A Good Deal

Mr Tim's Country Kitchen
620 South Presa Street

(in just south of the Alamo Street crossing)

Between the hammered-metal ceiling and the painted-concrete floor is a restaurant that successfully emphasizes its down-home Last-Frontier philosophy. The breakfast food available here is largely simple fare, properly done. Eggs, pancakes, biscuits: these things are hard to screw up (I can say that, despite recent experience?), but also hard to really excel at. Still, everything we tried at Mr Tim's was as we expected, and a little more.

Last city inspection: August 2011; 16 demerits

On arrival, my first thought was that I would not be happy with any place that not only offers liver and onions (all viscera being Number Two on my personal list of Five Foods I Will Not Eat Under Any Circumstances), but brags about it with a large sign on the front window. I was relieved to find that no one in the place had ordered liver, which has, to me, a distinct and revolting aroma. 

Not that there were many people in the dining room; at 10AM on a Monday, with school back in session, I suppose all the parents in town were at home reveling in the restored privacy, or at work. They weren't out having a late breakfast. Mr Tim's has, effectively, two dining areas: the original one, and a closed-in former patio (I'm guessing) out front. (A small outdoor seating area right between building and sidewalk remains, but only large enough for a couple of tables.) We were almost alone among the 18 tables. We apparently snuck in below the radar of the staff, as it was a short while before anyone came to greet us with menus and utensils, but once they knew we were there, the service improved to a level that could be described as better than average, without doing violence to the words.

The breakfast menu is full of run-of-the-mill offerings: you've got your eggs, your pancakes, your breakfast meats, your bread choices ... the kind of stuff you can get anywhere breakfast is served. This is, first of all, a traditional place, and those are the things Americans traditionally eat. But there are a few indications, too, that Mr Tim's is just a little out of the ordinary: "Texas Style French Toast," for example (not on the online menu, but on the card), and bragging-rights cinnamon rolls. These things stake Mr Tim's claim to excellence, and we mainly found that a claim worth considering. 

We agreed to split one of those cinnamon rolls. I haven't had an oversized cinnamon roll since the height of the fashion passed in, oh, 1986. The steroidal offerings I've seen in various pastry cases around the country have never been much of a temptation to me, but I thought, in the interest of science (let's call it), I should at least try one; so we agreed to split one. We should have brought at least four more people for that. Most of it now rests in my refrigerator, in a Styrofoam go-box, where it will prove the devil's plaything until I've destroyed it. It was, to quote the man across the table from me, "a biiiiiig-ass cinnamon roll." 

It is huge. I'd say it's probably eleven inches square, and about two and a half inches high; not so high as those monsters you see as you walk in to Lulu's (which, I believe, is Mr Tim's main competition for the local Cinnamon-Roll Crown), but surely as filling. The rolls at Lulu's are made from strips of dough turned on edge and wound around many times; Mr Tim's makes theirs with thick ropes of dough wound less tightly. While I'm sure each style has its partisans, I'm of the opinion that the lightly-wound ropes make for a lighter, less-dense roll, with a texture more like cake than biscuit. Certainly the cinnamon roll we sampled is a light, almost spongy creation, with a hint of almond extract and healthy doses of cinnamon and a full, but not excessive, slathering of sugary glaze, sufficient to cover the entire plate-sized roll with the stuff, and to form glaciers in the creases of the dough. 

We made the mistake of ordering a regular breakfast, too: eggs, hash-browns, and biscuits, plus my table-mate had bacon. The eggs were cooked perfectly to order, which just goes to show that it can be done. The hashbrowns were the most unremarkable part of the meal: not bad, just not worth getting excited about. They were just like the hashbrowns you get at, oh, The Waffle House: shipped in dehydrated form, rehydrated in the kitchen. Ho, hum.

