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.