have some kind of competition for that honour, it should be Best Performing Arts Venue Other Than The Majestic Theater; that way, all the other places in town have a shot. Same goes for Best Local Festival: when you say "Fiesta," you've said it all. 

There are also some interesting things that don't make my eyes roll in anti-consumerist irritation, like the magazine's choice for Best Concierge: Luke the Lab, a rescue-dog who hangs out at the Fairmount. Or Material Recovery, chosen as the Best Shop for Furniture; now, that sounds like an interesting thing, and even though I don't have any open space left in my house, and have to pick my way carefully when moving from room to room, I want to check out this place.

Thai Corner: Really That Good

I may have a new favourite Thai place in town.

Thai Corner sits at the Wurzbach Road end of a strip-mall on Fredericksburg, near the Medical Center, competing with neighbours offering up non-fast-food burgers, savory Indian food, high-end Italian, and the usual uninteresting assortment of fast food. It's an unremarkable place, by all appearances, and not as big as it seemed from the road. But a single lunch there has put it in the running to displace Tong's as my favourite Thai place in San Antonio.

We chose the place as much for its location as for any expectation of quality. We just happened to be there around lunch time. You quickly learn that restaurants in areas like that, and in strip-malls like that, are a complete crap shoot; they rely on volume business rather than any reputation for excellence. Sometimes you get lucky.

The décor is a typical mix of strip-mall veneers and acoustic tiles, the essential Asian wall hangings, and a curious assortment of near-elegant touches. All in all, it looks as though the decorating budget gave out before the aspirations did. Still, it's pleasant enough, in a glass-wall, modular sort of way. Our table rocked slightly, just enough to splash the soup up to the rim of its container, but not over. The chairs were comfortable without being at all special.

Thai Corner offers a prix-fixé lunch special, with, excepting the soup course, more than enough choices to satisfy most palates. A cup of the soup du jour comes with each order, and ours was on the table before we had water, or drinks, or menus, or utensils. It was a thin broth with what looked like chicken shavings in it, a sampling of vegetables, and possibly a noodle. I may have tasted one, though I didn't see it in the cup or on my spoon (when the spoons finally arrived). Still, it was tasty, probably as much from the salt as the chicken. Certainly not something I'd have ordered, had a choice been offered.

There were five appetizers offered: egg roll, spring roll, pot stickers, cucumber salad, and (I forget which) crab Rangoon or fried wonton. I opted for the spring roll, while my unindicted co-conspirator went for the pot stickers. 

The presentation of the spring roll was attractive, it being cut into four pieces served up-ended, each segment topped with a sweet peach sauce. Despite being less than totally fresh, it was delicious, and though the peach sauce was unexpected and initially jarring, I quickly decided that I really liked its flavour. My friend's pot stickers were very hot, small, and modestly stuffed. They were, however, cooked to perfection, retaining their mild chewiness without attaining the sort of unpleasant density found, for example, in those thousand-dish Asian buffets that seem to spring up in every suburban venue. In quantity, both appetizers were sufficient, more amuse bouche than what we fat people have grown accustomed to, ordering appetizers that could serve as a meal. 

The portions of the entrées, however, was more than generous: this is, I'm absolutely sure, the first time that I've ever had to ask for a go-box for a lunch special. 

Most of the entrées on offer -- there are probably two dozen of them -- offer a choice of main ingredient: chicken, beef, tofu, or vegetarian. Duck, shrimp, barbecued pork, and seafood mix are available for an extra charge of two or three dollars. I chose my favourite Thai dish, pad wun sen, so that I could compare Thai Corner with other Thai restaurants on a level playing field; my co-conspirator went for the ginger chicken.

Both, I swear to God, were excellent. My pad wun sen (with chicken -- I wanted to get duck but that would have undermined my reason for choosing the dish in the first place) is, I'm just about sure, the best I've ever had. Well, okay, let's say it is as good as any I've ever had. Probably fattening as hell, but full of chicken and egg and deliciously sautéed veggies all mixed in with a heapin' helpin' of them skinny rice noodles I love so much. The seasoning on it was, to my way of thinking, perfect. I don't know if I'll be able to bring myself to tell my wife there are leftovers available for her lunch; I may have to hide the container.