Rick and I part company over the biscuits. He likes his biscuits flaky, in the Southern style; I like those, too, but am just as happy with the chuck-wagon style biscuit served at Mr Tim's: heavy but not dense, with enough structural integrity to stay intact when you use it to clean your plate. In fact, as I think on it now, I'll say I prefer that type of biscuit, as being more utilitarian than the flaky variety. I might not serve it to the Ambassador, but it's what you need when you're eatin' under the stars out on the range.

And it's hard to beat Mr Tim's for value. Whether a giant cinnamon roll is worth $5, I can't say, but laying that to one side, the rest of the prices are certainly on the low side. Any regular reader of this blog knows how important that aspect is to me, and if anything will prompt me to recommend a place to others, it's the feeling that you get a good deal when you go there. You get a good deal at Mr Tim's.

There Is Substance

Tre Trattoria
4003 Broadway

(in the Boardwalk, between the Witte Museum and Hildebrand)

N.B.: This restaurant is now located at the Museum of Art. I haven't tried it since the move. 4/19/21.

Every now and then one likes to splurge. Personally, I prefer to splurge now (and it's always "now"), but my innate cheapness and a lack of limitless resources, plus a vague awareness of things like body shape, cholesterol count and the middle-age medicinal trifecta keep me from a life of unbridled culinary libertinage. Still, every now and then I will at least make a show of splurging. 

Today, in furtherance of those impulses, my friend Rick took me to lunch at Tre Trattoria, one of local-celeb-chef Jason Dady's places (the others being Bin 555; The Lodge in Castle Hills; and another location of Tre Trattoria, downtown in the Fairmount Hotel). (Oh, and there's a barbecue place, too....) I had only been to one of his places before, though certainly I know his name; but as a curmudgeon, I won't let myself be too impressed by celebrity, until I'm personally certain there's some substance to it. My two visits to Bin 555 had not assured me that such was the case. The first visit, at lunch time many years ago, is all but lost in the mists of time, except for a feeling of not being greatly impressed; the second visit, for dinner about three years ago, I remember mainly for the company of a charming and amusing couple, new friends who might have become best friends, had they not gotten a divorce a few months later. Chè sarà sarà.

So. I had never so much as seen Tre Trattoria. It's tucked away in the back of the Boardwalk, an eclectic jumble of shops and offices and restaurants that seem to cater to the Gucci-B crowd. I suspect, in fact, that Chef Dady calls his outpost "Tre Trattoria Alamo Heights," even though it's in San Antonio, in order to encourage those folks in the belief that, yes, it is okay to cross Hildebrand Avenue, but only long enough to have lunch; stay any longer and they're likely to be infected with bourgeois leanings, and want to park on the street overnight, or vote Democratic.

Tre Trattoria has a large, well-accoutered south-facing outdoor dining area. No surprise that it had about it an air of desuetude: San Antonio in August is never a place to have lunch al fresco, this year more than most. Still, I thought longingly how nice a place it would be, if we could just knock thirty degrees off the temperature. Maybe in September.... 

Inside the expensively decorated dining room (which, sadly, already strikes me as dated rather than trendy), the youthful staff did their best to make us feel comfortable and welcome, but you could just about tell that they, with their designer jeans and ubiquitous tattoos, weren't accustomed to being better-dressed than their clientele. Rick was in his National Sarcasm Society T-shirt, and I was sporting a Liverpool team shirt. I don't think that was what discomfited them; maybe it was the shorts and tennis shoes. Still, they were tactful, graceful, accepting and patient. When a couple of overdressed blue-haired '09-ers came in and took the adjoining booth (the rattle of jewelry attracted our attention), well, weren't we put in our place. 

The menu is the sort of thing you've come to expect at poncy places, but it's nowhere near as pretentious as most other fine restaurants. There were no designer names on the various ingredients, nor gushing descriptions of sensations attributable to eating them. There were a few translations of Italian words, though others were left un-translated. (Myself, I don't know what "Gremolota" is, but neither do I care). The wine list is moderately extensive, but neither of us was interested. 

