A Sense of (Disposable) History

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.