My friend's ginger chicken was exquisitely done, too. He rated it at four and a half chili peppers, and having tasted it, I'll agree. The ginger flavour was clear without being overpowering; the vegetables were, as in my own dish, sautéed just right. He complained about the white rice being too sticky, but I pointed out that, I'm told, that's the way it's supposed to be in Asian cooking, so you can eat it with chopsticks. Anyway, once the rice had soaked up some of the juices from the chicken, it lost its stickiness. He also noticed that it was made with less salt than he's used to, but I don't consider that a bad thing either.

The one real failing at Thai Corner is the service. We were there a little after 1pm on a weekday; the place was coming down from its lunch rush, and there seemed to be more than enough employees on hand to easily handle the remaining tables. But the service was disorganized and, I suspect, the kitchen was too: we heard several people complaining about the length of time they had been waiting, whether to be served or waited on at all. At least two groups of diners decided to take their orders to go, because they had to be back at work and it had taken so long. 

Our own experience wasn't that extreme, but then, we didn't have to be anywhere. Still, it would have been nice to get utensils and napkins without having to ask, while our soup threatened to grow cold; and it would have been nice to have someone drop by at some point to see if we needed anything after being served; and it would have been nice to have our waitress come within ear shot now and then, instead of having to send the bus boy to get our go-boxes. But all in all, it was just a tad shy of mediocre, a barely acceptable level of service.

That one attribute aside (and, as I say, the service for us wasn't so bad as to be upsetting, like it seemed to be for others), this is the third Thai restaurant I've tried in the Medical Center area, the others being Sarika's and Sampong's. Both of those were pretty run-of-the-mill lunch experiences. Thai Corner was much better overall.

In the end, we both had exceptional meals at very reasonable prices (less than $8 each, including iced tea), and we both have enough left over to provide another light meal tomorrow. Unless somebody forgets to hide the box in the fridge.

The Other Thousand Oaks Café

I went to the Thousand Oaks Café on Austin Highway a few times, always wondering why it was called that when it was so far from Thousand Oaks. I was never impressed, but the last time I went, for lunch with my Significant Other, I was so underwhelmed that I vowed never to go again. The food was greasier than a Mr. Gatti's pizza and every bit as bland, and I felt sick to my stomach later on. 

In the two or three years since, my curiosity about the name has been rewarded: there is an original location, actually on (or just off of) Thousand Oaks, which I came across unexpectedly when I was out that way searching for ... oh, who remembers what? What I do remember, and this because I mentioned it in a posting on this blog, was that the food there was utterly unremarkable, which right there makes it better than anything I'd had at the Austin Highway location.

Still, I pass by the Austin Highway location several times a month, and noticed that my favourite dish, chilaquiles, has been prominently promoted on their outdoor sign for a year or two now. Eventually, lust for chilaquiles overcame my resolve, and I had breakfast there today.

The good news is, it wasn't bad. The bad news is, it wasn't good. In fact, I don't think I've ever been to a more run-of-the-mill restaurant. The chilaquiles were, oh, okay. Just okay. They had all the right ingredients; could've done with a little more peppers and tomatoes; the onions were nicely sautéed, and the eggs were firm but not dry. There were, if anything, too many tortilla pieces, but it's hard to complain about that. (Still, I manage....) The coating of cheese --- dare I call it cheese? I suspect it is more properly called cheese food --- over the top was profuse but not, thankfully, exuberant. Salsa verde and a little black pepper made the whole mix sufficiently piquant for my aging palate. 

The dish came with refried beans that must have been puréed to be so thin and soggy, and with chunks of fried potatoes, a growing and disturbing trend in Tex-Mex eatery art. (Disturbing because rice and beans, taken together, form proteins within the body, and so provide at least a modicum of nutrition to the largely poor people who rely on them. Fried potatoes and beans together are just starch and fat.)

Lastly, let me mention the coffee. It was coffee. More drinkable than the supercharged sludge I'd gotten on a recent venture Beyond The Death Loop, but that's the best thing I can say about it. Honestly, I think somebody may have run a little more water through the filter than is strictly proper. 

The service was adequate, and that, I think, describes it as fully as I'm capable of. Good enough to earn a 15% tip, with none of the hovering or meaningless chatter that puts me off, but also with none of the pleasantry or attentiveness that earns a higher return.

The place is an old Jim's, or something very like it: the paradigmatic Okay Place.