Many of the entrées on the menu are available in larger and smaller portions. What presumably is a full he-man serving comes at one price ($15 for the pasta dishes, which was where my attention dwelt); a smaller serving is available for less ($10). And for lunch, the restaurant offers what they call a "Chef's Quick Bite," consisting of a serving — the smaller serving — of the main dish, preceded by soup or salad. These replace the Pranzo listed on the older on-line version of the menu. They have no price listed, but our waiter told us they were $12. We both chose from those options.

>

Last city inspection: March 2010
14 demerits

Both of us opted for the soup, a creamy white-bean concoction seasoned with celery and brown butter. How was it? Well, imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, and after lunch, I stopped off at the Gucci-B for a can of cannellini, and went home to try and duplicate what I'd had. (Came pretty close, considering that I'm not about to spend the time needed to clarify and brown butter; and I used nonfat yogurt instead of cream, and the white wine I used is of the cheapest variety available. I should have puréed the beans longer, and I should have let it reduce longer, but the aroma and taste are not entirely unlike what Tre Trattoria offers. All things considered, though, I'll spend the money for theirs.)

My entrée was pappardelle with rustic pork ragu, fennel and lemon. Rick chose the pan-seared gnocchi with creamy gorgonzola. Both were delicious, and there was some debate as to which was better. Like the legislative and executive branches of government, we both claim victory in that debate, but only I really won.* 

Pappardelle is a wide ribbon of pasta, like lasagna noodles after a long interview with the Inquisition. It is difficult to store and transport, as it is very delicate in its dry state, and so isn't often seen at grocery stores. It is an excellent pasta, though, where there is a thick sauce to put on it. (If I had a pasta maker at home, it would only be so I could make pappardelle myself. I'd use it for other stuff too, and probably enjoy routinely having fresh, home-made pasta, but I would only buy a pasta machine for that one purpose. Which is why I don't have one.) The Neapolitan-style ragu had a pleasing intensity, and the pork was served in plentiful, large and insanely tender chunks. The tastes of fennel and lemon were both subdued, as I would have requested had I been asked. If I had to complain** ... well, I can't really think of anything. Maybe too much salt. 

Rick's gnocchi was clearly of the home-made variety, deeply redolent of fresh potato flavour and lightly overlaid with a very thick sauce of Gorgonzola cheese in cream. I thought the searing of the gnocchi had been carried just a bit farther than was necessary, as some of it was nearer black than brown, but the taste was not diminished. If anything, it could have done with another quarter-cup of the luxurious sauce. And his dish did have too much salt.

The table service at Tre Trattoria was excellent, but ... well, I have to wonder why they call these lunch specials "Chef's Quick Bites" if they're going to take so very long to come out of the kitchen? After ordering, we finished our soup, went through two plates of really quite outstanding bread — a light, crusty baguette — and had time to contemplate the chandelier (derivative), the furnishings (interesting), and the artwork (uninteresting, except for a photo of some tomatoes) and the other customers (enough said) before commenting on how loooooong it was taking. We are both retired and had nowhere to be, so we weren't really in any hurry; but you just know that the idea of a "Quick Bite" was to get working people in and out quickly, without their feeling rushed. We felt abandoned, or would have had not the waiter made occasional passes to reassure us. The long delay is the reason the "service" rating is not much higher.

* Proof? You want proof? History is written by the winners.

** And I do.

That's odd...

Cha-Cha's
5616 Bandera Road

(just inside Loop 410)

It's been about ten years since I was last in Cha Cha's. I used to go for breakfast with a friend who particularly liked the place, and another couple we used to hang out with liked it for dinner. I don't remember feeling particularly strongly about the place one way or t'other, so when I happened to be on that side of town and looking for a place to eat breakfast, there it was, nestled in by Zarzamora Creek, across from the Sushi-B. Why the hell not.

