I Kind of Like It.

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

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.

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.

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.