Rise ... and Go

Rise Café & Bakery has been around in the hinterland long enough that I've actually heard of it. Heard good things about it, too, so when I was passing by on the way to visit a friend in one of those sprawling new hospitals out there in Ultra-Loop Land hoping to find a decent taquería, spotting the well-known name on the sign, I decided to give it a try instead. I should have kept looking for tacos.

It's not a big place, about the size of an ordinary Starbucks, but without the outside seating. Located in a strip center on 1604 between 281 and Stone Oak, it suffers from a lack of charisma on the outside, but manages to make up for that once you're in the door. Café tables a-plenty, but not so crowded that you feel the people around you are eavesdropping, or watching your computer screen and judging you.  The counter's in the back, and there's a comfortable-looking group of sofas on one side, in case you want a more comfortable conversation pit than the tables offer. 

The menu is reasonably varied for this type of restaurant; coffee and coffee-based drinks; other hot drinks (and presumably cold, too, though I didn't notice them on the menu board); a nice selection of enticing pastries, a few baked dishes, sandwiches, and a couple of more elaborate things that didn't really interest me for breakfast. I ordered plain ol' coffee, a cranberry-orange scone, and a jalapeño and sausage kolache.

The kolache was an impulse buy, mainly attributable to the fact that, the last three times I've stopped at my favourite Czech bakery in West, up beyond Waco, they've been out of those delicious, soft, creamy-good treats, and I thought maybe the local variety would serve as a substitute. It didn't. These kolaches are made with four or five cocktail sausages, the kind you make faces over at low-budget catered events, wrapped in what tasted like biscuit dough and baked with a single slice of jalapeño on top. These sad creations are heated ever so briefly before being served, enough that they're not cold but not so long as to make them warm. I guess it was just above room temperature. The flavour is what you'd expect, given the unimaginative ingredients.

The scone was much better: a large-ish square, chock full of cranberries and with a definite background taste of orange. The dough was well-made, properly crumbly, and perfectly baked. I know just enough about baking to know that I can't do it myself; someone at Rise can, and I wish they'd take an interest in the kolaches.

The coffee ... well, judging from the success of Starbucks and Seattle's Best, I guess it's to the liking of a lot of people. Or maybe people just think that's what coffee is supposed to taste like, and so they don't dare complain. I find it offensively bitter, acidic, and inordinately strong, meaning that I had to dose it liberally with half-and-half and sweetener to make it palatable. Chaque á son gôut, I suppose, but it sure ain't to my gôut.

Lunching al Fresco Again: Crumpets

The patios at Crumpets

I wrote the other day that La Fogata has the nicest patio in town. I had forgotten about Crumpets'. I had lunch there today, and was reminded of just how nice it was. Not at all the same ambiance of Old Mexico, but relaxing and refreshing none the less.

Crumpets has an undeserved reputation for high prices. I probably shouldn't say anything to undermine that, because one of the things I like best about having lunch there is the thinness of the crowd. The patio areas, where I always sit in fine weather like today's, has about a dozen tables, and today there were only two others occupied. The artificial stream that runs through the grounds was empty today --- their pump was damaged by a fallen tree that was washed into it in the recent heavy rains --- but somehow that didn't detract from the setting at all. It was still like being in the Hill Country, pleasantly quiet and green, instead of in the city.

Service at Crumpets is really, really good. Everything is attended to, every tedious customer request fulfilled expeditiously. I'm sure the wait staff are back there talking about how many baskets of bread we asked for --- the croissants they offer are almost tasty enough to excite a Frenchman --- or how much water we took in, but when they get to the table they are professional, polite, cheerful, thoughtful, informative, prompt and caring; yet not overbearing. This is something I've observed every time I go to the place, which isn't as often as it deserves.

Today I decided on a light lunch: I'm going to the beach next summer, and don't want people trying to roll me back into the ocean, so I need to start now losing some weight. I went for the tortilla soup and a house salad. My lunch partner was miffed, because that's what she was going to order, so just to keep from copying me she ordered the "special" salad, which had, I don't know, shrimp on it? She said they smelled fishy, and was not being ironic, but didn't ask me to try them, so I don't know. It might've been her; maybe she was in a mood. Anyway, she didn't bring it up with our waitress; but I've marked the "food" rating down half a chile pepper just in case it was the shrimp, and not her.

What does that mean?

The tortilla soup was full of big chunks of chicken, and the tortilla strips had an excellent texture to them, neither crisp nor flaccid (both being functions of how long they'd been in the broth). The other ingredients are served on a separate plate, so you can take as much or as little as you please. A little pretentious, maybe, but I liked that touch. 