Emiliano Zapata
one of the Great Men of
Western Civilization

Here's what it was like: my friend and I were the only people in the place. That's not too odd; it wasn't really prime breakfasting hours, though it seemed a little odd to be so entirely alone in such a well-known place. We were seated promptly by a cheerful waiter who was fascinated by my friend's T-shirt, with its colourful depictions of various coleoptera, and whose mustache I found oddly interesting, insofar as one side went up like Hercule Poirot's, while the other side went down like Emiliano Zapata's. One is a favourite literary character, the other is a favourite historical character. That has nothing whatsoever to do with this restaurant; I just found it curious.

I found something on the breakfast menu called huevos texanos, which I had never heard of. The Moustache informed me that it was eggs topped by a chili gravy such as they use on enchiladas, with onions and yellow cheese. That sounded good, so I ordered it, with coffee. My friend Rick ordered huevos rancheros.

The coffee came, in a French press. This may make for "attractive after-dinner presentation," and it may be a simple mechanism, but not if you don't know how to use it. It seems that the Mustache didn't. He put before me a cup filled with grounds. After a second try he took the device off to the kitchen, where apparently resided someone with greater experience. Eventually the coffee returned, sans press and sans grounds. We sat back and awaited our breakfast, diverted by the vaguely pornographic ads in the local throwaway weekly rag.

Soon, though, the Mustache returned to tell us that he had been roundly chastised by the cook because he didn't ask us how we wanted our eggs prepared. We both asked for them over medium, which satisfied him, and he left.

A minute or two later, the other employee approached our table and said, without elaboration, "Huevos texanos." I somehow expected more, but after just a moment realized he was asking who at our table had ordered that dish. I admitted my role in the scene, and he asked me, again, how I wanted my eggs. I said "over medium." He looked at Rick and said, with a moderately thick accent that required some concentration to decode, but was not at all unintelligible, "You want eggs over medium too?" And Rick admitted to that preference.

Shortly after this scene, our other employee returned and said, again, "Huevos texanos." I looked at him, and at Rick, and finally realized that he was again asking who, at our table, had ordered this apparently very difficult and demanding dish. I again identified myself, and he said, "With onions on top?"

The Metropolitan Health District has no
inspection listed on line for this location.

It occurred to me that this was not a trick question, so I answered in the affirmative, and he left me to return to the mild pornography of the throwaway rag. Before long, though, he returned yet again, this time bearing two dishes. He stood by the table uncertainly, and finally said, "Huevos texanos?" For a third time I identified myself as the destination for that dish, and it was placed before me. I sampled the sauce, which I found disappointingly thin, but pleasingly flavourful. The eggs were fully covered by it, and the rest of the plate was completely covered by refried beans and fried potatoes in small chunks. Flour tortillas were made available as well. Rick's huevos rancheros looked almost indistinguishable, except that his sauce was chunkier than mine.

I sampled the beans, which were good; they were neither dry nor runny, and I'm happy whenever I get refritos that don't have the soapy taste of lard. The potatoes were actually very good: cooked in very hot oil for close to the perfect length of time, they had a little crunch on the outside and lots of softness inside. Rick confirmed that he shared these appraisals of the side-dishes.

"Over medium" is, it appears, a concept unfamiliar to the cooks at Cha Cha's. To me, and to Rick, it means that the whites are fully set and the yolks are completely runny. My egg whites were runny. Rick's were hardly cooked at all. Describing what we got as "over medium" would be to stretch that term beyond credibility, kind of like a Virginia Republican congressman describing elements of Obama's health-care proposal. I thought about sending it back, but it's not like an undercooked steak; you can't just scrape off the sauce and throw a couple of fried eggs on the grill for another minute, not after they've had a knife taken to them; and neither of us wanted to wait for another batch to be prepared. We made do, not entirely satisfied by, nor repulsed by the error.

We got a refill of coffee, poured this time from a styrofoam cup.

Despite the lack of frying-time for the eggs, and the peculiarities incident to their delivery, and despite the technological issues with coffee preparation, the flavour of both our breakfasts and the coffee was good overall, right down to the flour tortillas served on the side. The place is clean, pleasant and comfortable, and the prices are in the range that I consider reasonable for what you get.

Smelling the Roses

Pete's Tako House
1022 North Main Avenue

(where Lex & Main come together)

N.B.: Reports are that this business has relocated to 502 Brooklyn Avenue, downtown, near the River. I haven't verified that myself. 8/8/12

There are a few regular commentators on Urbanspoon whose opinion I feel is reliable. That's not to say that I agree with them; quite often I don't, but I find they write about restaurants with sufficient precision (and, to be honest, much greater conciseness than I generally try for) that I can tell where I will likely agree or disagree. One of those commentators is "Lepricano," a guy who spends too much time in New York and Las Vegas to be completely trustworthy, but who seems nonetheless to have a solid real-world foundation for his opinions. 

I came across his comments on Pete's Tako House this morning while trying to decide where to have breakfast, and his evaluation, agreeing with a previous comment expressed by a writer I don't know enough about, convinced me that this place is worth a visit.

Let's be honest: I've been passing by Pete's Tako House for twenty years, and was never the least bit tempted to stop in. For one thing, I almost always passed by in the late afternoon, after it had closed. For another, it always had a derelict and shuttered look to it (well, it would, being closed and all); and the neighbourhood it's in doesn't, in the evening hours, inspire great feelings of security: it is surrounded by offices that are deserted by 6PM, and by gay bars that, whatever they may be like on the inside, look from the outside like perfect spots for a drug deal.

Last city inspection: October 2010
26 demerits

But here it was, late morning, and I'm in the mood for tacos. I summon my personal Kato/Robin/Tonto and head off towards downtown. 

During the daytime, with cars in its tiny parking lot, Pete's doesn't look nearly as forbidding as it used to on the way home from work. It stands on a point of land jutting into the jumbled intersection where Main and Lexington Avenues separate (or come together), and where Maple Street ends (or begins). I wouldn't call it welcoming, exactly: it still has the aura of a converted gas station (which, maybe, it actually is); but it doesn't scare me off. 

Inside is a dining room that's small even by taquería standards. It has about a dozen tables, close together, yet somehow their proximity to one another doesn't have the same discomfiting characteristic that I've noted in other places (most recently this week, at Magnolia Pancake Haus). Taquerías are supposed to be like this; exactly like this. Menu board on the wall; cash register in the back, keeping the kitchen company; random pictures on the wall veering from art to camp to commercial; a thrum of noise from machinery and conversation that never overwhelms, like white noise. 

The waiter greets us as though we were regulars; he is cheerful, gregarious, welcoming, and efficient. We have our drinks in a moment, he answers questions about the food succinctly, and our orders are placed. We barely have time to admire the architecture of the retirement home looming over Crockett Park in the distance, or comment on the photograph of the Pope-mobile passing by on the street, before tacos are placed before us. Mine are in corn tortillas, wrapped tight in foil; Rick's are in thin home-made flour tortillas.

The quality of the food is kind of like recent stock-market averages: it's up and down. Rick's flour tortillas are, he swears (and if I had a stack of Bibles, I'm sure he'd swear on them), the best he's had in a long, long time. He thinks the picadillo is a little underseasoned, not quite as good as he had at Blanquita's; he calls his bean-and-bacon taco outstanding. He offers me not a taste, so all I can do is report his opinion. I will say that his taco fillings looked good, though.

My tacos are chilaquiles and machacado. The chilaquiles are disappointing, not because they're bad — they're not — but because they don't live up to the billing provided by the comments on Urbanspoon. The ingredients are correct, the tortillas are on the well-made, high-quality side (for corn tortillas; what can I say? yo soy gringo), and the eggs and chilaquiles themselves (the actual fried corn-tortilla pieces that give the dish its name) are cooked just right. But I thought the texture suffered from excessive hurry in the kitchen; the pico needed to be left in the pan, or on the grill, maybe half a minute longer, to break down the cell-walls in the onion and pepper. As it was, they were too crunchy to be satisfying. One of the things I love about chilaquiles, when they're made the way I like them, is the range of textures. If the pico isn't allowed to soften sufficiently, that range is curtailed, and that's what I found at Pete's.