Serving sizes are adequate for real people, nothing like the overblown things we're getting so used to, now that food is so cheap in this country. The salad, with just the right amount of delicious creamy house dressing, was large enough to cover the entire plate, and the sous-chef who prepares the salad seems almost to remember that nothing in a salad should be bigger than a lady's mouth (one of my pet peeves). When the soup was first brought to me, I was disappointed not to have been given a bowl big enough to swim in, but by the time I was finished I was certainly satisfied with what I'd had. 

Maybe the restaurant's location, just off Harry Wurzbach and almost invisible from the road, is why so few people seem to go there at lunch. Maybe it's not the undeserved reputation for pricey food. Or maybe they just left something off the bill by mistake, because I was out of there for about ten bucks, including tip, and I'd had a goodly amount of excellent food for that money. I don't now recall the prices of other things I've had there before, but I do know that I've never felt cheated after dining there. That's probably why I keep going back when I'm in that part of town.

YaYa Thai & Sushi

I love Thai food. I don't know a thing about it, except that it's really, really tasty stuff. But one of the drawbacks of being enamored with it has always been that there are no Thai restaurants, good or otherwise, close to home for me. The nearest has always been Tong's, on Austin Highway, which isn't terribly far as the crow flies, but navigating the obstacle-course of blue-hair Broadway through Alamo Heights has always sent a slight shiver up my spine. It's not quite as off-putting as having to drive through Houston to get to New Orleans, but it's that same sort of thing.

So I was very excited to find a new Thai place in the restaurant listings on Urbanspoon.com, quite close to home for me: Yaya's, on McCullough, in Olmos Park. We went there tonight to try it out.

The decor is a mix of the elegant and mundane. The interior finishing was very nicely done, the tables and chairs were from the "Asian restaurant decor" page of some industry catalog, and some of the details looked like they'd been bought at a coffee-shop's going-out-of-business sale. The two interior dining rooms were spacious, with a long bar (a sushi bar? I don't know, I didn't look closely) and a few tastefully distributed plants. (There is also a patio out front, which was unused; surprising, given how nice the weather's been.)  On arrival, a gentlemen at the front counter seemed confused: should he seat us? He asked how many we were, took the appropriate number of menus from a stack, came out from the counter ... and stood there, looking for all the world like he had forgotten where he was. He seemed, then, to be communicating telepathically with someone in another room, and finally decided to seat us at the very first table. I wasn't thrilled with that, but didn't complain. I think it might have sent him off the deep end. In any case, the tables are placed far enough apart that the man at the next table, who seemed determined to talk his date to death, didn't bother me too much; I could see him talking, talking, talking, but only now and then could I hear him at all. 

Someone came by with water. Someone else came by with water. Someone paused by our table and asked if we needed more time, which we did. Someone else came and refilled our water. We finally settled on two commonplace Thai dishes --- pad wun sen with chicken, and Thai basil with pork --- plus shrimp fresh-rolls. (I always think it's best to order something you're familiar with the first time you visit a restaurant you expect to go back to; that way, you'll be able to make a direct comparison with what you're used to getting elsewhere.)

What does that mean?

Then someone came by with water.

The shrimp rolls were tasty, but were loosely packed, so that the innards kept coming out when you tried to eat it. The peanut sauce was no better nor worse than any other I've had; I've about decided there's only one manufacturer of this sauce in the whole world, and he supplies every Thai restaurant there is. 

The Thai basil was good, with a soy-based sauce that seems to be a little heavy on salt, or possibly MSG. The vegetables were cooked to perfection, crispy-chewy, and the pork was thoroughly cooked. Served with plain ol' white rice, it made a good meal by itself.

The pad wun sen, which is my favourite Thai dish, disappointed a little. It seems to lack a certain sharpness of flavour. Not that it's under-seasoned: it's not; it just seems that all the flavours of vegetables, chicken, and broth lacked definition. I would say, too, that the noodles were overcooked, but given how quickly rice noodles passes from "done" to "overdone," that seems unduly harsh. 

Fresh rolls and two entrees were about $30 with tax and tip; that, I think, compares very favourably with the other good Thai places I've found in town, and it may be that, for me, the shortcomings of the food are offset by the shortness of the drive to get there. We'll have to see.