The machacado, on the other hand, was outstanding. In most places, the machacado (the dried, shredded meat that gives this dish it's name) is kind of like gas-station jerky: tasty and chewy. Here, the meat is just like what I find in Mexico. Here it is actually dry. It is finely shredded and has a texture that is closer to wood than steak, and yes, I know that sounds just awful, but that's what it's supposed to be like. To eat it, you must chew slowly and thoughtfully, and that's the beauty of a well-made machacado taco: it forces you to slow down and relish the flavours, enjoy the textures, appreciate the qualities of what you're eating. I suppose if I ate nothing but machacado tacos from Pete's Tako House, I'd be as thin as that guy Jared who eats at Subway, because I have to eat it so very slowly. 

Really, that's a good thing, a very good thing.

Nascent Local Tradition

Magnolia Pancake Haus
606 Embassy Oak

(behind the Embassy Theaters, just off West Avenue near Bitters Road)

Looking over the menu at Magnolia Pancake Haus reminded me of a place in New Orleans, the Ruby Slipper, where I had what I thought of at the time (and still do) as "the best breakfast ever." Mostly because both places are known in their respective locales as great breakfast spots. The Ruby Slipper, though, is a neighbourhood eatery deeply infused with a mix of Old N'awlinz Tradition and New Age Cutesiness; Magnolia is a straightforward restaurant that has no real neighbourhood around it, more an IHOP without the homogenization and mock sophistication. Its menu takes its cues from favourite dishes discovered in other places around the country: San Francisco, Chicago, and so on. (And on that score, by the way, the manager would do well to visit the Ruby Slipper.) 

Magnolia, which has relocated from its old digs across the parking lot, loses nothing from the move. The old location was clean and new and sparkly; the new location is that as well, and probably larger. Last time I visited, after the move, I was disappointed because (a) the tables were so close together I felt myself almost a part of the conversation at three adjacent tables; and (b) there seemed to have been some decline in the product coming from the new kitchen. It just didn't taste as good as it always has before.

Whatever the problem in the kitchen, if there was one, it's been resolved. As for the table-placement, this morning I was in the front dining area, which has two rows of booths with tables placed in between, and everything has enough separation to make me feel comfortable. I didn't see the layout of the back dining room, where I'd eaten before, to see if they've maybe lowered the density of seating there. If they haven't, I won't want to be in there. But that's just me; some people like community seating.

The food: Yes, it was very good. I went for the Jambalaya omelet, in vague homage, perhaps, to that Ruby Slipper breakfast. The eggs were fluffy to the point of being almost too thick, folded around the filling of seasoned rice, chicken and sausage in a suspiciously precise manner. (I say "suspiciously precise" because the eggs had not cooked into the filling in the least, which makes me suspect that Magnolia has some kind of device in its kitchen that allows its cooks to actually prepare omelets in the shape of a taco, then put the filling in afterwards. How else to explain the machine-like neatness of the folded eggs?) Over the top was a reddish-brown sauce with cheese in it that, yes, did seem redolent of jambalaya seasonings, but looked more like enchilada sauce. Despite appearances, it was quite tasty in a way appropriate to the dish. 

The two pancakes that accompanied the omelet, though, were the high point of my morning. (Usually, that's damning with faint praise, but this was a particularly good morning all around. Surely not because I took my wife to the airport this morning; more in spite of that.) The pancakes were light, fluffy, and slightly sweet. They were so light, in fact, that I could have poured an entire pitcher of syrup on them without overflowing the too-small plate they were laid on. But that much syrup would still have been a travesty, an indignity to which such wonderful creations as these pancakes should not be subjected. The pancakes, actually, were better in some ways than what I had at the Ruby Slipper, a comparison that means nothing to you, perhaps, but speaks volumes to me. 

I've already mentioned how clean the place is, partly because it's very new. There is a sort of suburban sterility to the atmosphere of the place, as though it has consciously tried to capture the ambience of a Sheraton Hotel lobby; though the idea that anyone would go for that on purpose is not to be believed. So let's just say that it's suburban-modern, kind of like the "hominess" you get in a contractor's model in a new subdivision. Nice enough, but definitely nothing special. Not the least bit lived-in.

Last city inspection:  August 2009
29 demerits; that's a lot.

The service is pretty good. I probably marked it up higher than it should have been because I sat there for a while wondering when the waiter was going to bring more coffee, then felt like an idiot when I realized he had left one of those insulated coffee pots on the table. In a normal mood, I'd mark down for that: to me, it means that the management is determined to get by with fewer staff than a decent restaurant should have; kind of like, you know, IHOP. Name one really good restaurant that uses those things.  Go ahead, name one. You can't, can you?

The prices are, I would say, at least twenty percent higher than they ought to be. Breakfast for two people, with coffee, tax and tip, was $25. I didn't notice the price of coffee, but I'll bet that's a big part of the excess; though I also thought the price of my omelet was higher than it should have been. It was good, but it wasn't that good.

Down-Home Chi-Chi

The Esquire Tavern
155 East Commerce

(between St. Mary's and Soledad)

From the outside, nothing at the Esquire has changed since the last time I was there, exactly twenty years ago to the day. (I remember, because August 4th is an important date in my family, and 1991 was a Year Of Momentous Change.) Back then it was the kind of place where you expect to hear the smash of a beer bottle being converted into a weapon. It seemed crowded with shirt-and-tie guys who loved rubbing shoulders with the dregs of society, who were present in, it seemed, just sufficient numbers to attract the free-spending shirt-and-tie guys. It was then, and is still, an Institution in downtown San Antonio, but now that it's been re-imagined as a sort of New Age Haven, it no longer has to rely on such dross as a tenuous connection with a well-received Television Event to attract attention.

Once you step inside, you realize that ... well, nothing's really changed there either ... except ... it feels different. There are still a few guys holding up the bar (yes, the famous Long Bar) in the middle of the day, just enough of them to make you wonder about people who have nothing else to do that time of day. (What do you mean, "People like me"?) They've been cleaned up, though: they no longer look scruffy and dangerous; now they look ... well, like us ordinary folk. 

The back part of the very deep room is the dining area. I notice that there are a few tables on the balcony overlooking the River Walk, but honestly, even in the shade with a fan going, it's too damn hot in August (especially this year) to even think about shirking one's responsibility to soak up as much artificially chilled air as one can. Yet I see that one table is occupied, presumably by aliens from Mercury who find Earth intolerably chilly. Or tourists from Up North who want a "it was so hot" story to tell their friends when they get back home. Or locals who are carrying I-can-take-it one-upsmanship just a tad too far.*

The indoor part of the dining area is plenty big, and even though it's the lunch hour on a work day, there aren't many people clogging it up. The booths are of the old-fashioned variety, with high backs and wings to add to the feeling of sinfulness. Your boss will really have to look hard to find you in there; leave your cellphone on your desk, "accidentally." So will your girlfriend's husband. The place has a comfortable feeling of privacy about it, even if you're not playing hooky or cheating on a Significant Other. There are televisions on the wall above the bar, for the truly bored, but the sound is off so they don't interfere with others' enjoyment. And everything is dark: the wood, the floors, the huge mirrors on the walls, the wallpaper, the ancient ceiling; everything is well-lit, though, by the light streaming through the glass wall that is the Riverwalk end of the room. I could see well enough to read our local throwaway weekly rag, which piqued my interest this week with a cynical political piece about our Saintly Governor and some poor shlub who was wrongly executed some years ago. Well, mistakes happen, and those editors over at the throwaway weekly rag, they just don't appreciate irony.

The menu is printed on both sides of a six-by-eight card, and features fru-fru-sounding appetizers, sandwiches, salads.... All the usual stuff, except nothing is usual here. The Esquire takes particular pride in having everything that can be home made home made, right down to the ketchup and mustard and pickles. It makes for an interesting, albeit brief, topic of conversation, but I don't know that it affects the taste of things all that much. 

Still, the tastes were generally pretty darn good. They don't carry the only beer I like enough to cross the street for, so I stuck with water; though I was fleetingly tempted by the Mexican Coke and home-made carbonated water, mainly as a novelty interest. The $2.50 price tag on each was all it took for me to dismiss that whim. For that amount of money for colored water with sugar, the waiter would have to stand behind me and massage my shoulders. I know, of course, that most people in the world simply shrug their shoulders at the thought of paying eight or ten times the value of a thing; if they didn't, Coke, of any nationality, would cost thirty-five cents and there would be fewer foreclosures.

The menu starts with a section called "Plates." I think, by that, they mean everything from tapas to entrées.  I toyed with the idea of a plate of fried peanuts, but instead asked for the deviled eggs; I vaguely remember hearing something about the deviled eggs, though I don't recall whether it was good or bad, or whether it was from a reliable source. My table-mate ordered a jalapeño bean burger, medium-well, and I picked the Big Red Short Rib Empanada. 

Sadly, the Big Red Short Rib Empanada, easily the most intriguing menu entry I've seen since bananas Foster pain perdu, is no longer a regular feature at the Esquire. For reasons of economics, perhaps, or as the result of a time-and-motion study, they are now only available on weekends. My fallback, an instantaneous decision made with inadequate reflection, was the sirloin burger with smoked Gouda cheese. 

The deviled eggs were good. Not great. Presumably the kitchen staff did not lay the eggs themselves. (Maybe they have their own chickens, on a spread outside the Loop.) The eggs were boiled perfectly well, not the least bit rubbery but still possessing sufficient structural integrity to be easily managed as finger-food. The filling, while a damn sight better than what I got yesterday at a much less attractive trough on the South Side, was a little disappointing. The taste was good, and the pink peppercorns decorating the tops made for an intriguing appearance and a pleasant counterpoint, but the texture was simply too smooth. It had all been over-mixed, leaving nothing for the tongue to grab on to.

My friend's jalapeño bean burger was, he said, very good. According to the menu, it contains organic beef, cheese, refritos with ancho, jalapeño aioli (which would seem out of place on beef, but wasn't) and roasted jalapeños. At ten bucks a pop, it'd had better be good. 

My cheeseburger was only nine dollars. "Only" nine dollars. I have to wonder if a restaurant in downtown San Antonio, which is full of people who make their livings as hotel maids and security guards, can survive with prices like that. Most of the higher-paid people, the city employees and county employees and lawyers and bankers, will likely prefer places with higher visibility value; places like The Palm and Bohanon's and Biga, where they get to be seen spending too much money. Oh, sure, on occasion they'll drift into the Esquire and have a quiet lunch with some lobbyist or developer or defendant or mistress, but I don't know if it'll be often enough to keep this very good restaurant going. A shame, really.

No city inspection.

Anyway, my burger was also very good, except that I regret having chosen the Gouda. Somehow, the smoky flavour of the cheese had issues with the excellent flavours of beef and veggies and that home-made ketchup and mustard. Also the home-made sesame-seed bun was toasted to within an inch of its life. Another ten seconds on the heat and I'd've been sending it back.

I have resisted the urge to consider the cost of parking in the "value" rating: we paid $5 to park for an hour at the garage a block away, which was only worth it because of the heat. I figure, though, that the Esquire's clientele isn't going to be driving downtown to eat, so parking won't be an issue for them. They'll be walking over from the office, in their shirts and ties, hoping to rub shoulders with a 21st Century version of the demimonde. The place looks right for that, but turns out to be a nice place anyway.

*I'm betting on the locals; the look of the Esquire from the outside, as others have noted, is generally sufficient to scare the tourists away.